Showing papers on "Business Process Model and Notation published in 2022"

Engineering Trustable and Auditable Choreography-based Systems Using Blockchain

Abstract: A key challenge in engineering distributed systems consists in the integration into their development of a decentralised infrastructure allowing the system participants to trust each other. In this article, we face such a challenge by proposing a model-driven methodology and a related framework to support the engineering of trustable and auditable systems. The approach is based on choreography diagrams specified in the Business Process Model and Notation standard, describing the interactions that should occur among the distributed components of systems. We support the whole lifecycle of choreographies, from their modelling to their distributed execution and auditing. The framework, based on blockchain technology, is named ChorChain. More specifically, ChorChain takes as input a BPMN choreography model and automatically translates it into a Solidity smart contract. The smart contract permits us to enforce the interactions among the cooperating components as prescribed by the choreography model. By leveraging on the auditability of blockchain, ChorChain also supports the activity of auditors continuously. In such a way, ChorChain enables auditors to get some degree of assurance on what happens simultaneously with, or shortly after, information disclosure. We assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methodology and framework through experiments conducted on the Rinkeby Ethereum Testnet.

Towards a Comprehensive BPMN Extension for Modeling IoT-Aware Processes in Business Process Models

Abstract: Internet of Thing (IoT) devices enable the collection and exchange of data over the Internet, whereas Business Process Management (BPM) is concerned with the analysis, discovery, implementation, execution, monitoring, and evolution of business processes. By enriching BPM systems with IoT capabilities, data from the real world can be captured and utilized during process execution in order to improve online process monitoring and data-driven decision making. Furthermore, this integration fosters prescriptive process monitoring, e.g., by enabling IoT-driven process adaptions when deviations between the digital process and the one actually happening in the real world occur. As a prerequisite for exploiting these benefits, IoT-related aspects of business processes need to be modeled. To enable the use of sensors, actuators, and other IoT objects in combination with process models, we introduce a BPMN 2.0 extension with IoT-related artifacts and events. We provide a first evaluation of this extension by applying it in two case studies for modeling of IoT-aware processes.

Control flow versus communication: comparing two approaches to process modelling

Abstract: PurposeBusiness process modelling integrates and visualizes relevant information essential for managing day-to-day business operations. It plays a critical role in the design and execution of business transformations. Recognizing the role of process modelling, a large number of modelling languages, methods and techniques have been developed, each offering diverse advantages and having inherent limitations. Traditional and popular process modelling approaches focus on the exact specification of the control flow of business processes, whereas more recent approaches like Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) are focused on the communication between process participants. This study aims to provide comparative insights about these two approaches through their experimental application. This study does so by comparing Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN); a control flow approach, with S-BPM; a communication approach, with a specific focus on their suitability for novice modellers.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on an exploratory experiment that compares BPMN to S-BPM. Applying cognitive load theory, this study compares the experiences and outcomes of novice process modellers, assessing perceived ease of use, model quality (syntactic and semantic) and modelling efficiency (time to model) across the two approaches.FindingsStudy results show that S-BPM (a communication approach) led to significantly better user performances for process modelling than BPMN (a control flow approach). This study points to how a different modelling approach such as S-BPM could be either considered as an alternative or to complement the more popular control flow approach BPMN. This observation was especially relevant for modelling contexts where domain experts are novice process modellers.Originality/valueThis study provides the first empirical evidence that communication approaches like S-BPM could outperform modelling approaches which are control-flow based (i.e. BPMN), especially when being used by novice process modellers who hold the domain and process knowledge. This study uses this as a springboard to present important considerations for practice and guide future process modelling research.

Modeling, Executing and Monitoring IoT-Aware Processes with BPM Technology

Abstract: Enhancing business process management (BPM) with IoT capabilities offers promising perspectives for bridging the gap between digital processes and physical world. Although there exist many approaches for modeling IoT-aware processes, only few of them enable executing and monitoring these processes. This paper gives insights into our approach to model, execute and monitor IoT-aware processes by extending the Business Process Model and Notation 2.0 (BPMN 2.0) with IoT-specific artifacts and events. A particular focus of this paper is put on the engine enabling the execution and monitoring of IoT-aware processes. It has been fully implemented and validated for various IoT-aware processes. Due to the web-based access to the execution engine and loosely coupling IoT services, the approach may be applied in a wide variety of application domains.

Model to Program and Blockchain Approaches for Business Processes and Workflows in Finance

Abstract: Business process modeling and verification have become an essential way to control and assure organizational evolution. We overview the opportunities for the application of blockchain in Business Process Management and Modeling in Finance and we focus on in-depth analysis of claim process in insurance as a use case. We investigate the utilization of blockchain technology for model checking of Workflow, Business Processes to ensure consistency, integrity, and security in a dynamically changing business environment. We create a UML profile for the blockchain, then we combine it with a UML activity diagram followed by a verification using Petri nets to guarantee a distributed computing system and scalable with mutable data. Our paper creates a unified picture of the approaches towards business processes modeling used in the financial industry organized around the set of premises intending to develop a future research agenda for blockchain business process modeling, specifically for the financial industry domain.

Standards‐based modeling and deployment of serverless function orchestrations using BPMN and TOSCA

Abstract: Function‐as‐a‐Service (FaaS) is a cloud service model enabling to implement serverless applications for a variety of use cases. These range from scheduled calls of single functions to complex function orchestrations executed using orchestration services such as AWS step functions. However, since the available function orchestration technologies vary in functionalities, supported modeling languages, and APIs, modeling such function orchestrations and their deployment require significant technology‐specific expertise. Moreover, the resulting models are typically not portable due to provider‐ and technology‐specific details, and major efforts are required when exchanging an orchestrator or provider due to such lock‐ins. To tackle this issue, we introduce a vendor‐ and technology‐agnostic method for the modeling and deployment of serverless function orchestrations, which relies on the business process model and notation (BPMN) and topology and orchestration specification for cloud applications (TOSCA) standards for modeling function orchestrations and their deployment, respectively. We also present a toolchain for modeling serverless function orchestrations in BPMN, generating proprietary models supported by different function orchestration technologies from BPMN models, specifying their actual deployment in TOSCA, and then enacting such deployment. Finally, we illustrate a case study applying our method and toolchain in practice.

Modeling, Executing and Monitoring IoT-Driven Business Rules with BPMN and DMN: Current Support and Challenges

Abstract: The involvement of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Business Process Management (BPM) solutions is continuously increasing. While BPM enables the modeling, implementation, execution, monitoring, and analysis of business processes, IoT fosters the collection and exchange of data over the Internet. By enriching BPM solutions with real-world IoT data both process automation and process monitoring can be improved. Furthermore, IoT data can be utilized during process execution to realize IoT-driven business rules that consider the state of the physical environment. The aggregation of low-level IoT data into process-relevant, high-level IoT data is a paramount step towards IoT-driven business processes and business rules respectively. In this context, Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) and Decision Model and Notation (DMN) provide support to model, execute, and monitor IoT-driven business rules, but some challenges remain. This paper derives the challenges that emerge when modeling, executing, and monitoring IoT-driven business rules using BPMN 2.0 and DMN standards.

Data Warehousing Process Modeling from Classical Approaches to New Trends: Main Features and Comparisons

Abstract: The extract, transform, and load (ETL) process is at the core of data warehousing architectures. As such, the success of data warehouse (DW) projects is essentially based on the proper modeling of the ETL process. As there is no standard model for the representation and design of this process, several researchers have made efforts to propose modeling methods based on different formalisms, such as unified modeling language (UML), ontology, model-driven architecture (MDA), model-driven development (MDD), and graphical flow, which includes business process model notation (BPMN), colored Petri nets (CPN), Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL), CommonCube, entity modeling diagram (EMD), and so on. With the emergence of Big Data, despite the multitude of relevant approaches proposed for modeling the ETL process in classical environments, part of the community has been motivated to provide new data warehousing methods that support Big Data specifications. In this paper, we present a summary of relevant works related to the modeling of data warehousing approaches, from classical ETL processes to ELT design approaches. A systematic literature review is conducted and a detailed set of comparison criteria are defined in order to allow the reader to better understand the evolution of these processes. Our study paints a complete picture of ETL modeling approaches, from their advent to the era of Big Data, while comparing their main characteristics. This study allows for the identification of the main challenges and issues related to the design of Big Data warehousing systems, mainly involving the lack of a generic design model for data collection, storage, processing, querying, and analysis.

Semantic modeling and analysis of complex data-aware processes and their executions

Abstract: Enriching business processes with the semantic knowledge of an ontology is recognized as a fundamental need in business process management in order to obtain better models and perform more expressive execution analyses. In our work, we model semantically annotated business processes in an OWL knowledge base formalizing the structure of business processes together with the associated business domain. We extend previous work in three substantial manners: first, we show how to exploit the OWL knowledge base to represent the complex data artifacts manipulated by a business process (together with the process itself); second, we show how execution traces can be added into the OWL knowledge base to perform a process execution analysis involving knowledge about both the structure and the domain of a business process; third, we show how to support the semantic modeling and analysis of complex data-aware business processes and their executions. In detail, we illustrate how we extended the MoKi tool for enabling the collaborative modeling of semantically annotated complex data-aware processes, and for supporting their execution analysis via semantic-based reasoning techniques capable of scaling to non-trivial amounts of data while maintaining their advantages. The feasibility and usefulness of the proposed conceptual framework and tool support is shown through a real use case and an experimental evaluation.

Application of Business Process Semantic Annotation Techniques to Perform Pattern Recognition Activities Applied to the Generalized Civic Access

Abstract: The digital transformation plays a strategic role in simplifying relations with citizens and businesses and in the growth of the community and the economy. Through the strengthening of digital infrastructures, the creation of websites, online services and the use of interoperable data platforms, the Public Administration makes its information assets available to its users, innovative, simple and accessible digital services to reduce waiting times and counter work, costs and bureaucratic burdens, and guarantees private individuals services that can be used directly from their smartphones or PCs. From all this, it can be seen that there is a need for redesigning processes or creating new ones to ensure that a public service responds to the specific needs of different citizens. This paper proposes a semantic approach for BPMN annotation using domain ontologies. Such annotation aims to provide the BPMN with the expressiveness necessary to allow the discovery of specific process patterns. The case study analyzed is Generalized Civic Access - ACG. A BPMN is proposed that describes a process of request by a citizen for a document held in an office of the Italian public administration and an ontology that describes the Profile of the Italian application for access conditions.

Probabilistic Model Checking of BPMN Processes at Runtime

Abstract: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a standard business process modelling language that allows users to describe a set of structured tasks, which results in a service or product. Before running a BPMN process, the user often has no clear idea of the probability of executing some task or specific combination of tasks. This is, however, of prime importance for adjusting resources associated with tasks and thus optimising costs. In this paper, we define an approach to perform probabilistic model checking of BPMN models at runtime. To do so, we first transform the BPMN model into a Labelled Transition System (LTS). Then, by analysing the execution traces obtained when running multiple instances of the process, we can compute the probability of executing each transition in the LTS model, and thus generate a Probabilistic Transition System (PTS). Finally, we perform probabilistic model checking for verifying that the PTS model satisfies a given probabilistic property. This verification loop is applied periodically to update the results according to the execution of the process instances. All these steps are implemented in a tool chain, which was applied successfully to several realistic BPMN processes.

A Context and Augmented Reality BPMN and BPMS Extension for Industrial Internet of Things Processes

Abstract: In the context of Industry 4.0, smart factories enable a new level of highly individualized and very efficient production, driven by highly automated processes and connected Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices. Yet the IIoT process context, crucial for operational process enactment, cannot be readily represented in processes as currently modeled. Despite automation progress, manual tasks performed by humans (such as maintenance) remain, and while complicated tasks can be supported by Augmented Reality (AR) devices, they remain insufficiently integrated into global production processes. To seamlessly integrate process automation, IIoT context, and AR, this paper contributes BPMN-CARX, a Context and Augmented Reality eXtension (CARX) for BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) and the CARX Framework, which enables AR and IIoT context integration with existing Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs). An Industry 4.0 case study demonstrates its feasibility and applicability.

Obtaining Semi-Formal Models from Qualitative Data: From Interviews Into BPMN Models in User-Centered Design Processes

Abstract: Abstract Gathering qualitative user data in a user-centered design process is one of the very early steps to create interactive systems. However, generating structured models from qualitative data towards descriptions that can be used for the implementation of interactive systems and prototypes raises various challenges, such as a strong influence of the modeler's knowledge and their interpretation of the gathered qualitative data. Introducing the modeler's bias may result in a system implementation which does not fully represent the information provided in the original qualitative data, generating an unwanted gap between what the user needs and what the system provides. To address this challenge, in this paper we present a structured and manual transformation method, which enables a modeler to create BPMN models from interview data by reducing the modeler's individual influence on the resulting BPMN model. We evaluate this approach in the context of the implementation of persuasive systems, which should support changing unwanted work-related habits. Therefore, we conducted unstructured interviews with office workers, thinking aloud interviews, in which we asked office workers to imagine a situation where they showed an unwanted work-related habit and to describe this habit together with an alternative behavior. In a quantitative experimental study, we then asked study participants to create BPMN models either with or without our new transformation method. Our analyses showed that when using our method, different participants created very similar BPMN models of the habits, even with little training. We conclude that the major contribution of our work is that the presented method can be applied to the creation of structured models from unstructured interview data. This method that makes use of rich interview data is suitable for the design and implementation of interactive systems.

A Knowledge-Driven Business Process Analysis Methodology

Abstract: AbstractBusiness Process Analysis (BPA) is a strategic activity, necessary for enterprises to model their business operations, especially in the context of information system development. This paper proposes a knowledge framework, referred to as BPA Canvas, primarily conceived to guide business people in building a BPA knowledge base. The resulting knowledge base is organized into eight sections where only the last one, the BPA ontology, requires specialist competences.KeywordsInformation systemBusiness process analysisBusiness model canvasKnowledge representationOntology

Modeling Boundary-Spanning Business Processes in Industry 4.0: Incorporating Risk-Based Design

Abstract: AbstractIndustry 4.0 brings new challenges to the digitalization and decentralization of business processes. This paper contributes with a Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) Extension that addresses the inter-organizational nature of the fourth industrial revolution and the need to address risk-by-design since the early stages of industrial collaboration. The proposal results from two design science research cycles. The extension named IOBP 4.0 provides an integrated description of (1) private/shared process elements, (2) local/distributed manufacturing stages, (3) technology incorporation strategy in the production network, and (4) risk situations. IOBP 4.0 can be useful for companies certified by the ISO 9001 quality standard that need to disclose their processes and third-party collaborations, following a risk-based approach. Moreover, incorporating risk-based process design in Industry 4.0 may improve business process resilience in manufacturing networks.KeywordsIndustry 4.0Inter-organizational business processRisk-based thinkingBPMNExtensionBusiness process management

BPMN pra GERAL: a framework to translate BPMN to a citizen language

Abstract: PurposeThis research work aims to expose the detailed construction of a framework for translation between Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) and a citizen process language, named GERAL, so that BPMN and modeling non-experts can publicize their procedural information in an understandable and quality manner. The artifact is built in detail through epistemological rigor derived from empirical evidence and best practices related to the topic of understanding business processes, both based on well-established literature on the subject.Design/methodology/approachIn the case of research involving the construction of an artifact, the design science research (DSR) methodology was used to conduct engineering with an emphasis on the scientific method; for evaluation, the authors used the case study methodology. Data collection is based on documentation analysis, questionnaire, interview and observation. The authors also use references associating DSR with case studies, for greater contextual rigor of the research.FindingsThis work presents findings and contributions, both new and also reinforcing others already present (1) use of the principles of Citizen/Plain Language improve instructional communication related to process modeling; (2) the citizen process language GERAL itself; (3) the BPMN pra GERAL guide for process translation; (4) qualitative findings from the observation of the use of the artifact in a real case, with non-experts and (5) a well-founded instance of building a notation with an emphasis on understanding, which can be replicated in other cases.Research limitations/implicationsFuture perspectives for conducting the research are presented. As a qualitative research instantiated involving a subjective construct, such as understanding, generalization is partially limited and should be interpreted as a transferability criterion. The evaluation involved participants with complete higher education and graduates, even though from areas not dedicated to process modeling or BPMN, being non-experts. The main indicator was understood with limitations in other aspects, such as formal semantics and precise executability.Practical implicationsThe formative research showed improvements to the base artifact, the framework first version, which will consequently be reflected in the guide. The GERAL and the guide were very well received, and all participants were able to translate the proposed model effectively, despite small slips in second notation. The guide improved the participants' perception of transparency and understanding of business processes, making them aware of the benefits of this topic.Social implicationsThe output of the built and researched artifact are understandable models by non-experts in technical languages of business processes. It is an alternative for BPMN models and dubious/long texts. Almost unexpectedly, the guide and its principles awaken an appreciation of understandable procedural communication, that is, it builds an intrinsic motivation in the user of the importance of publicizing his processes and assists in compliance with current data disclosure laws. It also builds informational democratic values of better participation and data absorption, from translators to the target audience.Originality/valueIt presents a qualitative approach to deal with business process modeling and understanding; substantiates in detail, using well-established bases in the literature, the construction of a solution aimed at understanding business processes; offers a translation guide for non-experts and experts interested in disclosing and instructing their procedural information modeled in BPMN.

A visual approach for identification and annotation of business process elements in process descriptions

Abstract: Business process management (BPM) has been proven to provide several benefits for organizations (e.g., efficiency, agility, governance). However, the effort required for adopting a process-centered approach can be a challenge in different aspects, including financial concerns, organizational changes and time consumption. To achieve this goal, many companies use different approaches, such as document analysis, to be able to discover and understand their business processes. In light of this, in this paper, we propose a user-interactive visual approach to support the process comprehension by identifying and annotating core BPMN 2.0 elements in process descriptions. Specifically, our approach is able to detect sequences of words that indicate the presence of a process element, create a consistent data structure, and expose it as a consumable web service. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a survey experiment, showing promising results in every category evaluated, for which 88% of the users indicated positive results concerning the usefulness of the approach to assist the process modeling phase. Additionally, a process modeling case study shows a designed process model with a precision of 77% of process elements in comparison to its original process model.