Modeling with EPBE

The Eriksson-Penker Business Extensions were designed to logically extend the Unified Modeling Language to allow you to model the important business aspects of an enterprise. The Unified Modeling Language which had become a standard in late 1997 quickly became the lingua franca for software development models. After its adoption It was realized that because of its sound structure it could be used as the basis for modeling other systems.  Hans-Erik Eriksson and Magnus Penker, who had backgrounds in object-oriented technology and business process modeling, identified a gap and an opportunity to create a language that could be used to model enterprise business system with a focus on enterprise processes. The language gained wide appeal due to its small size and pragmatic and expressive elements. It was never created as a UML profile but its structure was based on this ubiquitous language.  Business and technical people alike found it easy to describe a process and include such elements as the Actor and Event that initiates the process, the goal of the process and the inputs and outputs required including information and resources.

Enterprise Architect was the first UML based tool to identify the significance of the language and continues to be the front runner and tool of choice for this proven small but effective business modeling language.