Business Process Lines to deal with the Variability (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.

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...

Understandability Issues of Approaches Supporting Business Process Variability

2012

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.

Extending Feature Models to Express Variability in Business Process Models

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2015

In complex organizations Business Processes tends to exist in different variants that typically share objectives and part of their structure. In recent years it has been recognized that the explicit modeling of variability can brings important benefits to organizations that can more easily reflect on their behavior and more efficiently structure their activities and processes. Particularly interesting in this respect is the situation of the Public Administration that delivers the same service using many different and replicated processes. The management of such complexity ask for methods explicitly supporting the modeling of variability aspects for Business Processes. In this paper we present a novel notation to describe variability of Business Processes and an approach to successively derive process variants. The notation takes inspiration from feature modeling approaches and has been implemented in a real tool using the ADOxx platform. The notation, and the corresponding approach, seems particularly suitable for the Public Administration context, and it has been actually experimented in a complex real scenario.

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.

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.

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.

Modeling Business Process Variability for Design-Time Configuration

Handbook of Research on Business Process Modeling

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 models with respect to a given set of requirements.

On the Dynamic Configuration of Business Process Models

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2012

Business Process Models are a relevant input for the development of information systems. Since processes are performed in increasingly dynamic business environments, the processes are required to be flexible and dynamic as well, adapting to environmental changes. Thus, it is essential to properly represent variability in Business Process Models. Moreover, in order to allow for adaptive and autonomic systems, it is of paramount importance to reason on the variability of a process, being able to select an optimal process configuration for a given context. In this paper, we present an approach for such context-aware reasoning, on which the business process configuration is driven by Non-Functional Requirements. Using independent models for expressing variability representation, configuration knowledge, contextual information, and the process itself, we present algorithms and mechanisms to perform business process configuration at runtime, without requiring human intervention. Furthermore, we describe experiments we conducted in order to assess the suitability of our approach.