what does this symbol mean?

BPMN symbols

The notation of BPMN business process diagrams: the event circles, task boxes and gateway diamonds, the flows between them, and the pools and lanes of a swimlane diagram, and what each one means.

Test yourself: BPMN symbols quiz

Events 5 symbols

Activities 2 symbols

Gateways 3 symbols

Flows 1 symbol

Swimlanes 2 symbols

Data and notes 2 symbols

About bPMN symbols

BPMN, Business Process Model and Notation, is a standard way of drawing business processes: who does what, in what order, and what passes between the people and organisations involved. It is published by the Object Management Group (OMG), a not-for-profit standards consortium. The current version, BPMN 2.0.2, dates from December 2013, and the same text is the international standard ISO/IEC 19510. The OMG describes BPMN as a flowchart-like notation, comprehensible to business users yet precise enough for technical users. Each symbol has its own page.

The five kinds of symbol

BPMN 2.0.2 sorts its elements into five groups. Flow objects are the main ones: events, circles for something that happens; activities, rounded rectangles for work, either a Task or a Sub-process; and gateways, diamonds where paths split or join. Data is shown by data objects and data stores. Connecting objects are the lines: the solid sequence flow, the dashed message flow and the dotted association. Swimlanes are the pools and lanes. Artifacts, such as a text annotation, add information without changing the process.

Reading the circles and diamonds

An event’s line says when it happens: thin for a start, double for an intermediate event and thick for an end. A marker inside says what kind of event it is, such as an envelope for a message or a clock for a timer; a filled marker throws and an unfilled one catches. A gateway’s marker says how the paths divide: an X for an exclusive gateway, which takes one path, a plus for a parallel gateway, which takes all of them, and a circle for an inclusive gateway, which takes one or more.

Swimlane diagrams

A swimlane diagram divides a process into bands, one for each participant or role, with each step in the band of whoever carries it out. Stephen White of IBM, introducing BPMN in 2004, wrote that many process modelling methods use swimlanes and that BPMN supports them with two constructs: a Pool for each participant, such as a company, and lanes for the divisions within it, often a company function or role.

Where BPMN came from

The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) released BPMN 1.0 in May 2004, after more than two years of work by its Notation Working Group, according to White. Its aim was a notation readily understood by everyone from the business analysts who draft a process to the developers who implement it. White described the diagram as based on a flowcharting technique, with shapes chosen to be familiar: activities are rectangles and decisions are diamonds, as in a flowchart.

Sources

  1. Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN), Specification home page, Object Management Group, Graphical notations for business processes; ISO/IEC 19510
  2. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Version 2.0.2, OMG document formal/2013-12-09, December 2013 (also ISO/IEC 19510), Object Management Group, Title page; Section 7.3
  3. Introduction to BPMN, Stephen A. White, IBM Corporation, 2004 (published on bpmn.org), IBM Corporation; Business Process Management Initiative, What Is BPMN?; Swimlanes

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research