Supporting different process views through a Shared Process Model

Abstract

Abstract. Different stakeholders in the Business Process Management (BPM) life cycle benefit from having different views onto a particular process model. Each view can show, and offer to change, the details relevant to the particular stakeholder, leaving out the irrelevant ones. However, introducing different views on a process model entails the problem to synchronize changes in case that one view evolves. This problem is especially relevant and challenging for views at different abstraction levels. In this paper, we propose a Shared Process Model that provides different stakeholder views at different abstraction levels and that synchronizes changes made to any view. We present detailed requirements and a solution design for the Shared Process Model in this paper. Moreover, we also present an overview of our prototypical implementation to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach.

Towards a Reference Architecture for the Co-evolution of Business Processes

“…Küster et al [4] propose an approach to synchronise process views at different abstraction levels through a shared process model. The shared process model is initialised by a single process view, as it is assumed that different process views evolved from a single model.…”

“…In propagating the changes, not all the elements of a particular process model can be changed nor can all the changes be propagated. Each element or a group of elements in a process model can be characterised as public or private [4]. A private change is a change that should not be reflected in the relevant process models whereas a public change can be propagated to relevant process model elements if they themselves are marked as public.…”

“…For realising the co-evolution of business processes by different stakeholders we propose to use process views which are well-known [4]- [6]. In this section we describe a typical process view life cycle which consists of the three phases creating a process view, managing a process view and eliminating a process view using a simplified example.…”

“…The framework can support Process views gen. + + + + -n.d. n/a + [13] Process views gen. + -+ + -+ n/a + [5] Change propagation --+ + -+ n/a + [14] Model composition ---+ -+ n/a - [15] Process views gen. n.d. -+ + -n.d. n/a + [16] Process views gen. + -+ --+ n/a + [17] Equivalence & abstraction --+ + -+ n/a + [18] Relevant activities + n/a + + + n.d. n/a + [19] QoS prediction + n/a -+ -n/a n/a - [20] Process mining n.d. n/a n/a + -n.d. n/a + [21] Process mining + + n/a + -n.d. n/a + Process Co-Evolution [22] Change management -n/a -+ n/a n.d. + + [23] Conflict resolution -n/a n/a + n/a + + + [24] Change propagation n.d. n/a n/a + n/a + n.d + [4] Change propagation + n/a + + -+ -+ [25] Conflict -n/a n/a + -+ + - [26] Conflict det./res n.d. n/a n/a + -n.d. + - [27] Merging views -n/a + + -n.d. -+ [28] Conflict resolution + n/a n.d. + -+ + -Legend: + supported, − not supported, n/a not applicable, n.d. not discussed.…”

A Pattern Based Method for Simplifying a BPMN Process Model

“…Ref. [32] focus on those process models that are shared by different users and analyse how to maintain a dynamic workflow in which several people interact along their life cycle. These works focus on evaluating the consistency of the patterns in this type of dynamic environments.…”