A grounding of business process modeling based on temporal logic

Business process modelling is an important part of system design. When designing or redesigning a business process, stakeholders specify, negotiate, and agree on business requirements to be satisfied, including non-functional requirements that concern the quality of the business process. This thesis addresses the question of how to specify and compute the quality of a business process, given the model that stakeholders use. The motivation for this thesis is the increasing importance of the quality of business processes. Knowing the quality of specific business processes enables stakeholders to judge if these processes need improvement. Knowing the quality of the constructs of those processes (viz., events, inputs, activities, and outputs) and the way they are structured enables a more detailed analysis of their shortcomings and provides a basis for the design of improvements. The research challenge of this thesis is grounded in the assumption that: “Organisations need an appropriate means to effectively compute achievement of their goals and objectives by their business processes.” Given this challenge, the main research question on which this thesis focuses is: “Can the quality of a business process be computed quantitatively at different levels of granularity?” The research objective is: “To develop frameworks, factors, and metrics for computing non-functional requirements (quality) of business processes quantitatively at different levels of granularity.” The outcomes of this thesis are: 1) BPIMM, a language-independent business process integrating meta-model, based on the concepts of seven mainstream business process modelling languages: BPMN, EPC, RAD, UML AD, SADT, IDEF0, and IDEF3. 2) BPC-QC (Business Process Concept - Quality Computation), an approach to quality computation at the lowest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BPC-QEF (Business Process Concept - Quality Evaluation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of the constructs of a business process: event, input, activity, and output. ii. A set of business process quality dimensions and factors. The following quality dimensions are distinguished: performance, efficiency, reliability, recoverability, permissibility, and availability. Each dimension categorises different quality aspects in terms of factors. A non-exhaustive set of sixteen quantitative factors is provided. iii. Quality metrics for each of the quality factors, to facilitate a quantitative computation of the quality of a specific construct of a business process. 3) BP-QC (Business Process - Quality Computation), an approach to compute the quality at the highest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BP-CQCF (Business Process - Compositional Quality Computation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of a business process as a whole, given the quality of its constructs. ii. A set of generic business process modelling patterns to decompose a business process into more succinct parts, namely: sequential, parallel with synchronisation, exclusive, inclusive, simple loop, and complex loop. iii. A set of over one hundred computational formulae. For each combination of modelling pattern and a quality factor, there is a formula to compute the quality. 4) AAV (Approach to Application and Validation), an evaluation plan to evaluate BPIMM, BPC-QC and BP-QC in practice, together with expert stakeholders. The plan consists of the units of measure, a measurement model, and a case study procedure. To evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis to real world business needs, four case studies have been conducted in different environments: a Dutch educational institution, a global financial institution, an international financial service provider, and a Dutch research project on crisis management. Each of these case studies concerns a different, single business process. This thesis shows that: 1) A quality computation approach can be adopted independent of a business process modelling language. 2) Quantitative quality factors can be introduced specifically for the constructs of a business process. 3) Quantitative metrics and computational formulae can be developed for specific quality factors, allowing the computation of different aspects of the quality of a business process quantitatively at different levels of granularity. 4) An evaluation plan can be developed to evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis (viz., BPIMM, BPC-QC, and BP-QC). The contributions of this thesis are designed to be beneficial to the areas of business and management, requirements engineering, software engineering, and business process modelling. In the areas of requirements engineering and software engineering, these contributions are intended to help practitioners to consider non-functional requirements at the earliest stage. In the area of business process modelling, information systems, service computing, and cloud computing, the contributions can be used for quality-driven modelling, design, and redesign. To conclude, knowing the quality value of a business process at different levels of granularity provides a basis for its improvement.

The behavior of commercial systems is described with business process models. There are different notations and formalism to express business processes. Many of these notations such as BPMN or ARIS EPC models are widely used in commercial projects. In the paper we focus on formalisms to express rules and specifications for the business processes. Temporal logic in general is a suitable formalism to express rules for dynamic processes. CTL is one kind of temporal logic focusing on branches and paths in particular. With CTL it is possible to formulate rules about different paths in business processes. Since the textual formulae of CTL are not very suitable in the development of commercial systems we introduce a graphical notation (G-CTL) based on the business process notation ARIS EPC. Moreover, we add to the CTL semantics specializes to differentiate between the element types in business process models and provide wildcards which allow the user to check for unknown elements or elements with only partially known properties.

Today’s fast and competitive markets require businesses to react faster to changes in its environment, and sometimes even before the changes actually happen. Changes can occur on almost every level, e.g. change in demand of customers, change of law, or change of the corporate strategy. Not adapting to these changes can result in financial and legal consequences for any business organisation. IT-controlled business processes are essential parts of modern organisations which motivates why business processes are required to efficiently adapt to these changes in a quick and flexible way. This requirement suggests a more dynamic handling of business processes and their models, moving from design-time business process models to run-time business process models. One general approach to address this problem is provided by the community of models@run.time, in which models reflect the system’s current state at any point in time and allow immediate reasoning and adaptation mechanisms. This paper examines the potential role of business process models at run-time by: (1) discussing the state-of the art of both, business process modelling and models@run.time, (2) reflecting on the nature of business processes at run-time, and (3) most importantly, highlighting key research challenges that need addressing to make this step.

Business process modeling (BPM) is one of the key technologies to benefit enterprises with higher efficiencies and greater business values. However, BPM requires intensive business expertise and human resources. Thus, it is valuable and challenging to enable fast delivery of reusable business process designs, regarding the existence of various popular business processes modeling languages and fast changing markets. In this paper, we generate language-specific business process models and process interaction semantics from UML 2.0 process models. A WS-BPEL metadata model and a process interaction semantics metadata model is defined to annotate UML 2.0 business process model as stereotypes; with a set of transformation patterns, we can generate a WS-BPEL business process model and a process interaction semantics file from each annotated UML 2.0 process model. Our approach can also be similarly applied to other process modeling languages to highly reuse the business process model in UML 2.0.

Industry 4.0 is a key strategic trend of the economy. Virtual factories are key building blocks for Industry 4.0 where product design processes, manufacturing processes and general collaborative business processes across factories and enterprises are integrated. In the context of EU H2020 FIRST (vF Interoperation suppoRting buSiness innovaTion) project, end users of vFs are not experts in business process modelling to guarantee correct collaborative business processes for realizing execution. To enable automatic execution of business processes, verification is an important step at the business process design stage to avoid errors at runtime. Research in business process model verification has yielded a plethora of approaches in form of languages and tools that are based on Petri nets family and temporal logic. However, no report specifically targets and presents a comparative assessment of these approaches based on criteria as one we propose. In this paper we present an assessment of the most common verification approaches based on their expressibility, flexibility, suitability and complexity. We also look at how big data impacts the business process verification approach in a data-rich world.

Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model

<b>Research background and purpose</b>: Efficient management of business processes is crucial for operational excellence and customer satisfaction. Organizations employ Business Process Management techniques to design, monitor, optimize and automate these processes effectively. This paper explores the elements that ensure the smooth functioning of business operations and drive organizational success, and is focused on the determinants of business process effectiveness. Based on a literature review, this study aims to examine the role of knowledge transfer and integration, business process efficiency and business process modelling in shaping business process effectiveness. <b>Design/methodology/approach:</b> Data collected from polish 300 managers and specialists using the CAWI method was analysed using structural equation modelling. <b>Findings:</b> The study provides evidence of the direct influence of business process efficiency on business process effectiveness. The study's findings also reveal the direct impact of business process modelling, as well as knowledge transfer and integration, on business process efficiency. It is surprising that the influence of business process modelling, and knowledge transfer and integration on the effectiveness of business processes is not recognized. <b>Value added and limitations:</b> The contribution of this study is to highlight the importance of business process modelling (as a major factor), as well as knowledge transfer and integration, in business process effectiveness, and the importance of business process efficiency in shaping business process effectiveness. The study is subject to certain limitations, among which are: the use of a single-respondent approach, conducting the survey among managers from different sectors (the specifics of the business can have a significant impact on shaping the constructs we study), conducting the study at a specific point in time, which creates challenges in accurately assessing the effectiveness of business processes.

Communication flow orientation in business process modeling and its effect on redesign success: Results from a field study

The necessity of aligning an enterprise's information system (IS) model to its business process (BP) model is incontestable to the consistent analysis of the business performance. However, the main difficulty of establishing/maintaining BP-IS model alignment stems from the dissimilarities in the knowledge of the information system developers and the business process experts. To overcome these limits, the authors propose a model-driven architecture compliant methodology that helps software analysts to build an IS analysis model aligned to a given BP model. The proposed methodology allows mastering transformation from computation independent model to platform independent model. The CIM level expresses the BP, which is modelled through the standard BPMN and, at the PIM level represents the aligned IS model, which is generated as use case diagram, system sequence diagrams, and class diagram. CIM to PIM transformation accounts for the BP structural and semantic perspectives to generate an aligned IS model that respects the best-practice granularity level and the quality of UML diagrams.

Although Business process modelling is an increasingly popular research area for both organisations and enterprises due to its usefulness in optimizing resources management, business reengineering and business performance, it is not yet widely accepted in Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs), which are vital for sustainable economy development. The understanding of Business Process is an essential approach for an Organization to achieve set objectives and improve its operations. It has been able to show Business Analysts, and Managers where bottleneck exists in the system, how to optimize the Business Process to reduce cost of running the Organization, and the required resources needed for an Organization. This is clear for large scale organizations and enterprises but under research investigation for SMEs. Business Process Modelling (BPM) is a representation of the processes of the Organization. Several modelling techniques have been proposed and used to capture the characteristics of business processes. However, limited guidelines exist for selecting appropriate modelling techniques based on the characteristics of the problem and its requirements. This is even more accurate in the case of selecting proper BPM software tools to achieve those BPM modelling and simulation goals. This paper aims at presenting a comparative analysis of some relatively popular business process modelling techniques focusing on the associated software tools. The comparative framework proposed is based on the following major criteria: data flow capability, logical reasoning and understandability, specification of roles, and capability of simulation, flexibility and ease of use, simulation support and scope. However, the emphasis of this investigation is put on SME applicability of these tools and techniques. Therefore, the first goal is to define proper selection criteria for the application of BPM tools to SMEs. The proposed framework can serve as the basis for evaluating further modelling techniques and generating selection procedures focusing on a comparison of existing tools to implement these techniques properly for SMEs. This is to enable a potential user/modeller choose the right technique and tool in modelling critical SME Business Processes in order to analyse and optimize its operations.

This chapter reveals the roles of business process modeling (BPM) and business process reengineering (BPR) in eGovernment, thus describing the concepts of eGovernment and BPM; BPM methodologies; business process modeling notation (BPMN); the importance of BPR in government-to-citizen (G2C) e-commerce; the relationship between BPM and eGovernment-based citizen satisfaction; the application of BPR in eGovernment; and the implementation of eGovernment through BPM. eGovernment is a modern trend that is driven by the advances in BPM and BPR as well as the aspirations of citizens who place increasing demands on governments' service. By modeling business processes in eGovernment, public sector organizations can achieve improvements in transparency and reduction in costs and resource requirements, resulting in improved business performance and compliance. The chapter argues that applying BPM and BPR in eGovernment has the potential to enhance public sector performance and achieve organizational goals in public sector organizations.

Business processes are essential components of all enterprises and the use of models, languages and execution engines as components of a Business Process Management (BPM) deployment are now commonplace. By definition, these processes describe an enterprise in terms of its organizational knowledge, structure and activities, and are often essential to realizing an organization's competitive advantage. It thus follows that the design, execution and, critically, responsiveness to change in the system or environment they are affecting, is of prime significance toward establishing and maintaining efficient business operation. Deploying a high quality and effective Business Process Management System (BPMS) is thus utterly essential to many modern enterprises. Yet current trends toward flexible methods of working, just-in-time organizational reaction times, distributed intra-organization and interorganization collaboration and constantly changing markets are creating new and complex business landscapes. This brings about increased complexity, further motivating the need for real-time dynamic change throughout an enterprise's business processes; ever more dynamic environments require key business processes to be more flexible and automated in both their design and behaviour. Yet many companies are now discovering that investments in conventional BPMS often suffers from poor return on investment due to a common inability to create business process models that are both meaningful to business people and capable of offering the real-time process flexibility and rapid process adaptation required to cope effectively with the fluid business conditions typifying many modern enterprises. As evidenced by our work with customers in the manufacturing domain, there is very often a need to alter executing process structures, sometimes in real-time, without perturbing the integrity of running process instances. If a BPMS is not built to innately support change in this manner the result can be reductions in both dependability and visibility, especially from a management perspective. Our observation is that many of the current procedural approaches to BPM are too inflexible and unresponsive to change, especially in any automated fashion. In fact many BPMS solutions provide only design-time modelling, with neither support for run-time determination of process structure, nor direct execution of industry standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) process models without the need for first translating BPMN into intermediary formats, such as the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), in preparation for execution. In practice, these issues imply that process models can tend to become overly complex and brittle through the necessity of coding-in all O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te ch w eb .o rg

Business analysts define business process models for describing a series of tasks to produce services or products to serve business goals. Hence business process models represent business requirements for development of the software that enables automation of the business processes. When tasks in a business process are changed, such changes also trigger changes in the artifacts that have been produced during development of the related software. Analysis of an impact a business process change has on the software is useful for the software project manager and the system analyst to plan the effort to change the artifacts, including the software itself, accordingly. This paper presents a traceability impact analysis using traceability information of the old version of the business process model and its related software artifacts. The impact analysis is based on different patterns of business process changes that are made to the old business process model to create a new version of the model. Detection algorithms are used to identify various patterns of process structure changes so that business process tasks that are changed and software artifacts that would be impacted by the changes can be reported. The paper also discusses a supporting tool and its evaluation.

In this study, we argue that important of strategy, business, design, and technology alignment affecting an organization’s ICT enterprise architecture is also reflected by business management perspective and business process model. Enterprise Architecture (EA) is an effective way to develop current and future views of the entire enterprise. EA does this primarily by integrating the processes for strategic, business and technology planning in a way that also integrates with other business and technology process. The seamless collaborate and synergize working between technology and non-technology executives and professionals are needed in the designing and formulating enterprise architecture. Therefore, in order to facilitate this analysis, we propose an approach to relate EA specified business architecture to business process innovation, modeled using Service blueprint and Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). Our approach is accompanied by a method that supports the process automation of business process model and is illustrated by a Healthcare service practice as a case study.

Business process modeling is an important part of organizational management since it enables companies to obtain insights into their operational workflows and find opportunities for development. However, evaluating and quantifying the similarity of multiple business process models can be difficult because these models frequently differ greatly in terms of structure and nomenclature. This study offers an approach that uses natural language processing techniques to evaluate the similarity of business process models in order to address this issue. The algorithm uses the activity labels given in the business process models as input to produce textual descriptions of the associated business processes. The algorithm includes various preprocessing stages to guarantee that the textual descriptions are correct and consistent. First, single words are retrieved and transformed to lower case from the resulting textual descriptions. After that, all non-alphabetic and stop words are removed from the retrieved words. The remaining words are then stemmed, which includes reducing them to their base form. The algorithm evaluates the similarity of distinct business process models using similarity measures, including Jaccard, Sorensen – Dice, overlap, and simple matching coefficients, after the textual descriptions have been prepared and preprocessed. These metrics provide a more detailed understanding of the similarities and differences across various business process models, which can then be used to influence decision-making and business process improvement initiatives. The software implementation of the proposed algorithm demonstrates its usage for similarity measurement in a database of business process models. Experiments show that the developed algorithm is 31% faster than a search based on the SQL LIKE clause and allows finding 18% more similar models in the business process model database.