Business Process Model and Notation

About: Business Process Model and Notation is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 9038 publications have been published within this topic receiving 190712 citations. The topic is also known as: Business Process Modeling Notation & BPMN.

Business process technology for the enterprise

Abstract: A system, method and computer program that enables an application designer to automate the process of software development and develop business applications by modeling the constituent business process models is provided. After identifying the business requirements in terms of the underlying business processes, the same are modeled visually using the inter-relationships across processes. The modeling activity is accomplished by using the visual modeling environment in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention, which, among other tools comprises a set of abstract business components. Each business process is viewed as a collection of business tasks. Each business task is modeled as an instance of an abstract business component. The instance acquires process-specific context with process-specific parameters input by the application designer. Such tasks are then connected together as required for the business process. A runtime execution module of the system executes these business processes at the user's request.

A three-level framework for process and data management of complex e-services

Abstract: Service outsourcing is the business paradigm in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers can be selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service brokering and cross-organizational process enactment and, hence, has to conform to market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intra-organizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization for process and data management. In this paper, we present a three-level process and data specification framework for dynamic contract-based outsourcing of complex services. We focus on services with an externally visible control flow, as opposed to simple, black-box web services. The framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approach is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We discuss an abstract architecture for dynamic service outsourcing based on the three-level framework. We show how the framework and architecture can be placed in the context of existing infrastructures for cross-organizational process support. As service outsourcing is used more and more for core business processes requiring reliable execution, we pay special attention to transaction management.

The effects of content presentation format and user characteristics on novice developers' understanding of process models

Abstract: Process models are used by information professionals to convey semantics about the business operations in a real world domain intended to be supported by an information system. The understandability of these models is vital to them being used for information systems development. In this paper, we examine two factors that we predict will influence the understanding of a business process that novice developers obtain from a corresponding process model: the content presentation form chosen to articulate the business domain, and the user characteristics of the novice developers working with the model. Our experimental study provides evidence that novice developers obtain similar levels of understanding when confronted with an unfamiliar or a familiar process model. However, previous modeling experience, the use of English as a second language, and previous work experience in BPM are important influencing factors of model understanding. Our findings suggest that education and research in process modeling should increase the focus on human factors and how they relate to content and content presentation formats for different modeling tasks. We discuss implications for practice and research.

Realizing business processes with ECA rules: benefits, challenges, limits

Abstract: Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules offer a flexible, adaptive, and modular approach to realizing business processes. This article discusses the use of ECA rules for describing business processes in an executable manner. It investigates the benefits one hopes to derive from using ECA rules and presents the challenges in realizing business processes. These constitute a list of requirements for an (executable) business process description language, and we take them as a basis to investigate suitability of the concrete ECA rule language XChange in realizing a business process from the EU-Rent Case Study.