What do Pools represent in BPMN diagrams?

Pools in Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) diagrams represent the organizations involved in a process. Each pool acts as a container for the activities related to a particular organization or participant. This visual representation helps to clarify how multiple organizations interact within a business process, facilitating the understanding of roles, responsibilities, and overall workflow.

The use of pools is crucial for modeling processes that span across different organizational boundaries, allowing stakeholders to clearly see which tasks are performed by which organization. By having distinct pools, BPMN also provides a structured way to illustrate interactions through message flows, thus enhancing communication and coordination among various participants in a business process.

In contrast, individual tasks within a process are represented by different elements within the pools, such as activities or tasks themselves. Types of data entities are modeled using data objects or artifacts, while decision points are depicted using gateways in the BPMN structure. Each of these elements serves a specific purpose, but it is the pools that signify organizational involvement in the overarching process being modeled.