Why I Built BPMN-Lite?

Because I’ve Sat Through Too Many Confusing Process Meetings

I’ve sat through countless calls where functional consultants and business stakeholders struggle to understand which part of a process they are actually talking about. You know the drill: 15–20 minutes of stuttering prelude just to establish context, then 10 minutes left for actual work. All verbally — or in the best case, referencing some text document or Excel table.

Two minutes. That’s all it would take if someone could just point at a node or edge in a diagram.

That’s why I created BPMN-Lite — a text-based language for describing business processes that instantly generates diagrams.

TL;DR: github/oisee/bpl

Please install VSCode Extension (if you need guidance — feel free to ask in comments), test it, try to break it =) https://github.com/oisee/bpl

BEFORE:

- Business: "So after the payment validation..."
- Consultant: "Wait, is that before or after the inventory check?"
- Business: "No, no, I mean when the system validates..."
- Consultant: "Which system? The payment gateway or our internal..."
- Business: "Let me start over..."
[15 minutes later]
- Consultant: "OK so we're talking about step 7 in the Excel?"
- Business: "No, that's row 7, but it's actually step 9
             if you count the parallel processes..."

AFTER:

With BPMN-Lite, you write:

:Process Name
@Customer
  place order
  send: Payment
  receive: Confirmation
@System  
  receive: Payment
  ?Payment Valid
    +ship order
    -cancel order
  send: Confirmation

(Note: indentation does not matter — it just making it easier to read)

This automatically generates a diagram in realtime, as you type.

Now everyone can literally point: “This gateway here” or “This message flow between Customer and System.”

Choose Your Weapon

Look, if you love dragging boxes around, use Camunda’s bpmn.io — it’s excellent for visual modelling. But if you’re not a fan of moving a mouse around, or you want to capture processes quickly during meetings, use BPMN-Lite.

Why This Helps With Domain-Driven Design

In DDD methodology, we need a ubiquitous language — terms that mean the same thing to everyone. But it’s hard to maintain when you can’t even agree on which process step you’re discussing. BPMN-Lite enforces clarity:

• What’s written IS the process
• The diagram is just a view of that text
• Everyone references the same source of truth

Finally, all stakeholders can understand what the hell is going on using the same language.

The AI Angle

Here’s a bonus: LLMs can read and write this format. Try asking ChatGPT/Claude to modify a Visio diagram — not happening. But it can easily understand and modify BPMN-Lite text. Your AI assistant can now help design processes.

Practical Benefits

1. Meeting Efficiency: Point at diagrams, not a distant memories from the past meeting year ago
2. Version Control: See what actually changed in Git
3. Speed: Type during meetings, see diagram instantly
4. No License Hassles: Works in any text editor
5. Export Anywhere: Mermaid, Excel (for Visio), JSON, BPMN 2.0 XML (glitchy)

Real Talk

I built this because I was tired of watching smart people waste time in meetings trying to establish basic context. Business process discussions should be about improving processes, not deciphering which step someone is talking about.

The entire project is open source:

• Web version at [link available later]
• VS Code extension with live preview
• Run locally with npm start

What’s your worst “which step are we talking about?” meeting story? Have you found better ways to keep everyone on the same page during process discussions?

BusinessProcessManagement #BPMN #DomainDrivenDesign #MeetingProductivity #OpenSource #ProcessDocumentation #DeveloperTools

Lana Vinogradova, Rajendra Kielka Tnx for beta-testing!