Spreadsheet-Based Business Process Modeling

Abstract

Business Process models help to visualize processes of an organization. In enterprises, these processes are often specified in internal regulations, resolutions or other law acts of a company. Such descriptions, like task lists, have mostly form of enumerated lists or spreadsheets. We present a method how to generate a BPMN process model from a spreadsheetbased representation. In contrast to the existing approaches, our method does not require explicit specification of gateways in the spreadsheet, but it takes advantage of nested list form.

Spreadsheets as Interoperability Solution for Business Process Representation

“…In this paper, we present a method of generating graphical process models from spreadsheet-based representation. It extends our previous research discussed during the knowledge acquisition workshop [13]. The original contribution is the specification of creating the spreadsheet with ordered list and its transformation into a process model.…”

“…However, declaring flow objects or their relations explicitly, requires from the user a certain level of familiarity with business process modeling notations. In order to overcome this issue and make the spreadsheet representation more accessible for business users, we discussed the sketch of our approach in [13].…”

“…Our approach consists in generating business process models from spreadsheet-based representation. It is based on our preliminary workshop proposal presenting the method principles [13]. The context of the approach is presented in Figure 2.…”

Decomposition of business process models into reusable sub-diagrams

“…One of the user-friendly approaches is the spreadsheet-based representation [7] where the set of activities is listed in a table with specified branches and routing conditions. Process models apt for re-composition can be also described in a declarative specification [8], which focuses on constraints and dependencies between activities instead of determining an explicit sequence flow.…”

Overview of Verification Tools for Business Process Models

“…Considering designing processes, one can think about models designed manually by business analysts, as well as models generated from other representations such as: natural text description [1], structured text [2], spreadsheets [3], other representations like UML [4], or mining such models from event logs [5]. All such models can suffer from various anomalies [6]- [8].…”