Vinny, I think Kmajoos has answered this one - and thank you Kmajoos!

One thing I would add is from a BA perspective that the 'and' construct is not defining that processes must run at the same time (that is a design decision) - what they are defining is that there is no requirement for them not to run at the same time: the only dependencies they have are

- for precondition (in effect) the same trigger (the 'and' gateway)

- for post condition that a process cannot start until 2 or more preceeding processes have completed whether or not they run at the same time (when they don't run at the same time this is a usual suspect for process bottlenecks).

This is still all about defining process dependency requirements (which is all that process diagrams do) and not how it will be designed - my plan as a BA is just to say to the designers "I know exactly what the users require and here are the processes dependencies defined in a BPMN diagram. What is the design that best meets these dependecy requirements?". The designers now just have to worry about the best way to meet the requirements and not what the requirements were in the first place, which is how it should be...

Guy

Guy Beauchamp wrote Vinny, I think Kmajoos has answered this one - and thank you Kmajoos! One thing I would add is from a BA perspective that the 'and' construct is not defining that processes must run at the same time (that is a design decision) - what they are defining is that there is no requirement for them not to run at the same time: the only dependencies they have are - for precondition (in effect) the same trigger (the 'and' gateway) - for post condition that a process cannot start until 2 or more preceeding processes have completed whether or not they run at the same time (when they don't run at the same time this is a usual suspect for process bottlenecks). This is still all about defining process dependency requirements (which is all that process diagrams do) and not how it will be designed - my plan as a BA is just to say to the designers "I know exactly what the users require and here are the processes dependencies defined in a BPMN diagram. What is the design that best meets these dependecy requirements?". The designers now just have to worry about the best way to meet the requirements and not what the requirements were in the first place, which is how it should be... Guy

"...that is a design decision..."  That is well-put, Guy.  Why would a stakeholder require, 'These processes must execute at the same time'?   All that the stakeholder cares about is that the tasks complete before continuing with the rest of the process, and that the tasks were triggered as they defined.

Thanks again, Guy!

vinny

That's a fantastic suggestion --if that was one spreadsheet to which I was referring.  I mocked that model up quick --so quick that I neglected to explicitly state that those were two separate worksheets.  Had that been one worksheet, you're suggestion would've been perfect.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to critique and improve my diagram!!!!

vinny