Process modeling

About: Process modeling is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11639 publications have been published within this topic receiving 223996 citations. The topic is also known as: process simulation.

Process modeling in-the-large with SLANG

Abstract: The authors discuss some features provided by the SPADE environment to support the definition, analysis, and enactment of large and evolving software process models. In particular, they introduce the concept of activity, which allows the process designer to create and hierarchically aggregate fragments of process specifications. They then provide an execution model for activities and propose different alternatives for activity execution. They discuss the impact that the activity concept has on other important problems, such as incremental definition and evolution of large process models. >

Applying Patterns during Business Process Modeling

Abstract: Although the business process community has put a major emphasis on patterns, notably the famous workflow patterns, only limited support for using patterns in today's business process modeling tools can be found. While the basic workflow patterns for control flow are available in almost every business process modeling tool, there is no support for the user in correctly applying these simple patterns leading to many incorrectly modeled business processes. Only limited support for pattern compounds can be found in some tools, there is no active support for selecting patterns that are applicable in some user-determined context, tools do not give feedback to the user if applying a pattern can lead to a modeling error, nor do they trace the sequence of applied patterns during the editing process. In this paper, we describe an extension of a business process modeling tool with patterns to provide these capabilities. We distinguish three scenarios of pattern application and discuss a set of pattern compounds that are based on the basic workflow patterns for control flow. We present an approach where business users receive help in understanding the context and consequences of applying a pattern.

A Survey of Formal Verification for Business Process Modeling

Abstract: Information systems have to respond well to the changing business environment. Thus, they must have architecture which withstands the change. To design such systems, business process modeling is effective, however, the models include often abstractness and arbitrariness. Therefore, there have been efforts that validate rigorousness of the models. They have defined semantics of the models and applied various logics and formal methods to verification of the rigorousness. This paper focuses on formal verification of the models and surveys the efforts. We also discuss the prospect of the solutions. The establishment of the verification will be surely helpful toward solving the problems on business process reengineering, business process management, service-oriented architecture, and so on.

Understanding the occurrence of errors in process models based on metrics

Abstract: Business process models play an important role for the management, design, and improvement of process organizations and process-aware information systems. Despite the extensive application of process modeling in practice, there are hardly empirical results available on quality aspects of process models. This paper aims to advance the understanding of this matter by analyzing the connection between formal errors (such as deadlocks) and a set of metrics that capture various structural and behavioral aspects of a process model. In particular, we discuss the theoretical connection between errors and metrics, and provide a comprehensive validation based on an extensive sample of EPC process models from practice. Furthermore, we investigate the capability of the metrics to predict errors in a second independent sample of models. The high explanatory power of the metrics has considerable consequences for the design of future modeling guidelines and modeling tools.