Aligning business processes with the services layer using a semantic approach (original) (raw)
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IEEE Access, 2020
Many companies have implemented their business processes in Web applications which must be frequently adapted so as to stay aligned with new business process requirements. Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) constitute an appropriate option to manage the continuous changes in those processes by facilitating their alignment with the changing underlying system services. In this context, firms are trying to migrate their Web applications to new software architectures such as SOAs. However, this migration is usually carried out ad-hoc by means of non-reusable and error-prone manual processes. Similarly, the alignment between the business processes and the underlying services identified is usually done by hand. This work presents a model-driven semiautomatic approach to modernize legacy Web applications to SOAs. The approach is focused on an automatic semantic process aimed at discovering the services that can be used to implement the business processes (defined by the companies), then aligning these processes with the underlying services. A semantic algorithm is provided to aid the migration architect during the alignment process. The case study carried out shows that the alignment process results obtained by the semantic algorithm presented in this paper are similar to those obtained by the experts manually. Finally, SOA orchestration artifacts are generated from the semantic algorithm results. INDEX TERMS Legacy Web applications, service-oriented architecture, semantic algorithms, model-driven techniques.
An Alignment Model for Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture
2009
Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are two approaches that receive considerable attention in the scientific domain and in industry. Although both concepts can exist independently, they are considered as two-sides-of-thesame coin and seen as promising IS/IT strategies. Aligning both approaches should enable organizations to be agile and flexible in their responsiveness to the dynamic market environment. This is also propagated as the BPM/SOA synergy. Yet, there are misconceptions on the full complexity of implementing an enterprise-wide BPM system and SOA. This research proposes a maturity model that focuses on providing organizations a holistic view of the alignment between BPM/SOA in their current situation and in relation to their desired state. As such, it supports the organization in evolving towards BPM/SOA alignment, striving for a truly agile and flexible business-driven service-oriented enterprise that is highly responsive to the market dynamics in collaboration with their partners, customers and stakeholders within the ecosystem. The model has been validated at a financial institute, regarding consistency, comprehensiveness and applicability within specifically the financial domain. As a result, refinements were made and the updated model was used to assess the organization and build a roadmap providing key activities to support an already running BPM/SOA improvement project.
A Framework for Business Process Modeling and Alignment
This paper proposes an enterprise architecture framework that allows modeling organizational components for reuse and codevelopment, emphasizing their traceability and alignment at both design and execution time. It focuses on describing how entities interact in the context of business processes and relate to goals, actors and supporting systems. To facilitate the analysis of the architecture models, a set of five views that separate multiple organizational concerns is also introduced.
Assessment and impact analysis for aligning business processes and software systems
Proceedings of the 2005 ACM symposium on Applied computing - SAC '05, 2005
Business processes and existing software systems must be aligned so that software systems can adequately support the business processes in order to be effectively used within them. The alignment characteristic needs to be considered even during the execution of an evolution process. In particular, a strict relationship exists between the evolution of a legacy system and that of the supported business process. Therefore, the requirements for evolving a software system embedded in a business process are to be defined on the basis of the change needing to be performed on the process activities. In fact, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software system may impact the process activities in terms of input/output and/or purpose of the software system and, therefore, cause misalignment. A coarse grained strategy is proposed for detecting misalignment between software systems and supported business processes when a change is executed. In addition, the strategy supports the identification of all the objects, either software system components or process activities, affected by a change and needing to be considered during the evolution process, for keeping the alignment and ensuring the technological support to the business process. The strategy proposes the exploitation of quality parameters, for codifying the alignment concept, and impact analysis techniques, for propagating the change and identifying all the objects affected by a change and requiring new evolution interventions.
The purpose for achieving strategic alignment between Information Technology (IT) and Business areas refers to the need of large organizations to exploit the IT's ability to deliver good products and services, thereby standing out in a competitive scenario. Within this context, Business Process Management and Service Orientation tend to gain space in organizations, since they are able to automate and optimize processes and services for the business. In the business process analysis and modeling phase, it is important to treat not only functional properties, but also process quality and operating constraints, usually grouped as Non-Functional Properties (NFP); thereby preventing that investments in IT are wasted on inefficiency and rework. In order to address these constraints, Business Level Agreements (BLA) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) should be used. The most prestigious languages for business process modeling, including Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), lack the representation of these NFPs. The approach proposed in this paper, BLA@BPMN, extends BPMN to embody BLAs, as part of a bigger approach to foster strategic alignment in this context. A BLA is specified in the process model level so that it can be mapped to a set of SLAs at the executable process level.
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Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 2010
The alignment degree existing between a business process and the supporting software systems expresses how the software systems support the business process. This measure can be used for indicating business requirements that the software systems do not implement. Methods are needed for detecting the alignment level existing between software systems and business processes and identifying the software changes to be performed for increasing and keeping an adequate alignment level. This paper proposes a framework including a set of metrics codifying the alignment concept with the aim of measuring it, detecting misalignment, identifying and performing software evolution changes. The framework is, then, validated through a case study.
Aligning Business Process Models
2009 IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, 2009
This paper studies the following problem: given a pair of business process models, determine which elements in one model are related to which elements in the other model. This problem arises in the context of merging different versions or variants of a business process model or when comparing business process models in order to display their similarities and differences. The paper investigates two approaches to this alignment problem: one based purely on lexical matching of pairs of elements and another based on error-correcting graph matching. Using a set of models taken from real-life scenarios, the paper empirically shows that graph matching techniques yield a significantly higher precision than pure lexical matching, while achieving comparable recall.
A Framework to Align Business Processes: Identification of the Main Features
2021
Article history: Received: 21 December, 2020 Accepted: 04 March, 2021 Online: 27 March, 2021 Information and Communications Technologies are developing faster today than ever before, giving an important contribution to the global economy. Organizations in developed and developing economies explore new technologies to gain advantage and add value. That evolution also brings an increasing complexity to the organizations’ management. The alignment of organizational practices with international standards and best practices worldwide accepted in this domain is a relevant topic. To identify gaps in Information and Communications Technologies management area, a brief analysis of international standards will be considered in the state-of-the-art. Considering that Information Technology Infrastructure Library and Control Objectives for Information and related Technology are the most used in the literature review, this paper will propose an Information and Communications Technologies manageme...
Business Process Management Alignment
The Business Process Management Handbook, 2015
Alignment is a concept that dates back to the late 1990s, when it was described by Paul Strassmann: “Alignment is the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information technologies and the accepted financial measures of performance.” Alignment of business process management (BPM) hence should follow a similar principle or pattern to be effective. The objective therefore is how this alignment to and between BPM can create value that is ultimately measurable as a favorable financial outcome for a commercial enterprise. Business process management alignment, which is focused on both reusability and accelerating automation, requires that business managers have an understanding of what alignment is, how to develop an alignment competency, and what considerations should be made by organizations to ensure alignment is adequately adopted. This chapter discusses these aspects of alignment and gives credence to the development of aligned BPM.