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A flexible, object-centric approach for business process modelling

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Abstract

Mainstream business process modelling techniques often promote a design paradigm wherein the activities that may be performed within a case, together with their usual execution order, form the backbone on top of which other aspects are anchored. This Fordist paradigm, while effective in standardised and production-oriented domains, breaks when confronted with processes in which case-by-case variations and exceptions are the norm. We contend that the effective design of flexible processes calls for a substantially different modelling paradigm. Motivated by requirements from the human services domain, we explore the hypothesis that a framework consisting of a small set of coordination concepts, combined with established object-oriented modelling principles, provides a suitable foundation for designing highly flexible processes. Several human service delivery processes have been designed using this framework, and the resulting models have been used to realise a system to support these processes in a pilot environment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Guy Redding & Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede

  2. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

  3. FlowConnect Pty Ltd, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Adrian Iordachescu

Authors
  1. Guy Redding
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  2. Marlon Dumas
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  3. Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede
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  4. Adrian Iordachescu
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Correspondence to Guy Redding.

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Redding, G., Dumas, M., ter Hofstede, A.H.M. et al. A flexible, object-centric approach for business process modelling. SOCA 4, 191–201 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-010-0065-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11761-010-0065-4

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