Towards a Business Process Modeling Technique for Agile Development of Case Management Systems

Abstract

Abstract.A modern organization needs to adapt its behavior to changes in the business environment by changing its Business Processes (BP) and corresponding Business Process Support (BPS) systems. One way of achieving such adaptability is via separation of the system code from the process description/model by applying the concept of executable process models. Furthermore, to ease introduction of changes, such process model should separate different perspectives, for example, control-flow, human resources, and data perspectives, from each other. In addition, for developing a completely new process, it should be possible to start with a reduced process model to get a BPS system quickly running, and then continue to develop it in an agile manner. This article consists of two parts, the first sets requirements on modeling techniques that could be used in the tools that supports agile development of BPs and BPS systems. The second part suggests a business process modeling technique that allows to start modeling with the data/information perspective which would be appropriate for processes supported by Case or Adaptive Case Management (CM/ACM) systems. In a model produced by this technique, called data-centric business process model, a process instance/case is defined as sequence of states in a specially designed instance database, while the process model is defined as a set of rules that set restrictions on allowed states and transitions between them. The article details the background for the project of developing the datacentric process modeling technique, presents the outline of the structure of the model, and gives formal definitions for a substantial part of the model.

A study on the adaptive approach to technology-driven enhancement of multi-scenario business processes

“…It is worth noting that in business processes with opaque logic, encountering difficulties may hold back even people with extraordinary skills, who tend to avoid action in case of doubt and may hesitate to act at all. Contemporary business professionals using an agile way of thinking support decisions made in uncertainty and take full responsibility for them (Bider and Perjons, 2017).…”

“…It should be noted that the ABPM is not the only solution that combines adaptability with BPM. However, we believe that through its strong embedment in proven agility and business process improvement mechanisms and real-life validation, ABPM might provide added value in analysis and further development of the existing BPS tools (HCL, 2018; Bider and Perjons, 2017; Gomez, 2015), as well as building new tools from scratch. The ABPM is a closed, repeatable cycle and foresees continuous cooperation between IT staff and BPS business users.…”

“…The ABPM translates conceptual work, such as Roe (2010), into practical applications. Compared to the model implemented in iPB (Bider and Perjons, 2017), ABPM assumes cyclic improvement, as such a mechanism derives from BPM best practices.…”

“…One can even argue that industry has approached the problem of process adaptability with more determination than academia. Some real-life tools, like HCL Forms Experience Builder (HCL, 2018) – formerly an IBM product – and iPB (Bider and Perjons, 2017), attempt to combine forms with process management, though built around the workflow perspective. Moreover, even traditional workflow-oriented vendors as Bizagi started to look for agile process theories (Gomez, 2015).…”