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The evolution of business processes and supporting software systems requires their analysis and assessment from both quantitative and qualitative points of view. The analysis and evaluation activities need the support of methodological and technological tools, customizable to the innovation requirements of the chosen processes and supporting software systems.This paper proposes a measurement framework based on the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) paradigm. It is generally applicable to any business process and supporting software system after its instantiation. The collaborative software environment WebEv, Web for the Evaluation, is proposed for facilitating the collection and elaboration of the required measures. Finally, the paper describes the application of the measurement framework in a real context.

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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.