Activity performed by two roles

[Neats]

Hi everyone,

I am after some suggestions/help!

When you have an activity which is performed by two roles (with two
separate swim lanes) how is it represented that both actors perform
the function - would you:
- expand the activity box across both lanes
- or manage it another way.

I have looked through the Business Process Modeling Notation v1.2
(OMG) and I have not been able to find anything that helps in this
scenario.

Any suggestions would be great!

[DavidF]

Intuitively, I would expand the activity box across both lanes but
note that the LANE concept has no specific meaning in BPMN you can use
it to represent whatever you like.
"Lanes are used to organize and categorize activities within a Pool.
The meaning of the Lanes is up to the modeler. BPMN
does not specify the usage of Lanes. Lanes are often used for such
things as internal roles..."
In practice, I avoid the use of lanes and would add a note or colour
coding. The problem with expanding the activity over lanes is that the
idea does not work for any N of M roles.
You might also like to consider whether the roles are to be treated as
resources for the activity (one or more roles required in execution of
the activity) or ownership (by one role of two or more) of the
activity or part of the process. In the second case , I would be
applying sepearate pools for the roles recognising that the separately
owned bits of process may change independently.

[Philip McNicol]

Neats

My understanding is that showing an activity in more than one lane does not conform with the specification and sophisticated modelling tools will not allow it, or least point it out as an error.

A way to represent the situation is to use an XOR gateway to split the flow into two paths to activities in the two lanes, then merge the flows into one via another XOR gateway. This then gives you the opportunity to document the conditions under which one role or the other will complete the activity.


Phil

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[RAJEEV]

Hi Neats,

Adding on to Phil's comment , you can have either the XOR or AND
(PARALLEL) gateway depending on the condition to split and merge the
flow ; though merging using the AND approach will require to have a
clear timeline to complete the activity by both the roles.

Rajeev

On Nov 2, 4:25 am, "Philip McNicol" <Philip.McNi...@tattsgroup.com>
wrote:

[DavidF]

Phil, My quote was from the specification

"Lanes are used to organize and categorize activities within a Pool.
The meaning of the Lanes is up to the modeler. BPMN does not specify
the usage of Lanes. Lanes are often used for such
things as internal roles..."

So compliance with the spec is not an issue here.
I question whether any BPMN modelling tool should be more restrictive
than the specification when expressing the BPMN model ... those that
have special meanings ascribed to a Lane (not a POOL) might reasonably
flag warnings about resulting implementation.
I do agree with your use of XOR in the situation where you wish to
show the case of one role of many being the performer. The original
question was not specific about the meaning of 'both actors perform
the function...'