BPMN 2.0 is to be voted on in June with release around August/September and from all signs is likely to be passed as is. According to Bruce De Silver one of the big changes from an analyst point of view is event handling.
I, like I’m sure others, have been told by BPMN modelling vendors that events are a ‘system thing’ and shouldn’t be used to model a business flow. In any large scale process work I have done half the issue is differentiating the correct path through a process, to the exceptions. Whether the goal is removing exceptions for efficiency or showing
Of course BPMN 2.0 has many other advantages for those who wishes to execute process flows directly by a BPMS required attributes have been defined rather than the previous practice where each vendor had different names. In my opinion this can never be achieved, the process complexity needed for IT systems is far greater than business people need to know, or have to think about. This is particularly the case for the executives who we need the buy in from to get meaningful business change! Orchestration is an exception but the line between orchestration and workflow is forever hazy…
From rumours it seems OMG is trying to tie UML closer to BPMN, a move sure to push BPMN forever into the IT department domain and away from business users. But at least this will hopefully mean the end of BPEL!