An Integrated Infrastructure Using Process Mining Techniques for Software Process Verification

The verification of process implementations according to specifications is a critical step of process management. This verification must be practiced according to objective criteria and evidence. This study explains an integrated infrastructure that utilizes process mining for software process verification and case studies carried out by using this infrastructure. Specific software providing the utilization of process mining algorithms for software process verification is developed as a plugin to an open-source EPF Composer tool that supports the management of software and system engineering processes. With three case studies, bug management, task management, and defect management processes are verified against defined and established process models (modeled by using EPF Composer) by using this plugin over real process data. Among these, the results of the case study performed in a large, leading IT solutions company in Turkey are remarkable in demonstrating the opportunities for process improvement.

Recovering Business Process Models with Process Patterns

Originating from a pragmatic need to document strategies for modelling recurrent business scenarios, collections of workflow patterns have been proposed in the business process management community. The concrete applications of these workflow patterns in forward engineering have been extensively explored. Conversely, the core concern of business process archaeology is on recovering business process models from legacy systems utilizing reverse engineering methods. Little attention is given to the relationship between business process recovery and workflow patterns. This chapter aims to give a compact introduction to workflow control-flow patterns, workflow data patterns, workflow exception patterns, and service interaction patterns. In particular, the feasibility of combining workflow patterns with business process archaeology is examined by drawing on the research results of the MARBLE framework.

Transformation of Platform-Independent Model into Platform-Specific Model in Model-Driven Architecture

The Model-Driven Architecture approach to software development uses transformation models for transforming Platform-Independent Models (PIM) into Platform-Specific Models (PSM) as its core software development strategy. The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) approach and corresponding standards of the software development based on models have been initiated by the Object Management Group. In this chapter, the authors analyze the basic models of MDA (i.e., Computational Independent Model [CIM], PIM, and PSM) using a suitable example and formalize the model transformations for transforming PIM into PSM. These transformations have been illustrated through the generation of a Relational Model, an Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) Model, and a Web Model from PIM for the example under consideration, using UML profile, and keeping in mind the property of reusability of models in MDA transformations. The focus has been on the specification and formalization of rules needed to get the Relational PSM, EJB PSM, and Web PSM from PIM. A transformation tool, whose functionality of transformation of PIM into Relational PSM, EJB PSM, and Web PSM, is illustrated in this chapter.

Business Process Modeling with Services

Reverse engineering techniques have become very important within the maintenance process providing several benefits. They retrieve abstract representations that not only facilitate the comprehension of legacy systems but also refactor these representations. Business process archaeology has emerged as a set of techniques and tools to recover business processes from source code and to preserve the existing business functions and rules buried in legacy source code. This chapter presents a reverse engineering process and a tool to retrieve services from running databases. These services are further reused in composing business processes with respect to Service-Oriented Architecture, a new architectural style that promotes agility.

Fundaments of Business Process Archeology

Archeologists investigate some scenarios by trying to understand what they are observing and how it all fits together. Archeologists have to be careful to preserve the artifacts they find and respect and understand the cultural forces that produced them. Similar to traditional archeology, Business Process Archeology is carried out similarly to traditional archeology, but engineers do not have to wait for ages so that they can comprehend unfathomable artifacts. This is due to the fact that code and business process models become legacy just about as soon as they are written or modeled. Thereby, Business Process Archeology attempts to provide answers to the following questions: What are we looking at? How does it fit in with the rest of the world? and What were they thinking? This introductory chapter shows Business Process Archeology as an emerging stage within software modernization processes, focusing on understanding and recovering specific knowledge from existing software assets. Business Process Archeology consists of analyzing different software artifacts by means of reverse engineering techniques and tools in order to obtain very abstract models that depict not only the legacy systems but also the company and/or the company operation supported by this system (e.g., business process models). This chapter introduces fundaments and the basis of Business Process Archeology with some allusions to the remaining chapters of this book.

Cooperation Patterns and Adaptation Patterns for Service-Based Inter-Organizational Workflows

Modernization is an effective approach to making existing mainframe and distributed systems more responsive to business needs. SOA is an adequate paradigm that allows companies to tap into the business value in their current systems for rapid future changes to the business model. In their research works, the authors focus on the use of SOA to implement Inter-Organizational WorkFlows (IOWF). The goal is to take benefits from SOA advantages like interoperability, reusability, and flexibility to deal with process models flexibly enough. This chapter focuses on specific IOWF architectures: the “chained execution” and the “subcontracting.” First, the authors define Service-Based Cooperation Patterns (SBCP) suitable to these IOWF architectures; a SBCP is defined through three main dimensions: the distribution of services, the control of execution, and the structure of interaction. The second issue of the chapter consists of adaptation and evolution of IOWF process models obeying to the defined SBCP. Conformably to the three dimensions of SBCP, the authors define three classes of adaptation patterns: “service,” “control flow,” and “interaction.” Also, the authors particularly distinguish operations of evolution of process models based on two perspectives: the expansion of the global functionality of the process and the expansion of the cooperation. For implementation, the authors consider BPEL processes.

Transformation Mechanisms in the Business Model/Business Process Interface

Many scholars view the emerging business model concept as the missing link between a company’s strategy and its operational implementation into business processes. They remain vague, however, in answering the question as to how strategy-induced changes to the business model can be transformed into business process adjustments. The other way round—a feedback mechanism that triggers business model adjustments in case of issues at the business process level—is not conceptualized either. The study hence is twofold. The authors explore both the top-down (business model to business process) and the bottom-up (business process to business model) perspective of this interface. The top-down part considers business model changes, such as induced by adopting a Software-as-a-Service strategy, which require an effective implementation in a firm’s organization. The explorative findings cover a detailed description of the transformation framework as well as an exemplary expert survey that can serve as a reference for software firm decision makers. The bottom-up part clarifies the influence of business processes on the business model based on a literature review, expert interviews, and inductive reasoning. The authors derive a classification framework that provides new insights into the maturity of current KPI-systems and their strategic importance with regards to business model changes.

Recovery and Refinement of Business Process Models for Web Applications

Web Applications (WAs) have been often used to expose business processes to the users. WA modernization and evolution are complex and time-consuming activities that can be supported by software documentation (e.g., process models). When, as often happens, documentation is missing or is incomplete, documentation recovery and mining represent an important opportunity for reconstructing or completing it. Existing process-mining approaches, however, tend to recover models that are quite complex, rich, and intricate, thus difficult to understand and use for analysts and developers. Model refinement approaches have been presented in the literature to reduce the model complexity and intricateness while preserving the capability of representing the relevant information. In this chapter, the authors summarize approaches to mine first and refine later business process models from existing WAs. In particular, they present two process model refinement approaches: (1) re-modularization and (2) reduction. The authors introduce the techniques and show how to apply them to WAs.

An Architecture to Infer Business Rules from Event Condition Action Rules Implemented in the Persistence Layer

The business rules that govern the behaviour of a business process can be hardcoded in different ways in a software application. The modernization or improvement of these applications to a process-oriented perspective implies typically the modification of the business rules. Frequently, legacy systems are not well documented, and almost always the documentation they have is not updated. As a consequence, many times it is necessary to analyze the source code and databases structures to transform them into a business language more understandable by the business experts involved in the modernization process. Database triggers are one of the artefacts in which business rules are hardcoded. The authors focus on this kind of artefact, having in mind to avoid the manual analysis of the triggers by a database expert and bringing it closer to business experts. To achieve this, they need to discover business rules that are hardcoded in triggers and translate them into vocabularies that are commonly used by business experts. In this chapter, the authors propose an ADM-based architecture to discover business rules and rewrite them into a language that can be understood by the business experts.

Providing Automated Holistic Process and Knowledge Assistance during Software Modernization

Software modernization remains a difficult, highly intellectual, labor-intensive, collaborative, and risky undertaking involving software engineers interacting in knowledge-centric processes. While many tools and several methodologies are available, current modernization projects lack adequate automated and systematic operational process support. This chapter provides an introduction to the topic of automated process and knowledge assistance for software modernization, giving background information on related work in this area, and then expounds on various problems. To address these, a holistic solution approach and guidance framework called the Context-Aware Software Engineering Environment Event-Driven Framework (CoSEEEK) is described, which can support developers on software modernization projects, addressing such aspects as process dynamicity, extrinsic processes, process exception handling, coordination, quality assurance, and knowledge provisioning. Subsequently, future research directions are discussed and a conclusion is drawn.