Business Process Definition - BPD

BPD   
- The Business Process Definition is the core of the IBM BPM solutions. BPD is a diagram that represents the overall view and flow of the business process.

Fig: BPD with all components 

Pools and lanes

- The canvas as a whole represents the pool while multiple lanes can be added to segment the pool into horizontal sections.

Fig: Pools and Lanes

Sequence lines

- Sequence lines are drawn to connect the individual steps in the BPD. A sequence line describes which activities will follow other activities in sequence as the process executes. 

Activities

Fig: Initial Properties of Activity

- Activities are the core element in the process. These are the declarations that some work is going to be performed.

- Data mapping is the mapping of the variables in scope in the BPD to the expected parameters of the service that is to be called by the Activity.

- When an Activity is reached in the BPD, it may not always be applicable to execute this activity but instead it can be skipped over by using an condition attribute.

BPD Diagram Notes 

- Notes are documentation items added to the BPD diagram. They appear as yellow rectangles into which text can be entered.