While working on a process model, we will notice the use of several repeatable and re-usable steps that are commonly used. These are referred to as business process patterns, and are important for us to understand and keep in mind while developing a BPD using BPMN. These patterns began as developmental work by Wil van der Aalst, Arthur ter Hofstede, Bartek Kiepuszewski, and Alistair Barros who together identified many workflow patterns that could be used to describe a process behavior, and be considered for execution by a BPM system later on. We will be discussing some of the main business process patterns in subsequent sections of this chapter.

For ease of understanding, we can divide these patterns into the following categories: