Preserving correctness during business process model configuration

Aalst, Wil M. P. van der; Dumas, Marlon; Gottschalk, Florian; Hofstede, Arthur H. M. ter; Rosa, Marcello La; Mendling, Jan

doi:10.1007/s00165-009-0112-0

Cited by 97 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In this work, we assume a generic process model to capture the behavioural alternatives of different variants. This is similar to the approach taken in work on the configuration of process models [22,86,87,24], while other approaches define dedicated variation elements on the process modeling language level. Such languages include Configurable EPCs [74,31], aggregated EPCs [62], and the variant rich process models [76], which pick up ideas and concepts from modeling of software product families and feature diagrams [26,94].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 96%

Refactoring large process model repositories

Weber

Reichert

Mendling

et al. 2011

Computers in Industry

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188

120

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With the increasing adoption of process-aware information systems, large process model repositories have emerged. Typically, the models in such repositories are re-aligned to real-world events and demands through adaptation on a day-to-day basis. This bears the risk of introducing model redundancies and of unnecessarily increasing model complexity. If no continuous investment is made in keeping process models simple, changes will become more difficult and error-prone over time. Although refactoring techniques are widely used in software engineering to address similar problems, so far, no comparable state-of-the-art has evolved in the business process management domain. Process designers either have to refactor process models by hand or are simply unable to apply respective techniques at all. This paper proposes a catalogue of process model "smells" for identifying refactoring opportunities. In addition, it introduces a set of behavior-preserving techniques for refactoring large process repositories. The proposed refactorings enable process designers to effectively deal with model complexity by making process models better understandable and easier to maintain. The refactorings have been evaluated using large process repositories from the healthcare and automotive domain. To demonstrate the feasibility of the refactoring techniques, a proof-of-concept prototype has been implemented.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 96%

Refactoring large process model repositories

Weber

Reichert

Mendling

et al. 2011

Computers in Industry

Self Cite

188

120

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“…A configurable process model captures a family of related process models in a single artifact. Such models are intended to be configured to fit the requirements of specific organisations or projects, leading to individualised process models (van der Aalst et al 2010). Therefore, templates can be seen as a type of configurable business processes and their instantiation can be seen as a configuration of them (Kumar and Yao 2012).…”

Section: Ram2bpmn : Using Rambi With Bpmn Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A template-based approach for responsibility management in executable business processes

Cabanillas

Resinas

Ruiz–Cortés

2017

Enterprise Information Systems

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Process-oriented organisations need to manage the different types of responsibilities their employees may have w.r.t. the activities involved in their business processes. Despite several approaches provide support for responsibility modelling, in current Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) the only responsibility considered at runtime is the one related to performing the work required for activity completion. Others like accountability or consultation must be implemented by manually adding activities in the executable process model, which is time-consuming and error-prone. In this paper, we address this limitation by enabling current BPMS to execute processes in which people with different responsibilities interact to complete the activities. We introduce a metamodel based on Responsibility Assignment Matrices (RAM) to model the responsibility assignment for each activity, and a flexible template-based mechanism that automatically transforms such information into BPMN elements, which can be interpreted and executed by a BPMS. Thus, our approach does not enforce any specific behaviour for the different responsibilities but new templates can be modelled to specify the interaction that best suits the activity requirements. Furthermore, libraries of templates can be created and reused in different processes. We provide a reference implementation and build a library of templates for a well-known set of responsibilities.

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“…In this paper, we define for any configurable model a so-called configuration guideline to characterize all correct process configurations. This approach provides the following advantages over our previous approach [4]:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various configurable languages have been proposed as extensions of existing languages (e. g., C-EPCs [32], C-iEPCs [26], C-WF-nets [4], C-SAP, C-BPEL) but few are actually supported by enactment software (e. g., C-YAWL [20]). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As far as we know, our earlier approach [4] is the only one focusing on the verification of configurable process models which takes into account behavioral correctness and avoids the state-space explosion problem. Other approaches either only discuss syntactical correctness related to configuration [11,13,32], or deal with behavioral correctness but run into the state-space problem [22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ensuring correctness during process configuration via partner synthesis

Aalst

Lohmann

Rosa

2012

Information Systems

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Variants of the same process can be encountered within one organization or across different organizations. For example, different municipalities, courts, and rental agencies all need to support highly similar processes. In fact, procurement and sales processes can be found in almost any organization. However, despite these similarities, there is also the need to allow for local variations in a controlled manner. Therefore, many academics and practitioners have advocated the use of configurable process models (sometimes referred to as reference models). A configurable process model describes a family of similar process models in a given domain. Such a model can be configured to obtain a specific process model that is subsequently used to handle individual cases, for instance, to process customer orders. Process configuration is notoriously difficult as there may be all kinds of interdependencies between configuration decisions. In fact, an incorrect configuration may lead to behavioral issues such as deadlocks and livelocks. To address this problem, we present a novel verification approach inspired by the "operating guidelines" used for partner synthesis. We view the configuration process as an external service, and compute a characterization of all such services which meet particular requirements via the notion of configuration guideline. As a result, we can characterize all feasible configurations (i. e., configurations without behavioral problems) at design time, instead of repeatedly checking each individual configuration while configuring a process model.

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Preserving correctness during business process model configuration

Cited by 97 publications

References 39 publications

Refactoring large process model repositories

Refactoring large process model repositories

A template-based approach for responsibility management in executable business processes

Ensuring correctness during process configuration via partner synthesis

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