Modeling business scenarios with BPMN 2.0

Translating our business scenarios into business processes that are modeled with BPMN 2.0 is a very sensitive task. Modeling our business processes using the correct elements sounds simple, but we really need to understand the technical implications that our decisions at the modeling stage will have when we want to execute our process definitions. So let's get started with a real example.

We will use the development life cycle, a case we are familiar with, as an example for the first scenario we will be covering. The business goal of this process is to manage the release management cycle in the most efficient way. We will start in the simplest way possible, and then increasingly add complexity to make it more complete:

This process, shown in the previous diagram, describes the standard activities defined for a project development (or, at least, its happy path) from the moment the development starts to the moment the requirement is done and deployed...