BPMN process diagram template
An order fulfilment process in BPMN 2.0 with two lanes, an exclusive gateway that actually branches, and a message flow to the participant you do not control.
Notation: BPMN 2.0Diagram: Business process diagram
Open this template in Archyno
It opens as an editable model, not an image. Change it in the browser, then export to PNG, SVG, Mermaid, XMI, or a Sparx .qea file.
Open this templateWhat is on this diagram
- Order fulfilment
- The pool. One participant, one process - rename it to the party that owns the work.
- Sales / Warehouse
- The lanes. Who does the step, not what the step is.
- Order received
- The start event. Name it for what happened, not for what happens next.
- Stock available?
- The exclusive gateway. A question, with every answer drawn as a labelled branch.
- Pick and pack
- A task. A verb and an object, in the lane of whoever performs it.
- Customer
- The collapsed pool. A participant whose internals you neither know nor control.
How to make it yours
- Rename the pool to the participant that owns the process. If two parties own parts of it, that is two pools and a message flow between them, not two lanes.
- Rename the lanes to roles rather than to people or to systems. A lane called Jana is a lane that is wrong the week she changes team.
- Name the start event for the thing that already happened. "Order received" is a start event; "Receive order" is a task pretending to be one.
- Label every branch leaving the gateway. An unlabelled exclusive gateway is the single most common BPMN error, and it makes the diagram unreadable rather than merely untidy.
- Keep the message flow dashed and across the pool boundary. A solid sequence flow between two pools is invalid BPMN - flows do not cross participants.
- Give every path an end event. A task with nothing after it reads as an unfinished diagram, not as a finished process.
Common questions
What is the difference between a pool and a lane in BPMN?
A pool is a participant - a company, a department, a system that runs its own process. A lane is a subdivision inside one pool, usually a role. The practical test is the flow: sequence flows may cross lanes freely and may never cross pools. If the two boxes you are drawing need a solid arrow between them, they belong in one pool.
When should I use an exclusive gateway instead of a parallel one?
An exclusive gateway takes exactly one outgoing branch, chosen by the data; a parallel gateway takes all of them at once. Read the question aloud - if the answers are mutually exclusive, it is exclusive. If the answer is "both, at the same time", it is parallel and it needs a matching join before the process can continue.
Do I have to draw the customer's process?
No, and usually you should not. A collapsed pool - a bare rectangle with a name and no contents - says the participant exists, exchanges messages with you, and runs a process you do not model. Drawing the inside of a party you do not control is a guess presented as a specification.
Read the notation
The BPMN gateway types explained: exclusive, parallel, inclusive, event-based and complex, splitting versus merging, default flows, and why an unbalanced inclusive gateway is the classic way to deadlock a process.
A working introduction to BPMN 2.0: the five families of symbol, the difference between sequence flow and message flow, pools and lanes, the three levels of modelling, and when BPMN beats a UML activity diagram.
A reference for every BPMN 2.0 symbol: tasks and their type markers, subprocesses and call activities, the three event borders and their glyphs, the five gateway types, sequence against message flow, default and conditional flows, pools, lanes, data objects and artifacts.
A step-by-step procedure for drawing a BPMN 2.0 diagram: choosing the start and end events first, listing steps as verb phrases, drawing the happy path in one pool, adding gateways and loops, deciding whether a second pool is warranted, and the five checks that catch most defects.