extending feature models to express variability in business process models

IntroductionBPFM Supporting Business Process Variability

Evaluation in Public Administration DomainConclusions and Future Works

Extending Feature Models to Express Variabilityin Business Process Models

R. Cognini, F. Corradini, A. Polini, B. Re

University of Camerino

CAiSE-2015 Workshop on Enterprise ModelingStockholm, June 8th, 2015

R. Cognini, F. Corradini, A. Polini, B. Re Variability Modelling in BP



Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 BPFM Supporting Business Process Variability

3 Evaluation in Public Administration Domain

4 Conclusions and Future Works




Business Process Flexibility

Flexibility refers to the capability of defining and supporting BusinessProcesses able to accommodate to changes in the environment (internal andexternal) in which they operate

Taxonomies

Variability

Adaptation

Looseness

Evolution

Changes perspectives

Functional

Behavioral

Organization

Information

Temporal

Operational

Reichert, Manfred, and Barbara Weber. Enabling flexibility in process-aware information systems: challenges,methods, technologies. Springer, 2012.




Systematic Literature Review on BP Flexibility

A Systematic Literature Review wasconducted on the topic of BPFlexibility

Some research directions - that seemto deserve further attention by thecommunity - were highlighted

The guidelines suggested byKitchenham were followed

Cognini, R., Corradini, F., Gnesi, S., Polini, A., and Re, B. Research challenges in business process adaptability. InProceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (pp. 1049-1054). ACM. Gyeongju(Korea), 24 - 28 March 2014.




Planning and Conducting the Review

Research Questions

RQ1. What raises the need forBusiness Process flexibility?

RQ2. Which phases of the BusinessProcess Management lifecycle support for flexibility isrequired?

RQ3. Which are the instruments(languages and mechanisms)used to express and supportBusiness Process flexibility?

RQ4. Are there any realexperiences of BusinessProcess flexibility?




Results from the SLR

BPs have to be flexible mainlydue to external reason andexception (RQ1.)

Flexible BPM systems worksmainly on Design/Modeling andExecution phases of BPM lifecycle (RQ2.)

There is not a standard languagefor flexible BP (RQ3.1)

Many approach for flexible BP areproposed in literature (RQ3.2)

There is a lack of real experiences(RQ4.)

Open Challenges

Modeling languages forBusiness Processes Variability

Business Processes RunningInstances Adaptation

Verification of Flexible BusinessProcesses

Business Processes Evolution




BP Variability Approaches

Variability is the ability of derivingdifferent Business Process variantsfrom a Configurable ProcessModel at design-time

Several Business Process variabilityapproaches are available in thelitterature among the others we referto C-iEPC, vBPMN and PROVOP

C. Ayora et al., VIVACE: A framework for the systematic evaluation of variability support in process-awareinformation systems, Inform. Softw. Technol. (2014).




Configurable integrated EPC

Customization is achieved byrestriction

Customizes control flow, resources andobject perspective

Uses an extension of EPC

Configurable Nodes include functions,data, roles and connectors

La Rosa, Marcello, et al. ”Configurable multi-perspective business process models.” Information Systems 36.2(2011): 313-340.




vBPMN

Customization is achieved byrestriction and extension

Customizes only control flowperspective Extension of BPMN 2.0

Applies adaptation, exception handlingand time patterns

Customization is done by means ofpatterns applied according toadaptation rules in adaptive segments

Dhring, Markus, and Birgit Zimmermann. ”vBPMN: event-aware workflow variants by weaving BPMN2 andbusiness rules.” Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2011.332-341.




PROVOP

Customization is achieved byrestriction and extension

Customizes control flow, resource andobject perspective

Language-independent

Applies change operations (INSERT,DELETE, MOVE and MODIFY)

Customization is done by means ofoperations applied according tocontext rules in segments boundedwith adjustment points

Hallerbach, Alena, Thomas Bauer, and Manfred Reichert. ”Capturing variability in business process models: theProvop approach.” Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice 22.67 (2010): 519-546.




Table of Contents

1 Introduction







The Business Process Feature Model (BPFM) Approach

Explicitly represent behavioral perspective is not always possible!

Organizations operating in a give sector can be different in terms of organizationstructure even if they behave similar providing services sharing the same goal

A novel modeling approach to support flexibility of Business Processes was proposed

The approach permits to deal with large collections of Business Processes variantsthanks to the integration of Business Process and Feature Model notations




Feature Modeling

Feature Model (FM) is an

approach emerged in the context of

SPL in order to support the

development of a variety of products

from a common platform

K. Kang, S. G. Cohen, J. A. Hess, W. E. Novak, and A. S. Peterson. Feature-oriented domain analysis feasibilitystudy. Technical report, DTIC Doc., 1990.




Business Process Model and Notation 2.0: Basic Elements




BPFM Notation

In BPFM features represent the activities(sub-processes and task) characterizing aBP and constraints specify if activitieshave to be inserted in a BP variants andif activities have to or can be executed

Information concerning the input andoutput data object are included, they arerelated to an activity




Mapping BPFM Activities to BPMN




Mandatory Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Optional Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Domain Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Special Case Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Inclusive Constraints Mapping to BPMN




One Optional Constraints Mapping to BPMN




One Selection Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Xor Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Xor Selection Constraints Mapping to BPMN




Data Objects in BPFM

BPFM manages all types of BPMN 2.0 data objects, includingdata object states, with the same modelling notation





BPFM introduces the notion of composite and part of dataobjects





The state of a composed Data Object is not deduced by thestates of the single parts




Data Mapping to BPMN




BPFM Tool Based on ADOxx




Table of Contents

1 Introduction







Application Domain

Public Administrations engage in complex interactions in order to provide services tocitizens and companies

Public Service related activities can be modelled using notation and tools based onBusiness Process abstractions

Even if PAs share the same goal each of them can have different organizationalstructure depending on the PA self-organization capability

In PA law partially defines the activities to be performed, their temporal orderand the needed data-objects (global specification)

Each PA autonomy reacts according to internally requirements (localimplementation), BPs are differentlly implemented




Sportello Unico Attivita Produttive (SUAP)

SUAP refers to the activities that the Italian PAs have to put in place in order topermit to entrepreneurs to set up a new company

SUAP office offers more than 110 BP, they are different considering (i) the requesttarget so its important to keep in use a relevant and universal classification foreconomic activities types and (ii) the geographical location

SCIA Commerciale (Business Start-up Certified Notification)

SCIA Edilizia (Building Start-up Certified Notification)

Titolo Unico (Standard request to start business activity)

Variante Urbanistica (Zoning variances)

SUAP office can be placed inside the municipality or can be aggregated and offered bya consortium of municipalities




SUAP - Regularity Framework

European Directive 2006/123/CE of the European Parliament and of thecouncil of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market

Decree-Law n. 112/2008 article 38 converted into Law n. 133/2008 hasexpanded the scope for participation of Italian Municipalities to the fightagainst tax evasion.

Decree-Law n. 82/2005 e s.m.i. introducing the Code of DigitalAdministration. Decree of the President of the Republic (DPR) n.160/2010 article 7 introducing detail regarding to the SUAP.

...




SUAP - BPFM Model Design




SUAP - BPFM Configuration




SUAP - BP Fragments Derivation




SUAP - BP Variant Design




Table of Contents

1 Introduction







Conclusions and Future Works

BP variability is a need for complex organizations such as PublicAdministrations

Starting from a deep analysis of the literature a novel notation andapproach were defined considering variability impact on functional, behavioraland information perspectives

A modeling environment was also designed to support variable BusinessProcesses modeling

There are many items in the future work list, among the others

Continue experiments and validation

The approach does not provide mechanisms to verify that derived BPvariants are corrects

Adopt the approach to drive run-time adaptation, in particular exploringthe use of fragments




Thank you!

Barbara [email protected]


extending feature models to express variability in business process models

Engineering

business process models

business process adaptability

variability modelling

express variability

introduction bpfm

business processes able

future works table of

topic of bp flexibility

￼￼extending feature models to express variability in business process models

extending feature models to express variability in business process models