a wild helloworld of jBPM References: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jbpm/files/jBPM%205/jbpm-5.4.0.Final/jbpm-5.4.0.Final-bin.zip/download http://docs.jboss.org/jbpm/v5.4/userguide/ch.core-api.html#d0e1175 http://docs.jboss.org/jbpm/v5.4/userguide/ch.core-basics.html#d0e1298

example-bpmn.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<definitions id="Definition" targetNamespace="http://www.jboss.org/drools"
  typeLanguage="http://www.java.com/javaTypes" expressionLanguage="http://www.mvel.org/2.0"
	xmlns="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100524/MODEL" 
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100524/MODEL BPMN20.xsd"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
	<process processType="Private" isExecutable="true" id="com.sample.hello" name="Hello Process">
		<startEvent id="_1" name="Start" />
		<scriptTask id="_2" name="Hello">
			<script>System.out.println("Hello World");</script>
		</scriptTask>
		<endEvent id="_3" name="End">
			<terminateEventDefinition />
		</endEvent>
		<sequenceFlow id="_1-_2" sourceRef="_1" targetRef="_2" />
		<sequenceFlow id="_2-_3" sourceRef="_2" targetRef="_3" />
	</process>
</definitions>

Main.java

package example.jbpm;

import org.drools.KnowledgeBase;
import org.drools.builder.KnowledgeBuilder;
import org.drools.builder.KnowledgeBuilderFactory;
import org.drools.builder.ResourceType;
import org.drools.io.ResourceFactory;
import org.drools.runtime.StatefulKnowledgeSession;
import org.drools.runtime.process.ProcessInstance;

/**
 * jBPM client example
 *
 */
public class Main {

  /**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		String basedir = System.getProperty("user.dir");
		KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newKnowledgeBuilder();
		kbuilder.add(ResourceFactory.newFileResource(basedir+"/example-bpmn.xml"), ResourceType.BPMN2);
		KnowledgeBase kbase = kbuilder.newKnowledgeBase();
		
		StatefulKnowledgeSession ksession = kbase.newStatefulKnowledgeSession();
		ProcessInstance processInstance = ksession.startProcess("com.sample.hello");
	}

}