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Applying Patterns during Business Process Modeling

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Business Process Management (BPM 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 5240))

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Abstract

Although the business process community has put a major emphasis on patterns, notably the famous workflow patterns, only limited support for using patterns in today’s business process modeling tools can be found. While the basic workflow patterns for control flow are available in almost every business process modeling tool, there is no support for the user in correctly applying these simple patterns leading to many incorrectly modeled business processes. Only limited support for pattern compounds can be found in some tools, there is no active support for selecting patterns that are applicable in some user-determined context, tools do not give feedback to the user if applying a pattern can lead to a modeling error, nor do they trace the sequence of applied patterns during the editing process.

In this paper, we describe an extension of a business process modeling tool with patterns to provide these capabilities. We distinguish three scenarios of pattern application and discuss a set of pattern compounds that are based on the basic workflow patterns for control flow. We present an approach where business users receive help in understanding the context and consequences of applying a pattern.

The work published in this article was partially supported by the SUPER project (http://www. ip-super.org/) under the EU 6th Framework Programme Information Society Technologies Objective (contract no. FP6-026850).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland

    Thomas Gschwind & Jana Koehler

  2. IBM Software Group, Canada

    Janette Wong

Authors
  1. Thomas Gschwind
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  2. Jana Koehler
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  3. Janette Wong
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, J Liivi 2, 50409, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

  2. Department of Computer Science, Information Systems Group, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Manfred Reichert

  3. SAP Labs, LLC 3475 Deer Creek Road, CA 94304, Palo Alto, USA

    Ming-Chien Shan

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Gschwind, T., Koehler, J., Wong, J. (2008). Applying Patterns during Business Process Modeling. In: Dumas, M., Reichert, M., Shan, MC. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5240. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85758-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85758-7_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-85757-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-85758-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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