BPMN
Also called: Business Process Model and Notation · BPMN 2.0
The international standard notation for modelling business processes, precise enough that a diagram can be executed rather than only read.
BPMN — Business Process Model and Notation — is the standard graphical notation for business processes, maintained by the Object Management Group. It defines what each symbol means: activities, gateways, events, flows and the lanes that show who is responsible.
Its value is that it is unambiguous. A BPMN 2.0 diagram is precise enough to be executed by an engine, not merely interpreted by a reader. That is the difference between a drawing that documents a process and a model that runs it — and it is why BPMN, rather than a boxes-and-arrows sketch, is the formal language of executable architecture.