BPMN heatmaps: finding where your process loses time
3 min read · Updated Nov 11, 2026
A heatmap colours each step of a BPMN diagram by how long cases spend there. How to read one, what it can and cannot tell you, and what to do with the result.
A picture of where time goes
Ask a team where their process is slow and you get opinions. A BPMN heatmap replaces them with a picture: the process diagram itself, with each step coloured by the time cases spend there. Cool colours where cases pass quickly, hot colours where they wait.
Because it is drawn on the diagram people already know, a heatmap is one of the few analysis tools that business and IT read the same way.
What the colours measure
Most heatmaps show one of two things:
- Duration: how long cases spend at each step, from arriving to leaving.
- Frequency: how many cases pass through each step.
Both matter. A step that is slow but rarely used is less urgent than one that is a little slow and used by every case. Read duration and frequency together before deciding what to fix.
Reading it well
Separate waiting from working. A user task that takes two days is usually two days of waiting in someone's inbox and twenty minutes of work. The fix for waiting (more people, better routing, a deadline) is different from the fix for working (a simpler form, prefilled data).
Look at the slow cases, not only the average. An average of four hours can hide a tenth of cases that take a week. Those are the ones that become complaints.
Pick a period that means something. Compare this month with last month, or the weeks before and after a change. A heatmap over all time blurs every improvement you made.
Check the branches. After a gateway, one path may be fast and the other slow. The heatmap shows which branch cases take and what that costs.
What it cannot tell you
A heatmap shows where time goes, not why. A hot step might be understaffed, badly designed, waiting on an outside party, or simply a step that is meant to take time (a cooling-off period, say). Use it to choose where to look, then talk to the people who do the work.
From heatmap to action
- Find the hottest step that many cases go through.
- Open a few of the slowest cases and replay them: who held the task, for how long, and what they were waiting for.
- Change one thing: routing, staffing, the form, a deadline.
- Set a target for that step and watch the next period's heatmap.
Steps 2 and 4 are where most teams stop. Replaying individual cases and setting targets turns a nice picture into an improvement.
In Bridge
Bridge's BPMN heatmaps colour each step of a workflow by the time cases spend there, so the slowest steps stand out on the diagram itself. Token replay shows any case step by step: who did what, how long it took, and the variables at each step.
For each workflow you can set SLA targets; the SLA tracker warns at the threshold you set and flags cases at risk and in breach, and the dashboard shows durations over any time range so you can compare before and after a change.