Why UPN?

Why UPN?

Universal Process Notation has been designed specifically to foster discovery and understanding of the business process logic to be consumed by people. It is a great tool both for business analysis and end user training. UPN is characterized by: an extremely simple (universal) notation and a hierarchical structure.

Universal notation:

The UPN drawing notation can be summarized in this image of the activity box. All processes can be captured with just this one building block. We will see the power of this in practice in the following modules.

Contrast this with BPMN notation below, the most commonly used diagramming language in the IT world (Salesforce flows are BPMN-esque notation). While popular among some analysts, the notation is far more complex and can only be effectively utilized by experts.

BPMN (and any BPMN-esque alternatives) have been designed predominantly to help visualize algorithms (that is why they are used for visualizations in any modern declarative tool). 

Hierarchical structure:

UPN diagrams are not just diagrams. The other fundamental principle of this notation is the hierarchy. You can capture a more detailed process as a connected “child diagram” for a given step. This allows you to create a single, unified view of all business processes in a single map, as opposed to having multiple, siloed, and disjointed pictures. It also helps you make each diagram smaller and easier to read.

The principle of hierarchy will be explained in more detail in following modules.

Contrast the picture above with the one below. In most other diagramming notations you need to create single view pictures. You end up with bigger, more complex diagrams and with multiple, disjointed documents.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/BPMN-model-for-the-Incorporation-of-the-New-Employee-INE-hospital-process_fig2_220946584

What’s next

Next, you will take a short, theory and practical quiz. Select it from the menu below.

This quiz will help you to recognise the skills and knowledge you have gained, and identify any areas you still need to explore and learn.

Remember, you can revisit these pages, or ask us for help if you get stuck. Once you pass the quiz, click “Next Module” to move on to Module 3.