scholarly journals A Method for Bridging the Gap between Business Process Models and Services

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 62-98
Author(s):  
Leonardo Guerreiro Azevedo ◽  
Flávia Santoro ◽  
Fernanda Baião ◽  
Thaissa Diirr ◽  
Alexandre Souza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
System Development ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Development Lifecycle ◽  
Service Identification ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Service Oriented

Many proposals in the literature are consensual in making business processes as the starting point of a Service-Oriented system development lifecycle. However, there is no systematic approach that can be easily applied in practice. We argue that an effective SOA approach requires an integrated view of organizational business processes, where services are explicitly related to business models components. Accomplishing these requirements is vital for bridging the gap between business needs and their supporting services. This work proposes a top-down method for service identification and analysis from business process models. Each step of the method implements a set of heuristics that are also specified. The method is presented in detail, and constitutes a systematic guide for service identification and analysis. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the use of the method in practice.

Ontology-based Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Deriving Software Services from Business Process Model

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Mokhtar Soltani ◽  
Sidi Mohamed Benslimane
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Multi Objective ◽  
Service Identification ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Service Oriented ◽  
Software Services

Various approaches uses business process models as starting point to derive software services. The first and the important task for developing service-oriented models is service identification. However, the majority of existing methods for service identification are developed manually because, on the one hand, they are based on the competence of the developers and, on the other hand, the business process models do not comprise sufficient knowledge to identify services automatically. The integration of Business Process Modeling (BPM), Model-Driven Development (MDD), and Ontology-based Semantic Annotation (OSA) allows the automation of the SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) services development. Three steps are used for developing an SOA solution: service identification, service specification and finally service realization. In this paper, the authors illustrate a method called MOOSI (Multi-Objective Optimization-based Service Identification) that automatically identifies the architecturally significant elements from an annotated business process model in order to specify service model artifacts. The main goal of this work is to support the automation of the development process of service-oriented enterprise information system. The implementation results of our proposed method are discussed. This result shows that MOOSI can achieve high performance in terms of execution time and important quality in terms of modularization quality of identified services compared with other solution.

Services Derivation from Business Process

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Mohamed El Amine Chergui ◽  
Sidi Mohamed Benslimane
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Service Oriented Architecture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Optimal Designs ◽  
Design Metrics ◽  
Service Identification ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Business Analysis ◽  
Service Oriented

Several approaches for services development in SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) suggest business processes as a starting point. However, there is a lack of systematic methods for services identification during business analysis. It is recognized that in service engineering, service identification plays a critical role as it lays the foundation for the later phases. Existing Service identification approaches are often prescriptive and mostly ignore automation principles, most are based on the architect's knowledge thus could result in non-optimal designs which results in complicated dependencies between services. In this paper the authors propose a top down approach to identify automatically services from business process by using several design metrics. This approach produces services from business processes as input and using an improved combinatorial particle swarm optimization algorithm with crossover of genetic algorithm. The experimentation denotes that the authors' approach achieves better results in terms of performance and convergence speed.

Verification of e-Commerce Business Processes

2011 ◽  
pp. 105-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Feja ◽  
Andreas Speck ◽  
Elke Pulvermüller ◽  
Marcel Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
System Development ◽  
Real System ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Formal Requirement ◽  
Different Types

Nevertheless distinctive improvements are necessary before this technology can be applied in the real system development. Graphical formal requirement notations for different kinds of process model notations as representations of the specification of rules are also crucial, along with the ability to present the positive and especially negative results to the different types of stakeholders. And finally, the model checking technique has to be improved in order to deal with different types of model elements which are typical for business process models.

scholarly journals Applying Software Metrics to evaluate Business Process Models

2006 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvira Rolón ◽  
Francisco Ruiz ◽  
Félix García ◽  
Mario Piattini
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Software Metrics ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Software Process ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Quantitative Basis ◽  
Software Processes ◽  
Business Process Modeling Notation

In this paper, we define a set of metrics for the evaluation of conceptual models of business processes. The proposal supposes the adaptation and extension of the FMESP framework (Framework for the Modeling and Evaluation of Software Processes). This adaptation can be carried out thanks to the similarities that exist between both types of processes (software and business). FMESP includes a set of metrics, which provide the quantitative basis necessary to find out the maintainability of the software process models. This proposal has been used as the starting point in proposing a set of metrics for the evaluation of the complexity of business process models defined by BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). Moreover, the groups of metrics of FMESP have been extended. This is because the models of business processes represented in BPMN include quite a number of aspects of interest in this domain which are not considered in software processes modelled with SPEM (Software Process Engineering Metamodel).

scholarly journals Business processes exceptions in relation to operational performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 908-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Dijkman ◽  
Oktay Turetken ◽  
Geoffrey Robert van IJzendoorn ◽  
Meint de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Operational Performance ◽  
Normal Flow ◽  
Throughput Time ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Business process models describe the way of working in an organization. Typically, business process models distinguish between the normal flow of work and exceptions to that normal flow. However, they often present an idealized view. This means that unexpected exceptions – exceptions that are not modeled in the business process model – can also occur in practice. This has an effect on the efficiency of the organization, because information systems are not developed to handle unexpected exceptions. The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the occurrence of exceptions and operational performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper does this by analyzing the execution logs of business processes from five organizations, classifying execution paths as normal or exceptional. Subsequently, it analyzes the differences between normal and exceptional paths. Findings The results show that exceptions are related to worse operational performance in terms of a longer throughput time and that unexpected exceptions relate to a stronger increase in throughput time than expected exceptions. Practical implications These findings lead to practical implications on policies that can be followed with respect to exceptions. Most importantly, unexpected exceptions should be avoided by incorporating them into the process – and thus transforming them into expected exceptions – as much as possible. Also, as not all exceptions lead to longer throughput times, continuous improvement should be employed to continuously monitor the occurrence of exceptions and make decisions on their desirability in the process. Originality/value While work exists on analyzing the occurrence of exceptions in business processes, especially in the context of process conformance analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first work that analyzes the possible consequences of such exceptions.

scholarly journals Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Castela ◽  
Paulo Dias ◽  
Marielba Zacarias ◽  
José Tribolet
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Organizational Environment ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Over Time

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.

A Method for Eliciting Goals for Business Process Models based on Non-Functional Requirements Catalogues

2013 ◽  
pp. 226-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Modeling ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Business Process Modeling ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Goal Models

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.

Assigning Ontological Meaning to Workflow Nets

2012 ◽  
pp. 209-244
Author(s):  
Pnina Soffer ◽  
Maya Kaner ◽  
Yair Wand
Keyword(s):  
Petri Nets ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Workflow Nets ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Goals ◽  
General Constraints ◽  
Process Behavior

A common way to represent organizational domains is the use of business process models. A Workflow-net (WF-net) is an application of Petri Nets (with additional rules) that model business process behavior. However, the use of WF-nets to model business processes has some shortcomings. In particular, no rules exist beyond the general constraints of WF-nets to guide the mapping of an actual process into a net. Syntactically correct WF-nets may provide meaningful models of how organizations conduct their business processes. Moreover, the processes represented by these nets may not be feasible to execute or reach their business goals when executed. In this paper, the authors propose a set of rules for mapping the domain in which a process operates into a WF-net, which they derived by attaching ontological semantics to WF-nets. The rules guide the construction of WF-nets, which are meaningful in that their nodes and transitions are directly related to the modeled (business) domains. Furthermore, the proposed semantics imposes on the process models constraints that guide the development of valid process models, namely, models that assure that the process can accomplish its goal when executed.

Business Process Graphs

2011 ◽  
pp. 421-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Dijkman ◽  
Marlon Dumas ◽  
Luciano García-Bañuelos
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Similarity Search ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Search And Matching ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Process Graphs

Organizations create collections of hundreds or even thousands of business process models to describe their operations. This chapter explains how graphs can be used as underlying formalism to develop techniques for managing such collections. To this end it defines the business process graph formalism. On this formalism it defines techniques for determining similarity of business process graphs. Such techniques can be used to quickly search through a collection of business process graphs to find the graph that is most relevant to a given query. These techniques can be used by tool builders that develop tools for managing large collections of business process models. The aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the research area of using graphs to do similarity search and matching of business processes.

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