Business Process Modeling as a Blueprint for Enterprise Architecture

Author(s):  
J. Barjis ◽  
I. Barjis

For a successful study, design and development of the enterprise architecture, a thorough insight into the essence of the work and operation of an enterprise, is a crucial factor. As the well-known Zachman and other modern frameworks illustrate, enterprise processes and process modeling are one of the fundamental components of enterprise architecture for providing such an insight. Like building construction in which construction drawings or blueprints play crucial roles, enterprise process models are critical in developing enterprise architecture. Moreover, one may argue that the role of business process modeling in enterprise architecture is similar to the floor plan that defines the boundaries of a building to be constructed. Therefore, a suitable enterprise process modeling approach that could capture the essential operations and reflect the cross-enterprise (cross-departmental) processes is a needed component to complement enterprise architecture. In this chapter, authors study, discuss, and review the practical role of enterprise process modeling in enterprise architecture using a real life organization-based case study. Authors introduce a modeling methodology that captures essential activities not only within a process but also from the enterprise perspective where cross departmental or enterprise processes are represented.

Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio Cesar Sampaio do Prado Leite ◽  
Flavia Maria Santoro ◽  
Claudia Cappelli ◽  
Thais Vasconcelos Batista ◽  
Fabiana Jack Nogueira Santos

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a representation scheme based on the i* strategic actor model to represent the process owner information and show how to incorporate this approach into the event driven process chain and Business Process Modeling Notation-BPMN meta-models and also into the aspect-oriented business process modeling (BPM) context. Design/methodology/approach – The authors use a case study in a real setting to evaluate the proposal and a controlled experiment to get more evidence about its relevance. Findings – The authors presented evidence both from a case study in a real-world library showing the importance of representing – previously unavailable – process owner information, and from an experiment which involved participants analyzing the same models of the case study, confirming the preliminary evidences. It is important to stress the recognition that the proposed representation provided more transparency, in terms of ownership, than the usual BPM models. These benefits are due to the combination of the aspect-oriented approach and the strategic actor model, providing ownership information in a more transparent way. Originality/value – The authors not only argue the importance of clearly established process ownership, both of the core process and the aspectual process, but also the authors presented an approach to represent the actor involved in process and aspect ownership as an instantiation of the i* strategic actor. Using this approach, the process owner can be defined in terms of actors instead of the activities performed. It is also possible to define the aspect owner and to include the aspectual process concept in the business process model.


Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.


Author(s):  
Daniel Lübke ◽  
Maike Ahrens ◽  
Kurt Schneider

AbstractBusiness process modeling is an important activity for developing software systems—especially within digitization projects and when realizing digital business models. Specifying requirements and building executable workflows is often done by using BPMN 2.0 process models. Although there are several style guides available for BPMN, e.g., by Silver and Richard (BPMN method and style, vol 2, Cody-Cassidy Press, Aptos, 2009), there has not been much empirical research done into the consequences of the diagram layout. In particular, layouts that require scrolling have not been investigated yet. The aim of this research is to establish layout guidelines for business process modeling that help business process modelers to create more understandable business process diagrams. For establishing benefits and penalties of different layouts, a controlled eye tracking experiment was conducted, in which data of 21 professional software developers was used. Our results show that horizontal layouts are less demanding and that as many diagram elements as possible should be put on the initially visible screen area because such diagram elements are viewed more often and longer. Additionally, diagram elements related to the reader’s task are read more often than those not relevant to the task. BPMN modelers should favor a horizontal layout and use a more complex snake or multi-line layout whenever the diagrams are too large to fit on one page in order to support BPMN model comprehension.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal A. Abu Rub ◽  
Ayman A. Issa

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a new approach to investigate complex processes, such as software development processes, using business process modeling.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents an investigation into the use of role activity diagramming (RAD) to model complex processes in the software industry sector, with reference to the process of TestWarehouse as a case study.FindingsSystematic extension and quantitative analysis to RAD models led to the discovery of process bottlenecks, identification of cross functional boundary problems, and focused discussion about automation of processes.Research limitations/implicationsFurther work is required to validate and evaluate the proposed approach using several cases with different application domains and thus generalize the adopted approach.Practical implicationsA new approach has been used successfully to understand and analyze business processes. The tools and techniques that are used to perform the approach are not complicated and do not need much specialist expertise, so the approach is not only oriented toward specialists but also toward organizations' managers and staff.Originality/valueNew techniques have been developed by using process modelling to deepen the understanding and analyzing of complex organizational processes. This research implements a practical investigation which uses a case study to validate the new techniques.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Hilman Nuril Hadi ◽  
Tri Astoto Kurniawan ◽  
Ismiarta Aknuranda

BPMN has become the standard of business process modeling indescribing the existing series of business process. By engaging BPMN, an analystwould possibly able to model the whole business process activities in whichhe/she may analyze business process upon design time. It can be done byanalyzing the structure, behavior, or semantic of process model. In certaincondition one may ask a question what would the effects of the process be if itwere to be executed up to this point?. However, it cannot be solved with onlygraphical notation, but with its semantics. In practice, several modeling tools stilldo not provide a feature for managing information regarding the effects/resultsin the business process model. In fact, analysts should be supported with a toolin order to semantically enrich a process model with its effects. This articledescribes effect annotation semantically towards activity in the BPMN modelincluding the rules in representing its effects. The effect annotation will be suitedtowards activity type (atomic and compound activities). The outcomes of plugin development of eclipse BPMN2 modeler for representing semantic effect arealso described in this paper.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 397-403
Author(s):  
Reza Alinaghian ◽  
Azizah Abdul Rahman ◽  
Roliana Ibrahim

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy is a code that clarifies the duties, responsibilities and rights of technology stakeholders and specifies acceptable and efficient ICT utilization. ICT policy life cycle encompasses four main processes which are: development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. In many cases, the processes that form the life cycle of ICT policy usually stopped or failed at starting phase(s), including th e case study in this research (one of the Malaysian Public Institutions of Higher Education). Failures in ICT policy management may compromise ICT security, control and strategy in addition to incurring unnecessary expense. This paper discusses the methods utilized in conducting the study. Qualitative research and case study method were utilized to provide greater insight into this complicated phenomenon. An in-depth analysis and elaboration was performed using Viable System Model (VSM) and Hermeneutics method to diagnose and identify weaknesses, mismatches and viable requirements. The proposed model combined the perspectives of systemic functions and organizational structure of VSM with organizational processes and entities of Business Process Modeling (BPM). The application of VSM accommodated environmental dynamism, encouraged sustainable development and provided a sound theoretical platform. In combination with BPM, emphasis shifted from a specific, isolated policy domain to a business process model designed to manage overall ICT policy. An ICT policy management prototype was also developed based on the model. The model and prototype system have been verified through the case study.


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