BPMN - use of Activity Partitions in Subprocesses

[Paolo F Cantoni]

[Note: This has been heavily edited from the original - I mistakenly was looking at a UML 2.5 spec instead of the BPMN 2.0 spec  ]

A pool/lane can represent an organisational unit.  I've highlighted the term represent since you can't use the actual organisational unit element (and say that the pool/lane is merely a rendering of the element.  Notwithstanding the BPMN specification says it is the rendering of the participant in the collaboration).  One of the reasons you can't use the element is that the swimlane isn't the element - it's the element in a specific context (that of the enclosing process or collaboration) - at least that's been my understanding since it was drummed into me by Geert a long time ago.  That's why the elements in the process are nested under the appropriate swimlane in the browser.

So, "Accounts Dept" isn't - but is actually  "Accounts Dept in Process Invoice".  OK so far?

My question is...
Often the Main process flow (which includes the pool in question) may include a subprocess. The subprocess may not be fully contained in the lane of the main process.  For example, there may be a flow from the Accounts Dept to Customer Services.  Consequently, I'll need two lanes one Accounts Dept and one Customer Services in the subprocess diagram.  Now EA will create a new lane called Accounts Dept and another for Customer Services nested under the subprocess and therefore they won't be the ones from the main process.   As far as I can see, this is correct, the new one being "Accounts Dept in subprocess" and so on.

Can any BPMN gurus confirm I've got it straight?

TIA,
Paolo

[Geert Bellekens]

Hi Paolo,

Feels like you arrived at the right conclusion.

Please also note that there are two kinds of things people usually call a "subProcess"
There is the actual subprocess activity from BPMN, where everything is contained in the parent process. This type of subprocess is private and can only be used from within the parent process.

The other "subProcess" is where you call another BPMN process (outside of the parent process scope) by setting the calledActivityRef tagged value.

I prefer to use only the second variant as that leaves room for re-use without having to refactor a private sub-process into a BusinessProcess

Geert