Abstract
Business Process configuration constitutes a powerful tool for expressing similarities between different Business Process models. Such models in the case of real life systems are often very complex. Configuration gives the opportunity to keep different models in a single configurable model. Another approach to manage model complexity is hierarchization, which allows for encapsulating process details into sub-levels, helps to avoid inconsistencies and fosters reuse of similar parts of models. In this paper, we present an approach for configuring Business Processes that is based on hierarchization. Our approach takes advantage of the arbitrary \(n\)-to-\(m\) relationships between tasks in the merged processes. It preserves similar abstraction level of subprocesses in a hierarchy and allows a user to grasp the high-level flow of the merged processes. We also describe how to extend the approach to support multi-level hierarchization.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
References
OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN): Version 2.0 specification. Technical report formal/2011-01-03, Object Management Group (2011)
Allweyer, T.: BPMN 2.0. Introduction to the Standard for Business Process Modeling. BoD, Norderstedt (2010)
Nalepa, G.J., Kluza, K.: UML representation for rule-based application models with XTT2-based business rules. Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. (IJSEKE) 22(4), 485–524 (2012). http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S021819401250012X
Silver, B.: BPMN Method and Style. Cody-Cassidy Press (2009)
Reijers, H., Mendling, J., Dijkman, R.: Human and automatic modularizations of process models to enhance their comprehension. Inf. Syst. 36(5), 881–897 (2011)
Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Seven process modeling guidelines (7PMG). Inf. Softw. Technol. 52(2), 127–136 (2010)
Yan, Z., Dijkman, R., Grefen, P.: Business process model repositories—framework and survey. Inf. Softw. Technol. 54(4), 380–395 (2012)
Dijkman, R., Dumas, M., van Dongen, B., Käärik, R., Mendling, J.: Similarity of business process models: metrics and evaluation. Information Systems 36(2), 498–516 (2011)
Baran, M., Kluza, K., Nalepa, G.J., Ligęza, A.: A hierarchical approach for configuring business processes. In: Ganzha, M., Maciaszek, L.A.,Paprzycki, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems—FedCSIS 2013, Krakow, Poland, 8–11 September 2013, pp. 931–937. IEEE (2013)
Nuffel, D.V., Backer, M.D.: Multi-abstraction layered business process modeling. Comput. Ind. 63(2), 131–147 (2012)
Pittke, F., Leopold, H., Mendling, J., Tamm, G.: Enabling reuse of process models through the detection of similar process parts. In: La Rosa, M., Soffer, P. (eds.) Business Process Management Workshops. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 132, pp. 586–597. Springer, Berlin (2013)
Weber, B., Reichert, M., Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A.: Refactoring large process model repositories. Comput. Ind. 62(5), 467–486 (2011)
La Rosa, M., Wohed, P., Mendling, J., ter Hofstede, A., Reijers, H., Van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Managing process model complexity via abstract syntax modifications. Ind. Inf. IEEE Trans. 7(4), 614–629 (2011)
Cappelli, C., Leite, J.C., Batista, T., Silva, L.: An aspect-oriented approach to business process modeling. In: Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Early Aspects. EA’09, pp. 7–12. ACM, New York (2009)
Dumas, M., Garcia-Banuelos, L., Rosa, M.L., Uba, R.: Fast detection of exact clones in business process model repositories. Inf. Syst. 38(4), 619–633 (2013)
Uba, R., Dumas, M., Garcia-Banuelos, L., Rosa, M.: Clone detection in repositories of business process models. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Toumani, F., Wolf, K. (eds.) Business Process Management. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6896, pp. 248–264. Springer, Berlin (2011)
Haddar, N.Z., Makni, L., Ben Abdallah, H.: Literature review of reuse in business process modeling. Softw. Syst. Model. 121, 1–15 (2012)
Mendling, J., Neumann, G., Aalst, W.: Understanding the occurrence of errors in process models based on metrics. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds.) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2007: CoopIS, DOA, ODBASE, GADA, and IS. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4803, pp. 113–130. Springer, Berlin (2007)
Dijkman, R., Rosa, M.L., Reijers, H.A.: Managing large collections of business process models—current techniques and challenges. Comput. Ind. 63(2), 91–97 (2012)
Kunze, M., Weske, M.: Metric trees for efficient similarity search in large process model repositories. In: Muehlen, M., Su, J. (eds.) Business Process Management Workshops. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 66, pp. 535–546. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg (2011)
La Rosa, M., Gottschalk, F.: Synergia-comprehensive tool support for configurable process models. In: Proceedings of the Demo Track of the 7th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM’09), vol. 489. CEUR (2009)
Bobek, S., Baran, M., Kluza, K., Nalepa, G.J.: Application of bayesian networks to recommendations in business process modeling. In: Giordano, L., Montani, S., Dupre, D.T. (eds.) Proceedings of the Workshop AI Meets Business Processes 2013 co-located with the 13th Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2013), Turin, Italy, December 6, 2013 (2013). http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1101/
van der Aalst, W.M.: Business process management: a comprehensive survey. In: ISRN Software Engineering 2013 (2013)
La Rosa, M., Dumas, M., ter Hofstede, A.H., Mendling, J.: Configurable multi-perspective business process models. Inf. Syst. 36(2), 313–340 (2011)
Rosemann, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: A configurable reference modelling language. Inf. Syst. 32(1), 1–23 (2007)
Puhlmann, F., Schnieders, A., Weiland, J., Weske, M.: Variability Mechanisms for Process Models. PESOA-Report TR 17/2005, Process Family Engineering in Service-Oriented Applications (pesoa). BMBF-Project. Report, Hasso Plattner Institut, Postdam, Germany (2005)
Schnieders, A., Puhlmann, F.: Variability mechanisms in e-business process families. In: Proceeedings of the International Conference on Business Information Systems (BIS 2006), pp. 583–601 (2006)
Tealeb, A., Awad, A., Galal-Edeen, G.: Context-based variant generation of business process models. In: Bider, I., Gaaloul, K., Krogstie, J., Nurcan, S., Proper, H.A., Schmidt, R., Soffer, P. (eds.) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, no. 175 in Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, pp. 363–377. Springer, Berlin (2014). http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-43745-2_25
La Rosa, M., Dumas, M., Uba, R., Dijkman, R.M.: Business process model merging: an approach to business process consolidation. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. (TOSEM) 22(2), 11 (2013)
Döhring, M., Reijers, H.A., Smirnov, S.: Configuration vs. adaptation for business process variant maintenance: an empirical study. Inf. Syst. 39, 108–133 (2014)
Weidmann, M., Koetter, F., Kintz, M., Schleicher, D., Mietzner, R.: Adaptive business process modeling in the internet of services (ABIS). In: ICIW 2011, The Sixth International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services, pp. 29–34 (2011)
Müller, R., Greiner, U., Rahm, E.: Agentwork: a workflow system supporting rule-based workflow adaptation. Data Knowl. Eng. 51(2), 223–256 (2004)
Charfi, A., Müller, H., Mezini, M.: Aspect-oriented business process modeling with ao4bpmn. In: Modelling Foundations and Applications, pp. 48–61. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Rastrepkina, M.: Managing variability in process models by structural decomposition. In: Business Process Modeling Notation, pp. 106–113. Springer (2011)
Gottschalk, F., Van Der Aalst, W.M., Jansen-Vullers, M.H., La Rosa, M.: Configurable workflow models. Int. J. Co-op. Inf. Syst. 17(02), 177–221 (2008)
Awad, A., Sakr, S., Kunze, M., Weske, M.: Design by selection: a reuse-based approach for business process modeling. In: Conceptual Modeling-ER 2011, pp. 332–345. Springer, Berlin (2011)
Meerkamm, S.: Configuration of multi-perspectives variants. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 277–288. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Meerkamm, S.: Staged configuration of multi-perspectives variants based on a generic data model. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 326–337. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Hallerbach, A., Bauer, T., Reichert, M.: Capturing variability in business process models: the provop approach. J. Softw. Maint. Evol. Res. Pract. 22(6–7), 519–546 (2010)
Döhring, M., Zimmermann, B.: vBPMN: Event-Aware Workflow Variants by Weaving BPMN2 and Business Rules. In: Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, pp. 332–341. Springer (2011)
Nalepa, G.J.: Proposal of business process and rules modeling with the XTT method. In: V. Negru, et al. (eds.) Symbolic and numeric algorithms for scientific computing, 2007. SYNASC Ninth international symposium. September 26–29, pp. 500–506. IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, CPS Conference Publishing Service, Los Alamitos, California; Washington; Tokyo (2007)
Ligęza, A., Nalepa, G.J.: A study of methodological issues in design and development of rule-based systems: proposal of a new approach. Wiley Interdisciplinary Rev. Data Mining Knowl. Discov. 1(2), 117–137 (2011). doi:10.1002/widm.11
Nalepa, G.J., Ligęza, A., Kaczor, K.: Formalization and modeling of rules using the XTT2 method. Int. J. Artif. Intell. Tools 20(6), 1107–1125 (2011)
Nalepa, G., Bobek, S., Ligęza, A., Kaczor, K.: Algorithms for rule inference in modularized rule bases. In: Bassiliades, N., Governatori, G., Paschke, A. (eds.) Rule-Based Reasoning, Programming, and Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 6826, pp. 305–312. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg (2011)
Kluza, K., Nalepa, G.J.: Proposal of square metrics for measuring business process model complexity. In: M. Ganzha, L.A. Maciaszek, M. Paprzycki (eds.) Proceedings of the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems—FedCSIS 2012, Wroclaw, Poland, 9–12 September 2012, pp. 919–922 (2012). http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6354395
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the organizers of the ABICT 2013 workshop on the FedCSIS 2013 conference for providing an ample environment for presenting and discussing our research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baran, M., Kluza, K., Nalepa, G.J., Ligęza, A. (2015). A Multi-level Hierarchical Approach for Configuring Business Processes. In: Mach-Król, M., M. Olszak, C., Pełech-Pilichowski, T. (eds) Advances in ICT for Business, Industry and Public Sector. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 579. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11328-9_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11328-9_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11327-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11328-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)