Issues in Modeling Process Variants with Provop

For a particular business process, typically, different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a basic process (e.g. a reference process) to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary business process management (BPM) tools, however, do not adequately support the modeling and management of process variants. Either the variants have to be specified by separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods can lead to high model redundancies, which make model adaptations a time consuming and error-prone task. In this paper we discuss advanced modeling concepts of our Provop approach, which provides a flexible and powerful solution for modeling and managing process variants. With Provop, a particular process variant can be configured at a high level of abstraction by applying a set of well-defined change operations to a basic process model

Guaranteeing Soundness of Configurable Process Variants in Provop

Usually, for a particular business process a multitude of variants exists. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a reference process model to specific requirements building the process context. While some progress has been achieved regarding the configuration of process variants, there exists only little work on how to accomplish this in a sound and efficient manner, especially when considering the large number of process variants that exist in practice as well as the many syntactical and semantical constraints they have to obey. In this paper we discuss advanced concepts for the context- and constraint-based configuration of process variants, and show how they can be utilized to ensure soundness of the configured process variants. Enhancing process-aware information systems with the capability to easily configure sound process models, belonging to the same process family and fitting to the given application context, will enable a new quality in engineering process-aware information systems

Configuration and Management of Process Variants

This chapter deals with advanced concepts for the configuration and management of business process variants. Typically, for a particular business process, different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a master process (e.g., a reference process) to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary business process management tools do not adequately support the modeling and management of such process variants. Either the variants have to be specified in separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods can result in high model redundancies, which make model adaptations a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this chapter we discuss advanced concepts of our Provop approach, which provides a flexible and powerful solution for managing business process variants along their lifecycle. Such variant support will foster more systematic process configuration as well as process maintenance

Understandability Issues of Approaches Supporting Business Process Variability

The increasing adoption of Process-Aware Information Systems, together with the reuse of process knowledge, has led to the emergence of process model repositories with large process families, i.e., collections of related process model variants. For managing such related model collections two types of approaches exist. While behavioral approaches take supersets of variants and derive a process variant by hiding and blocking process elements, structural approaches take a base process model as input and derive a process variant by applying a set of change operations to it. However, at the current stage no framework for assessing these approaches exists and it is not yet clear which approach should be better used and under which circumstances. Therefore, to give first insights about this issue, this work compares both approaches in terms of understandability of the produced process model artifacts, which is fundamental for the management of process families and the reuse of their contained process fragments. In addition, the comparison can serve as theoretical basis for conducting experiments as well as for fostering the development of tools managing business process variability

A Reflection on the Interrelations Between Business Process Management and Requirements Engineering with an Agility Perspective

The paper points out some aspects of the interrelations between business process management, agility, flexibility, and requirements engineering. It shows some possibilities for agile development of business processes and for the development of flexible processes for changing requirements

Capturing Variability in Business Process Models: The Provop Approach

Usually, for a particular business process different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a reference process model to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary process management tools do not adequately support the modeling of such process variants. Either the variants have to be specified as separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods often lead to redundancies making model adaptations a time consuming and error-prone task. In this paper we discuss selected concepts of the Provop approach for modeling and managing process variants. A particular process variant can be configured at a high level of abstraction by applying a set of well-defined change operations to a reference process model. In particular, this paper discusses advanced concepts for the design and modeling of such a reference process model as well as for the adjustments required to configure the different process variants. Altogether, Provop provides a flexible and powerful solution for process variant management

Lifecycle Management for Business Process Variants

This chapter deals with advanced concepts for the configuration and management of business process variants. Typically, for a particular business process, different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a master process (e.g., a reference process) to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary Business Process Management tools do not adequately support the modeling and management of such process variants. Either the variants have to be specified in separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods can result in high model redundancies, which make model adaptations a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this chapter, we discuss advanced concepts of our Provop approach, which provides a flexible and powerful solution for managing business process variants along their lifecycle. Such variant support will foster more systematic process configuration as well as process maintenance

Correct Configuration of Process Variants in Provop

When engineering process-aware information systems (PAISs) one of the fundamental challenges is to cope with the variability of business processes. While some progress has been achieved regarding the configuration of process variants, there exists only little work on how to accomplish this in a correct manner. Configuring process variants constitutes a non-trivial challenge when considering the large number of process variants that exist in practice as well as the many syntactical and semantical constraints a configured process variant has to obey in a given context. In previous work we introduced the Provop approach for configuring and managing process variants. This paper picks up the Provop framework and shows how it ensures correctness of configurable process variants by construction. We discuss advanced concepts for the context- and constraint-based configuration of process variants, and show how they can be utilized to ensure correctness of the configured process variants. In this paper we also consider correctness issues in conjunction with dynamic variant re-configurations. Enhancing PAISs with the capability to correctly configure process models fitting to the given application context, and to correctly manage the resulting process variants afterwards, will enable a new quality in PAIS engineering

A pattern based method for simplifying a BPMN process model

BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is currently the preferred standard for the representation and analysis of business processes. The elaboration of these BPMN diagrams is usually carried out in an entirely manual manner. As a result of this human-driven process, it is not uncommon to find diagrams that are not in their most simplified version possible (regarding the number of elements). This work presents a fully automatic method to simplify a BPMN process model document. A two-phase iterative algorithm to achieve this simplification is described in detail. This algorithm follows a heuristic approach that makes intensive use of a Pattern Repository. This software element is concerned with the description of feasible reductions and its enactment. The critical concept lies in the discovery of small reducible patterns in the whole model and their substitution with optimised versions. This approach has been verified through a double validation testing in total 8102 cases taken from real world BPMN process models. Details for its implementation and usage by practitioners are provided in this paper along with a comparison with other existing techniques concerned with similar goals.Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481A-2017/323Universidade de Vigo/CISU