Towards a Universal Business Process Model Repository for Process Model Reuse

Mturi Elias Supervisor: Paul Johannesson

Department of Computer and Systems Science (DSV),

Stockholm University (SU), Sweden

Agenda1. Background and Motivation

2. Research Problem and Questions

3. Research Objectives

4. Research Process

5. Research Contribution

6. Conclusion and Future Research Directions

Background and Motivation Increased adoption of BPM – increased economic pressure One of the most important aspects of BPM is business

process modeling Benefits of modeling business processes:

process improvement, understanding, communication, aligning Business and IT, model-driven execution of processes, performance measurement, process analysis and simulation, knowledge management, change management

Besides these benefits, modeling is a complex, time consuming and error prone task

Reuse of process models can reduce the cost, complexity and time

Background and Motivation One of the proven approach for supporting reuse is a

process models repository The process model repository offers a space for

storing, maintaining and changing process knowledge for future reuse.

Research Problem and Questions Existing process model repositories have not yet succeeded in

being adopted to support process model reuse. Reasons includes

1. Most of existing repositories are proprietary—they are not publicly open

2. It is difficult to search and navigate across repositories because they follow different business and process classification schemes.

3. The process models are not goal related, making it difficult to get an understanding of what business goals that are realized by a certain process model

4. Existing repositories have limited scope—they lack completeness

Research Problem and Questions How should a process model repository be designed

in order to support reuse of process models? More specifically:

RQ1. What requirements should process model repository possess in order to increase the probability of process model reuse?

RQ2. What kind of information is required for describing process models that should be included in the repository structure to improve (1) searching process models (2) navigation of a process model repository, and (3) understandability of process models

RQ3. How can process models from different modeling notations be stored in a process model repository?

Research Objectives The main objective of this thesis is, therefore, to design

the architecture of a universal process model repository Specific Objectives:1. To elicit the requirements for a process model repository

2. To develop a model of business process metadata

3. To develop a common format (language independent) of process description

Research Process

Research Process (adopted from (Vaishnavi and Kuechler 2007))

Research Contribution 1. Requirements for a process model repository (paper 1)

2. A Business Process Metadata Model (BPMM) (paper 2)

3. A generic data model of a common format of process description (paper 3)

The Requirements for the UPR Elicited preliminary requirements (defined as

propositions) -- an exploratory study Then validated the propositions -- an empirical study

1. The repository should be able to store process models in at least one process modeling language

2. The repository should allow storing process models regardless of their domain

3. Process models in the repository should be represented in both graphical and textual form

5. Business process should be represented by several process models having different levels of detail

The Requirements for the UPR (2)5. The repository should store both business and process

models.

6. The repository should allow maintaining multiple variants of a process model.

7. Process model should be annotated with information that can facilitate searching, navigating and interpreting process models

8. Process models in the repository should be categorized based on different classification schemes to facilitate navigation

A Business Process Metadata Model (BPMM) The BPMM has been developed based on a systematic

approach, which consists of three phases,

Phase 1: Identification of process related concepts – from business frameworks, existing process

classification schemes, organizations theory, business process perspectives

Phase 2: Validation of the concepts – Empirical Study

Phase 3: The model construction – defining metadata element and their relationship

A Business Process Metadata Model (BPMM)

Excha nge Conversion

Suppo rt iveCore

Procure ment Tech. Development HRM

Firm Inf ra st ru cture

Inbound Log.

Operatio n

Outbound Log.

Marke ting&Sales

Service

Strategic

Tactical

Infomation

Financia l

Right

Service

Good

Operational

Planning

Identification Negotiation Actualization

Po st -Actual izat ion

PartOf/Include Managed Gen-Spec

has relationship

Hard Goal

Soft Goal

applies To

Industry

Channel Geopo li ti ca l Constraint

Customer Supplier Employee Investor/CreditorOrg. Unit

involved

is classified By Process Type

Process Area

ResourcePro cess Rel atio nship

Goal

Process Phase

applies To

Process Level

Business Context

Business Process

0..n1..n 0..n1..nis Of Type

1..n

1..n

1..n

1..n

1..n

1

1..n

1

is consumed/produced By

0..n

1..n

0..n

1..n1..n1..n 1..n1..n

has Goal

0..n

0..n

0..n

0..n is classified By

1..n

1..n

1..n

1..n

is performed At

Actor

1..n

1..n

1..n

1..n

BPMM Evaluation: Results and Discussion

0102030405060708090

100

ConsistsencyCorrectness

BPMM Evaluation: Results and Discussion Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU). PEOU1: The annotation definitions are clear and helpful for

annotation (>52%). PEOU2: It was easy to annotate the business processes (>

58%)

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

PEOU1

PEOU2

Strongly DisagreeDisagreeNot SureAgreeStrongly Agree

A Common Format of a Process Description Consists - partial data model & mapping specification

Step 1: Defined “process description” - based on the definition of process model and a business process

Step 2: Generated a generic metamodel - to provide concrete elements of a business processes

Step 3: Matched the generic metamodel to the process description (in Step 1) to form a generic process description that is further used to develop the partial data model

Step 4: Defined a mapping specification -- the elements of generic metamodel are matched to the elements of modeling languages

A Common Format of Process Description (2)

ProcessID (PK)

ProcessName

VersionID

Language

Process

ActivityID (FK)

OperatorID (FK)

OperatorName

ConnectionName

RelationDirection

Activity_Operator

OperatorID (PK)

OperatorType

Operator

EventID (PK)

EventType

Event

ActivityID (PK)

ActivityName

ProcessID (FK)

RelatedActivityID

RelationDirection

Activity

ActivityID (PK)

ParticipantID (PK)

ConnectionName

RelationDirection

ActivityParticipant

ConnectionID (PK)

ConnectionType

Connection

ActivityID (PK)

ResourceID (PK)

ResourceName

ConnectionName

ResourceActivityID (FK)

EventID (FK)

EventName

ConnectionName

RelationDirection

Activity_Event

ActivityID (FK)

ConnectionID (FK)

ConnectionName

Activity_ConnectionMappingID

BPMNElement

BPMNConstruct

YAWLElement

YAWLConstruct

….

Mapping_Spec

SubProcessID (PK)

ProcessID (FK)

ActivityID (FK)

SubProcess

ParticipantID (PK)

ParticipantName

Participant

ResourceID (PK)

ResourceName

Resource

Conclusion In this research we propose a UPR The research objectives were to:

elicit requirements for UPR Develop a model of business process metadata A common format of process description

The URP is an important step towards reuse of process models in order to reduce the cost of modeling business processes from scratch.

This entails challenges, but is relevant for practice, and serves as an exciting area for research.

Future Research Directions1. Defining a pattern-based method for goal annotation

of business process models in a repository

2. Development of a Business Process Metadata Annotation Tool for a Process Model Repository

3. Empirical evaluation of the Business Process Metadata Model

Thank You

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