Tracing Links Between Business Processes and Software Systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lerina Aversano ◽  
Maria Tortorella
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Software Maintenance ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Software System ◽  
Business Process Models

The traceability links existing between a business process and the supporting software systems s is a critical concern for the organizations, as it directly affects their performance. Methodologies and tools are needed for detecting these kinds of relationships and keeping an evidence of the existing connections. This paper proposes an approach for modelling a business processes evidencing the links existing between their activities and the components of the supporting software systems. The approach described in this paper is concerned with the use of information retrieval techniques to software maintenance and, in particular, to the problem of recovering traceability links between the business process models and the components of the supporting software system. An information retrieval approach is introduced based on two processing phases including syntactic and semantic analysis. The application of the approach is explored through a case study.

An Approach for Recovering the Connections between Business Process and Software System

2012 ◽  
pp. 250-267
Author(s):  
Lerina Aversano ◽  
Fiammetta Marulli ◽  
Maria Tortorella
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Software Maintenance ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Software Evolution ◽  
Software System ◽  
Maintenance Activities ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship existing between a business process and the supporting software system is a critical concern for organizations, as it directly affects their performance. The knowledge regarding this relationship plays an important role in the software evolution process, as it helps to identify the software components involved by a software change request. The research described in this chapter concerns the use of information retrieval techniques in the software maintenance activities. In particular, the chapter addresses the problem of recovering traceability links between the entities of the business process model and components of the supporting software system. Therefore, an information retrieval approach is proposed based on two processing phases including syntactic and semantic analysis. The usefulness of the approach is discussed through a case study.

ALBIS

2013 ◽  
pp. 188-206
Author(s):  
Lerina Aversano ◽  
Carmine Grasso ◽  
Maria Tortorella
Keyword(s):  
Information Retrieval ◽  
Software Maintenance ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Process Performance ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Support Software

The evaluation of the alignment level existing between a business process and the supporting software systems is a critical concern for an organization, as the higher the alignment level is, the better the process performance is. Monitoring the alignment implies the characterization of all the items it involves and definition of measures for evaluating it. This is a complex task, and the availability of automatic tools for supporting evaluation and evolution activities may be precious. This chapter presents the ALBIS Environment (Aligning Business Processes and Information Systems), designed to support software maintenance tasks. In particular, the proposed environment allows the modeling and tracing between business and software entities and the measurement of their alignment degree. An information retrieval approach is embedded in ALBIS based on two processing phases including syntactic and semantic analysis. The usefulness of the environment is discussed through two case studies.

A Method for Eliciting Goals for Business Process Models based on Non-Functional Requirements Catalogues

2013 ◽  
pp. 226-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Modeling ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Business Process Modeling ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Goal Models

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.

A Method for Eliciting Goals for Business Process Models based on Non-Functional Requirements Catalogues

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evellin Cardoso ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida ◽  
Renata S. S. Guizzardi ◽  
Giancarlo Guizzardi
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Modeling ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Business Process Modeling ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Goal Models

While traditional approaches in business process modeling tend to focus on “how” the business processes are performed (adopting a behavioral description in which business processes are described in terms of procedural aspects), in goal-oriented business process modeling, the proposals strive to extend traditional business process methodologies by providing a dimension of intentionality to business processes. One of the key difficulties in enabling one to model goal-oriented processes concerns the identification or elicitation of goals. This paper reports on a case study conducted in a Brazilian hospital, which obtained several goal models represented in i*/Tropos, each of which correspond to a business process also modeled in the scope of the study. NFR catalogues were helpful in goal elicitation, uncovering goals that did not come up during previous interviews prior to these catalogues’ use.

scholarly journals Business processes exceptions in relation to operational performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 908-922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Remco Dijkman ◽  
Oktay Turetken ◽  
Geoffrey Robert van IJzendoorn ◽  
Meint de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Operational Performance ◽  
Normal Flow ◽  
Throughput Time ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Business process models describe the way of working in an organization. Typically, business process models distinguish between the normal flow of work and exceptions to that normal flow. However, they often present an idealized view. This means that unexpected exceptions – exceptions that are not modeled in the business process model – can also occur in practice. This has an effect on the efficiency of the organization, because information systems are not developed to handle unexpected exceptions. The purpose of this paper is to study the relation between the occurrence of exceptions and operational performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper does this by analyzing the execution logs of business processes from five organizations, classifying execution paths as normal or exceptional. Subsequently, it analyzes the differences between normal and exceptional paths. Findings The results show that exceptions are related to worse operational performance in terms of a longer throughput time and that unexpected exceptions relate to a stronger increase in throughput time than expected exceptions. Practical implications These findings lead to practical implications on policies that can be followed with respect to exceptions. Most importantly, unexpected exceptions should be avoided by incorporating them into the process – and thus transforming them into expected exceptions – as much as possible. Also, as not all exceptions lead to longer throughput times, continuous improvement should be employed to continuously monitor the occurrence of exceptions and make decisions on their desirability in the process. Originality/value While work exists on analyzing the occurrence of exceptions in business processes, especially in the context of process conformance analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first work that analyzes the possible consequences of such exceptions.

scholarly journals Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Castela ◽  
Paulo Dias ◽  
Marielba Zacarias ◽  
José Tribolet
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Organizational Environment ◽  
Business Process Model ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Over Time

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.

Assigning Ontological Meaning to Workflow Nets

2012 ◽  
pp. 209-244
Author(s):  
Pnina Soffer ◽  
Maya Kaner ◽  
Yair Wand
Keyword(s):  
Petri Nets ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Workflow Nets ◽  
Business Process Models ◽  
Business Goals ◽  
General Constraints ◽  
Process Behavior

A common way to represent organizational domains is the use of business process models. A Workflow-net (WF-net) is an application of Petri Nets (with additional rules) that model business process behavior. However, the use of WF-nets to model business processes has some shortcomings. In particular, no rules exist beyond the general constraints of WF-nets to guide the mapping of an actual process into a net. Syntactically correct WF-nets may provide meaningful models of how organizations conduct their business processes. Moreover, the processes represented by these nets may not be feasible to execute or reach their business goals when executed. In this paper, the authors propose a set of rules for mapping the domain in which a process operates into a WF-net, which they derived by attaching ontological semantics to WF-nets. The rules guide the construction of WF-nets, which are meaningful in that their nodes and transitions are directly related to the modeled (business) domains. Furthermore, the proposed semantics imposes on the process models constraints that guide the development of valid process models, namely, models that assure that the process can accomplish its goal when executed.

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