Abstract
In recent years, BPMN has acquired a clear predominance among the notations for modeling business processes. This is mainly due to its capability to close the communication gap between business and IT people. As a consequence, the quality of produced models is more and more important and, among the others, understandability plays a relevant role to permit to properly convey information in such a heterogeneous context. To improve understandability, it is generally recommended to not overwhelm models with to many details, and to use instead sub-process modeling elements to split collaborations into layers. However, the BPMN standard does not provide precise specifications on how the details, hidden at the given layer, should be included in the model, in particular considering message exchange. In particular, the consistency checking between collapsed sub-processes and their detailed representation is left to the modeler, and there is not much support to help him/her in this activity. In this paper, we analyze BPMN modeling tools with respect to their actual capabilities to support multi-layer collaborations. From the analysis we observed a general lack of support in the modeling environment. Then we propose a design methodology providing a set of guidelines to ensure consistency in multi-layer collaborations. These guidelines have been implemented in a stand alone tool, which enables their automated checking in any BPMN modeling tool.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
A non mandatory branch is a path of the process that starts from an exclusive, inclusive or event-based split gateway.
- 2.
References
OMG: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN V 2.0) (2011)
Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.: Seven process modeling guidelines (7 pmg). Inf. Softw. Technol. 52(2), 127–136 (2010)
Wong, P.Y.H., Gibbons, J.: A process semantics for BPMN. In: Liu, S., Maibaum, T., Araki, K. (eds.) ICFEM 2008. LNCS, vol. 5256, pp. 355–374. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-88194-0_22
Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A., Cardoso, J.: What makes process models understandable? In: Alonso, G., Dadam, P., Rosemann, M. (eds.) BPM 2007. LNCS, vol. 4714, pp. 48–63. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75183-0_4
Mendling, J., Sanchez-Gonzalez, L., Garcia, F., La Rosa, M.: Thresholds for error probability measures of business process models. J. Syst. Softw. 85(5), 1188–1197 (2012)
Silingas, D., Mileviciene, E.: Refactoring BPMN models: from ‘Bad Smells’ to best practices and patterns. In: BPMN 2.0 Handbook Second Edition: Methods, Concepts, Case Studies and Standards in Business Process Management Notation, p. 125 (2011)
Leopold, H., Mendling, J., Günther, O.: Learning from quality issues of BPMN models from industry. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Enterprise Modeling and Information Systems Architectures, Vienna, Austria, 3–4 October 2016, pp. 36–39 (2016)
Allweyer, T.: BPMN 2.0 - Business Process Model and Notation: Einführung in den Standard für die Geschäftsprozessmodellierung. Books on Demand (2009)
Silver, B.: BPMN method and style: with BPMN implementer’s guide, 2 edn. (2011)
White, S.A.: BPMN modeling and reference guide: understanding and using BPMN. Future Strategies Inc. (2008)
de Oca, I.M.M., Snoeck, M., Reijers, H.A., RodrÃguez-Morffi, A.: A systematic literature review of studies on business process modeling quality. Inf. Softw. Technol. 58, 187–205 (2015)
Moreno-Montes de Oca, I., Snoeck, M.: Pragmatic guidelines for business process modeling. Technical Report 2592983, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business, November 2014
Christiansen, D.R., Carbone, M., Hildebrandt, T.: Formal semantics and implementation of BPMN 2.0 inclusive gateways. In: Bravetti, M., Bultan, T. (eds.) WS-FM 2010. LNCS, vol. 6551, pp. 146–160. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-19589-1_10
Corradini, F., Polini, A., Re, B., Tiezzi, F.: An operational semantics of BPMN collaboration. In: Braga, C., Ölveczky, P.C. (eds.) FACS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9539, pp. 161–180. Springer, Cham (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28934-2_9
Falcioni, D., Polini, A., Polzonetti, A., Re, B.: Direct verification of BPMN processes through an optimized unfolding technique, pp. 179–188. IEEE, August 2012
El-Saber, N., Boronat, A.: BPMN formalization and verification using Maude. In: Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on Behaviour Modelling-Foundations and Applications. BM-FA 2014, pp. 1:1–1:12. ACM, New York (2014)
Börger, E., Thalheim, B.: A method for verifiable and validatable business process modeling. In: Börger, E., Cisternino, A. (eds.) Advances in Software Engineering. LNCS, vol. 5316, pp. 59–115. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-89762-0_3
Van Gorp, P., Dijkman, R.: A visual token-based formalization of BPMN 2.0 based on in-place transformations. Inf. Softw. Technol. 55(2), 365–394 (2013)
Kossak, F., et al.: A rigorous semantics for BPMN 2.0 process diagrams. A Rigorous Semantics for BPMN 2.0 Process Diagrams, pp. 29–154. Springer, Cham (2014). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-09931-6_4
Dijkman, R.M., Dumas, M., Ouyang, C.: Semantics and analysis of business process models in BPMN. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(12), 1281–1294 (2008)
Corradini, F., Polini, A., Re, B.: Inter-organizational business process verification in public administration. Bus. Process Manage. J. 21(5), 1040–1065 (2015)
Conforti, R., Dumas, M., GarcÃa-Bañuelos, L., La Rosa, M.: BPMN miner. Inform. Syst. 56(C), 284–303 (2016)
Sabetzadeh, M., Nejati, S., Liaskos, S., Easterbrook, S., Chechik, M.: Consistency checking of conceptual models via model merging. In: 15th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2007), pp. 221–230. IEEE (2007)
Flavio, C., Alberto, P., Barbara, R., Damiano, F.: An eclipse plug-in for formal verification of BPMN processes. In: 2010 Third International Conference on Communication Theory, Reliability, and Quality of Service, pp. 144–149, June 2010
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Elisa Ballini for her support in the benchmarking of modelling environments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Corradini, F., Polini, A., Re, B., Rossi, L., Tiezzi, F. (2017). Supporting Multi-layer Modeling in BPMN Collaborations. In: Pergl, R., Lock, R., Babkin, E., Molhanec, M. (eds) Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation. EOMAS 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 298. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68185-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68185-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68184-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68185-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)