Requirements for Model-Based Development Process Design and Compliance of Standardized Models

Abstract

The planning of system development efforts is crucial to the successful realization of projects. However, development planning typically lacks systematic, engineering discipline, and consequently risks project and business success. Model-based process design is a potential information systems approach to addressing the increasing complexity of such planning. We characterize the ontology of development process design, based on real-life observations and scientific publications. We then synthesize the required ontology with the desirable characteristics of models, and derive key requirements for model-based development process design. Next, these requirements are used to evaluate the adequacy of three prominent, standardized model-based process design approaches—BPMN, OPM and SPEM. The findings reveal that the surveyed models are a partial fit, and do not promote sound process design. Finally, by generalizing the categorical evaluation results, possible root causes for the identified inadequacies are proposed. A new model design, which should rely on the formulated requirements set, is called for, in pursuit of a wider adoption of model-based design paradigms and better information systems realization to support the development of complex systems.

Designing a Model-Based, Multi-Perspective Process Design Environment

“…While the aforementioned complexity is demanding in its own, existing modeling environments do not ease the job of a process designer. They tend to incorporate versatile yet often perplexing modeling standards that may only partially fit the modeling objective (Shaked and Reich, 2021a) without making them accessible to the process designer. A recent technical report on model-based systems engineering maturitybased on an extensive, carefully developed surveyconfirms that the industrial maturity of using systems engineering related information models in technical processes and their management is very low (McDermott et al, 2020).…”

“…While BPMN and SPEM's versatility may promote their wide theoretical applicability, it does not promote sound modeling in practice. Specifically, the selection between different modeling alternative hinders rigorous modeling and the ability to reuse model fragments (Shaked and Reich, 2021a). Recker et al (2009), for example, established that BPMN is of high complexity, and called for reducing its complexity for practical implementations.…”