Ep. 99 - BPMN 3(?) ... Pt. 1 Definition, History, and Complaints

What's Your Baseline? Enterprise Architecture & Business Process Management Demystified

BPMN—”the” standard for process modeling and also the foundation for process automation using BPMS tools—is currently in its version 2.02, and that version was published in early 2014.
Since then? Crickets.

So, why haven't we seen an update of the standard? That is a big question and since we had such a blast talking about this topic we went wayyyyy overboard time-wise so that we are splitting the episode into two (well, Episodes 99 and 99 1/2) ;-)

Part 2 will be published in a week from now, on next Monday.

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

• Today’s topic: the complaint episode — what’s wrong with BPMN 2.0 and why we need a BPMN 3.0.
• A quick refresher: what BPMN is, where it came from, and why it became the lingua franca of process modeling.
• The promise of BPMN — a vendor-neutral, universal standard that was supposed to be “the last one you’d ever need.”
• The architecture perspective: balancing human understanding with machine execution — and why that balance got lost.
• A trip through history — from BPMN 1.0 (2004) to BPMN 2.0 (2011) and the last official update way back in 2013.
• The big question: why has BPMN stagnated for 12 years despite widespread use and clear pain points?
• Misconceptions and limitations — why BPMN isn’t truly hierarchical and struggles with multi-level process design.
• The missing pieces: business context, data models, organizational links, and real-world process hierarchies.
• AI and automation — how BPMN 2.0 fails to address adaptive, probabilistic, or dynamic process behavior.
• Tool vendors’ workarounds — how they “extended” BPMN to make it usable for analysts and automation implementers.
• The call to action: OMG, it’s time to evolve the standard — let’s build a BPMN 3.0 for the next generation.
• Listener question: how do you use BPMN 2.0? What frustrates you — and how have you worked around it?

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