SOA-Based Collaborative Modeling Method for Cross-Organizational Business Process Integration

This paper presents an approach to automated design of the initial conceptual database model. The source model is a collaborative business process model represented by BPMN, while the target model is represented by a UML class diagram. Automated synthesis of the target model is driven by typical business process patterns and includes automatic extraction of data objects, message flows and business process participants, as well as automatic generation of corresponding classes and their associations. Application of the implemented ATL-based generator is illustrated on a real business process model.

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained remarkable importance in research and practice in the last years. Innovative information and communication technology (ICT) is a driver for the effectiveness and efficiency of enterprise collaboration and the management of inter-organizational business processes. In this context, cooperating enterprises need a shared understanding of their own processes, those of their partners as well as of emerging inter-organizational process structures. In order to create such a shared understanding, the concept of collaborative modeling can serve as a useful approach. This article introduces a concept for collaborative business process modeling and its implementation in the CoMoMod tool. The tool supports several aspects of collaborative process modeling, such as simultaneous work of spatially distributed modelers on one process model diagram. Furthermore the tool permits synchronously creating a collaborative model with different modeling languages by automatically mapping and converting the different model representations. The proof of concept utilizes Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) and Petri Nets. The usage of an integrated chat messaging service supports communication during the process of collaboratively modeling business process.

Modeling business process allows an organization to think about its way of conducting business while helping discover weakness in its processes. Although it is common for participants to collaborate within an organization, it is essential to define how different participants from different organizations collaborate as a community, to reach a common business goal. In this context, the realization of business processes by means of services becomes more important, providing support for separating their definition from the technologies implementing them, allowing a better response to changes. A model-driven approach for the direct generation of services from business processes provides several advantages such as reuse of the knowledge imbibed in the correspondences defined between the involved metamodels and traceability between elements in both metamodels, allowing for a better Business-IT alignment. In this article we present an approach for the automatic generation of SoaML service-oriented models from collaborative business process models in BPMN2.

Business process collaboration is an imminent need when it comes to evolving an organization or expanding its system to keep up with the pace of technology. In a collaborative environment, business processes become more complex as organizations find themselves in front of large systems that need to share their resources and connect their businesses. Thus, the modeling of these processes becomes a tedious work for the designers. This article will represent a collaborative business process modeling language. The latter will be an extension of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) a standard for business process modeling.

Contemporary tools for business process modeling use menu-based interfaces for visualizing process models and interacting with them. However, pure menu-based interactions have been optimized for applications running on desktop computers and are limited regarding their use on multi-touch devices. At the same time, the increasing distribution of mobile devices in business life as well as their multi-touch capabilities offer promising perspectives for intuitively defining and adapting business process models. Additionally, multi-touch tables could improve collaborative business process modeling based on natural gestures and interactions. In this paper we present the results of an experiment in which we investigate the way users model business processes with multi-touch devices. Furthermore, a core gesture set is suggested enabling the easy definition and adaption of business process models on these devices. Overall, gesture-based process modeling and multi-touch devices allow for new ways of (collaborative) business process modeling.

There are several motivations to promote investment and scientific effort in the integration of intentional and operational perspectives: organisational reengineering, continuous improvement of business processes, alignment among complementary analysis perspectives, information traceability, etc. In this paper we propose the integration of two modelling languages that support the creation of goal and business process models: the i* goal-oriented modelling method and Communication Analysis, a communication-oriented business process modelling method. We describe the methodological integration of the two modelling methods with the aim of fulfilling several criteria: i) to rely on appropriate theories; ii) to provide abstract and concrete syntaxes; iii) to provide scenarios of application; and iv) to develop tool support. We provide guidelines for using the two modelling methods in a top-down analysis scenario. We also present an illustrative case that demonstrates the feasibility of the approach.

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.

This chapter describes the application of MDA (Model-Driven Architecture) and UML for the modeling and specification of collaborative business processes, with the purpose of enabling enterprises to establish Business-to-Business collaborations. The proposed MDA approach provides the components and techniques required for the development of collaborative processes, from their conceptual modeling to the specifications of these processes and the partners’ interfaces in a B2B standard. As part of this MDA approach, a UML Profile is provided, which extends the semantics of UML 2 to support the analysis and design of collaborative processes. This UML Profile is based on the use of interaction protocols to model collaborative processes. The application of this UML Profile in a case study is presented. Also, an overview is provided about the automatic generation of B2B specifications from conceptual models of collaborative processes. In particular, the generation of B2B specifications based on ebXML is described.

Business processes are designed to execute strategies that aim at achieving organisational goals. During the last decade, several methods have been proposed that prescribe the use of goal-oriented requirements engineering techniques for supporting different business process management activities, in particular business process modelling. The integration of goal modelling and business process modelling aims at increasing the alignment between business strategies and the processes with their supporting IT systems. This new research area, which the authors call Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering for Business Processes (GORE-for-BP), is developing rapidly, but without a clear conceptualization of the focus and scope of the proposed GORE-for-BP methods. Furthermore, an overview is lacking of which methods exist and what their level of maturity is. This paper therefore presents a research review of the GORE-for-BP area, with the aim of identifying relevant methods and assessing their focus, scope, and maturity. This study used Systematic Literature Review and Method Meta-Modelling as research methods to identify and evaluate the state of the GORE-for-BP research area and to propose a research agenda for directing future research in the area. Nineteen methods were identified, which is an indication of an active research area. Although some similarities were found with respect to how goal models are transformed into business process models (or vice-versa), there is also considerable divergence in modelling languages used and the extent of coverage of typical requirements engineering and business process management lifecycle phases. Furthermore, the exploitation of requirements engineering techniques in the full business process management lifecycle is currently under researched. Also, the maturity of the methods found in terms of the formalisation of the transformation activity, the elaboration of method guidelines, and the extent to which methods are validated, can be further improved.

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.

A distributed repository for managing business process models in cross-organizational collaborations

Business Process Management (BPM) is the factual criteria for business process modeling. Although it is widely used in various fields, when required When using business processes to express big data business processes, the existing business process specifications do not support it. Big data business can only be simulated as multiple manual tasks before execution, which is not friendly to non-big data technology practitioners, and will The non-standardized business process and poor reusability lead to a reduction in the efficiency of business completion. On the other hand, while supporting big data technology brings flexibility to BPM, it consumes a lot of process engine resources when executing big data business processes, and the execution efficiency is low, which brings greater burden to the process engine. Aiming at the above deficiencies, this paper carries out the following work: (1) Extend the existing business process modeling, and define a new category of " Big Data Service Task" by extending the activity elements in BPMN2.0 (2) Propose a compatible big data technology The task scheduling strategy in the business process includes a single big data task scheduling decision and an intensive big data task scheduling decision.

Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model

The paper analyzes the existing theoretical knowledge on modelling business processes of an enterprise in the conditions of the development of digital technologies. The purpose of the article is to generalize the existing views on the definition of the term «business process» and to note certain common essential features inherent in business processes, which consist in the awareness of the purpose of their implementation, repeatability (cyclicity), formation in time-space, provision of a certain resource, effectiveness. In view of the consolidated classification of enterprise business processes developed by scientists, with which the author agrees and the reference to which is indicated in the article, the developed standards for their description were considered. Thanks to the rapid development of digital technologies, new possibilities and ways of processing, presenting, saving and using information are opening up. Due to the tools developed on their basis, it was possible to analyze the approaches and ways of building graphic models of business processes, created according to the methodology of structural analysis (SADT) with the use of modern digital tools such as the graphical modelling language BPMN. We came to the conclusion that by having an idea of the functional structure of an enterprise, the purpose of its activity, and the list and content of existing business process models, using modern digital business process modelling tools, it is possible to significantly optimize work and obtain better results of operational activity. The application of the specified toolkit provides an opportunity to determine the degree of development of the business process, the ability to make quick adjustments by making changes, eliminating deficiencies, and checking the effectiveness of the system at the modelling stage. This will ensure a higher level of competitiveness for an enterprise in modern digital conditions.

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.