Variability in business processes: Automatically obtaining a generic specification (original) (raw)

Business process variability modeling

It is common for organizations to maintain multiple variants of a given business process, such as multiple sales processes for different products or multiple bookkeeping processes for different countries. Conventional business process modeling languages do not explicitly support the representation of such families of process variants. This gap triggered significant research efforts over the past decade, leading to an array of approaches to business process variability modeling. In general, each of these approaches extends a conventional process modeling language with constructs to capture customizable process models. A customizable process model represents a family of process variants in a way that a model of each variant can be derived by adding or deleting fragments according to customization options or according to a domain model. This survey draws up a systematic inventory of approaches to customizable process modeling and provides a comparative evaluation with the aim of identifying common and differentiating modeling features, providing criteria for selecting among multiple approaches, and identifying gaps in the state of the art. The survey puts into evidence an abundance of customizable process-modeling languages, which contrasts with a relative scarcity of available tool support and empirical comparative evaluations.

Business Process Lines to deal with the Variability

2010

Variability proved to be a central concept in different domains, manufacturing, software development etc. in order to develop solutions that can be easily adapted to different organizational settings and different sets of customers at a low price. We argue that families of business process models can facilitate the installation of situated models in different organizations. We propose a representation system called Map to capture variability in process models expressed in an intentional manner through business goals and strategies. The paper presents an intentional view of the business process variability and illustrates it in an excerpt of a real case in the Electricity Supply Industry. The kernel of an organizational level model is also introduced to allow the organizational implementation of each variant.

Variability in Business Process Families

… Management Association (IRMA …, 2007

Variability proved to be a central concept in different domains, manufacturing, software development etc. in order to develop solutions that can be easily adapted to different organisational settings and different sets of customers at a low price. We argue that families of business process ...

Reflecting business process variability in information systems

Abstract Information systems are a fundamental support for the business processes of a firm. Information systems should be shaped on the needs of the business process throughout the life of the firm. This poses the problem of tracking changes in the business process and to reflect those changes in the information system. Assumptions and constraints are necessary in any real software project but can impair flexibility and evolution.

A Qualitative Comparison of Approaches Supporting Business Process Variability

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2013

The increasing adoption of Process-Aware Information Systems, together with the reuse of process knowledge, has led to the emergence of process model repositories with large process families, i.e., collections of related process model variants. For managing such related model collections two types of approaches exist. While behavioral approaches take supersets of variants and derive a process variant by hiding and blocking process elements, structural approaches take a base process model as input and derive a process variant by applying a set of change operations to it. However, at the current stage no framework for assessing these approaches exists and it is not yet clear which approach should be better used and under which circumstances. Therefore, to give first insights about this issue, this work compares both approaches in terms of understandability of the produced process model artifacts, which is fundamental for the management of process families and the reuse of their contained process fragments. In addition, the comparison can serve as theoretical basis for conducting experiments as well as for fostering the development of tools managing business process variability.

Business Process Modeling : Variability and Scope

2014

Maintaining numerous variants of a given business process is very important for companies, which have dissimilar procedures such as book-keeping and trade used to present various goods for different countries. Languages of business process modeling are of routine type and do not contain the families of business process variants description clearly. The analysis of variability in business process modeling is carried out to cover gaps which were observed in the past. This study demonstrates key concepts of business process variants using an example in present methodologies in the area based on a common set of values. The outlines exhibit that initial methods are defined by the fact that they expand a conservative process modelling language with constructs that formulate it and make it capable to define personalized business process models. A personalized business process model defines a relations of process variants in such a way that every variant can be made by adding up or removing...

A SYSTEMATIC MAPPING STUDY ON BUSINESS PROCESS VARIABILITY

Business Process Management aligns organisational strategy and business operation. The dynamic environment within which organisations operate promotes changes in business processes, in a phenomenon known as business process variability. The goal of this research is reviewing business process variability literature to comprehend this phenomenon and analyse its theoretical foundation. Through a systematic mapping study, 80 primary studies acted as sources of evidence to answer three research questions. By summarizing this theoretical background, we establish a conceptual synthesis of business process variability. We equally describe business process variability approaches and observe whether these were empirically assessed. Finally, we discuss research opportunities in the field. Our study shows that concepts in business process variability domain are used in an inconsistent manner, demanding a common vocabulary. A significant number of approaches is available, but most of them lack empirical studies. Additionally, our findings provide a diagnosis of the major challenges in the field.

On managing business processes variants

Data & Knowledge Engineering, 2009

Variance in business process execution can be the result of several situations, such as disconnection between documented models and business operations, workarounds in spite of process execution engines, dynamic change and exception handling, flexible and ad-hoc requirements, and collaborative and/or knowledge intensive work. It is imperative that effective support for managing process variances be extended to organizations mature in their BPM (Business Process Management) uptake so that they can ensure organization wide consistency, promote reuse and capitalize on their BPM investments. This paper presents an approach for managing business processes that is conducive to dynamic change and the need for flexibility in execution. The approach is based on the notion of process constraints. It further provides a technique for effective utilization of the adaptations manifested in process variants. In particular, we will present a facility for discovery of preferred variants through effective search and retrieval based on the notion of process similarity, where multiple aspects of the process variants are compared according to specific query requirements. The advantage of this approach is the ability to provide a quantitative measure for the similarity between process variants, which further facilitates various BPM activities such as process reuse, analysis and discovery.

Modelling Business Process Variability for Design-Time Configuration

2008

A reference process model represents multiple variants of a common business process in an integrated and reusable manner. It is intended to be individualized in order to fit the requirements of a specific organization or project. This practice of individualizing reference process models provides an attractive alternative with respect to designing process models from scratch. In particular, it enables the reuse of proven practices. This chapter introduces techniques for representing variability in the context of reference process models, as well as techniques that facilitate the individualization of reference process model with respect to a given set of requirements.

Imperative versus Declarative Process Variability: Why Choose?

2012

Abstract Variability is a powerful abstraction in software engineering that allows managing product lines and business processes requiring great deals of change, customization and adaptation. In the field of Business Process Management (BPM) the increasing deployment of workflow engines having to handle an increasing number of instances has prompted for the strong need for variability techniques.