A systematic literature review of studies on business process modeling quality

ContextBusiness process modeling is an essential part of understanding and redesigning the activities that a typical enterprise uses to achieve its business goals. The quality of a business process model has a significant impact on the development of any enterprise and IT support for that process.ObjectiveSince the insights on what constitutes modeling quality are constantly evolving, it is unclear whether research on business process modeling quality already covers all major aspects of modeling quality. Therefore, the objective of this research is to determine the state of the art on business process modeling quality: What aspects of process modeling quality have been addressed until now and which gaps remain to be covered?MethodWe performed a systematic literature review of peer reviewed articles as published between 2000 and August 2013 on business process modeling quality. To analyze the contributions of the papers we use the Formal Concept Analysis technique.ResultsWe found 72 studies addressing quality aspects of business process models. These studies were classified into different dimensions: addressed model quality type, research goal, research method, and type of research result. Our findings suggest that there is no generally accepted framework of model quality types. Most research focuses on empirical and pragmatic quality aspects, specifically with respect to improving the understandability or readability of models. Among the various research methods, experimentation is the most popular one. The results from published research most often take the form of intangible knowledge.ConclusionWe believe there is a lack of an encompassing and generally accepted definition of business process modeling quality. This evidences the need for the development of a broader quality framework capable of dealing with the different aspects of business process modeling quality. Different dimensions of business process quality and of the process of modeling still require further research.     

An end-user approach to business process modeling

This paper discusses the main differences between humanistic and mechanistic business process modeling. While the mechanistic approach requires strict process formalization, emphasizes technical details, and constrains the modeling task to technology experts, the humanistic approach is more centered on the end-user. We developed a modeling approach and a collaborative tool supporting end-user business process modeling. Design storyboards were adopted as a paradigm for knowledge representation and visual composition. The main contributions from this research include the knowledge representation structure and a collaborative tool supporting visual composition of business process models.     

Modeling and formal verification of embedded systems based on a Petri net representation

In this paper we concentrate on aspects related to modeling and formal verification of embedded systems. First, we define a formal model of computation for embedded systems based on Petri nets that can capture important features of such systems and allows their representation at different levels of granularity. Our modeling formalism has a well-defined semantics so that it supports a precise representation of the system, the use of formal methods to verify its correctness, and the automation of different tasks along the design process. Second, we propose an approach to the problem of formal verification of embedded systems represented in our modeling formalism. We make use of model checking to prove whether certain properties, expressed as temporal logic formulas, hold with respect to the system model. We introduce a systematic procedure to translate our model into timed automata so that it is possible to use available model checking tools. We propose two strategies for improving the verification efficiency, the first by applying correctness-preserving transformations and the second by exploring the degree of parallelism characteristic to the system. Some examples, including a realistic industrial case, demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on practical applications.     

Syntax highlighting in business process models

Sense-making of process models is an important task in various phases of business process management initiatives. Despite this, there is currently hardly any support in business process modeling tools to adequately support model comprehension. In this paper we adapt the concept of syntax highlighting to workflow nets, a modeling technique that is frequently used for business process modeling. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we establish a theoretical argument to what extent highlighting could improve comprehension. Second, we formalize a concept for syntax highlighting in workflow nets and present a prototypical implementation with the WoPeD modeling tool. Third, we report on the results of an experiment that tests the hypothetical benefits of highlighting for comprehension. Our work can easily be transferred to other process modeling tools and other process modeling techniques.     

A new verification technique for large processes based on identification of relevant tasks

Verification recently has become a challenging topic for business process languages. Verification techniques like model checking allow to ensure that a process complies with domain-specific requirements, prior to the execution. To execute full-state verification techniques like model checking, the state space of the process needs to be constructed. This tends to increase exponentially with the size of the process schema, or it can even be infinite. We address this issue by means of requirements-specific reduction techniques, i.e., reducing the size of the state space without changing the result of the verification. We present an approach that, for a given requirement the system must fulfill, identifies the tasks relevant for the verification. Our approach then uses these relevant tasks for a reduction that confines the process to regions of interest for the verification. To evaluate our new technique, we use real-world industrial processes and requirements. Mainly because these processes make heavy use of parallelization, full-state-search verification algorithms are not able to verify them. With our reduction in turn, even complex processes with many parallel branches can be verified in less than 10 s.     

On the refactoring of activity labels in business process models

Large corporations increasingly utilize business process models for documenting and redesigning their operations. The extent of such modeling initiatives with several hundred models and dozens of often hardly trained modelers calls for automated quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can easily be checked by existing tools, there is a notable gap for checking the quality of the textual content of models, in particular, its activity labels. In this paper, we address the problem of activity label quality in business process models. We designed a technique for the recognition of labeling styles, and the automatic refactoring of labels with quality issues. More specifically, we developed a parsing algorithm that is able to deal with the shortness of activity labels, which integrates natural language tools like WordNet and the Stanford Parser. Using three business process model collections from practice with differing labeling style distributions, we demonstrate the applicability of our technique. In comparison to a straightforward application of standard natural language tools, our technique provides much more stable results. As an outcome, the technique shifts the boundary of process model quality issues that can be checked automatically from syntactic to semantic aspects.     

Managing context in business process management systems

Businesses need to continuously focus on change and innovation in order to survive in dynamic environments. The ability of an organization to deploy appropriate business processes requires that the fit between business processes and systems that support the management of these processes is continuously maintained and evolved. Acquisition and use of the knowledge about the context in which business processes are defined, modified, and implemented can help maintain this fit. We identify requirements for a business process management system (BPMS) capable of managing contextual knowledge. Based on these requirements, we have enhanced KOPeR, a knowledge-based system for business process improvement, with an explanation facility that can acquire and maintain knowledge about the context behind process definitions and design choices. A case study that illustrates the functionalities of this system which is designed to improve the fit between business processes and BPMS is presented.

Interaction-centric modeling of process choreographies

With the rise of electronic integration between organizations, the need for a precise specification of interaction behavior increases. Information systems, replacing interaction previously carried out by humans via phone, faxes and emails, require a precise specification for handling all possible situations. Such interaction behavior is described in process choreographies. While many proposals for choreography languages have already been made, most of them fall into the category of interconnection models, where the observable behavior of the different partners is described and then related via message flow. As this article will show, this modeling approach fails to support fundamental design principles of choreographies and typically leads to modeling errors. This motivates an alternative modeling style, namely interaction modeling, for overcoming these limitations. While the main concepts are independent of a concrete modeling language, iBPMN is introduced as novel interaction modeling language. Formal execution semantics are provided and a comprehensive toolset implementing the approach is presented.     

Prediction of business process durations using non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets

Companies need to efficiently manage their business processes to deliver products and services in time. Therefore, they monitor the progress of individual cases to be able to timely detect undesired deviations and to react accordingly. For example, companies can decide to speed up process execution by raising alerts or by using additional resources, which increases the chance that a certain deadline or service level agreement can be met. Central to such process control is accurate prediction of the remaining time of a case and the estimation of the risk of missing a deadline.To achieve this goal, we use a specific kind of stochastic Petri nets that can capture arbitrary duration distributions. Thereby, we are able to achieve higher prediction accuracy than related approaches. Further, we evaluate the approach in comparison to state of the art approaches and show the potential of exploiting a so far untapped source of information: the elapsed time since the last observed event. Real-world case studies in the financial and logistics domain serve to illustrate and evaluate the approach presented.     

Analysis and improvement of business process models using spreadsheets

Software in general is thoroughly analyzed before it is released to its users. Business processes often are not – at least not as thoroughly as it could be – before they are released to their users, e.g., employees or software agents. This paper ascribes this practice to the lack of suitable instruments for business process analysts, who design the processes, and aims to provide them with the necessary instruments to allow them to also analyze their processes. We use the spreadsheet paradigm to represent business process analysis tasks, such as writing metrics and assertions, running performance analysis and verification tasks, and reporting on the outcomes, and implement a spreadsheet-based tool for business process analysis. The results of two independent user studies demonstrate the viability of the approach.     

FirstSTEP process modeler — a CIMOSA-compliant modeling tool

Since its market release in late 1994, the FirstSTEP toolset developed by Interfacing Technologies of Montreal, Canada has been proven to be one of the most practical solutions for business process management initiatives. Being a methodology independent enterprise modeling and simulation application, FirstSTEP has been adopted by industry leaders from such diversified sectors as manufacturing, finance, telecom, healthcare, public, and others. Its concept and approach are compatible to the framework. Most notably is the user front-end simplicity that has enabled its acceptance by the typical business manager who is not usually academic in his/her approach. The paper presents the FirstSTEP tool suite, its concept and approach and demonstrates its capabilities using an application with a most recent FirstSTEP user — America Online.     

Activity labeling in process modeling: Empirical insights and recommendations

Few studies have investigated the factors contributing to the successful practice of process modeling. In particular, studies that contribute to the act of developing process models that facilitate communication and understanding are scarce. Although the value of process models is not only dependent on the choice of graphical constructs but also on their annotation with textual labels, there has been hardly any work on the quality of these labels. Accordingly, the research presented in this paper examines activity labeling practices in process modeling. Based on empirical data from process modeling practice, we identify and discuss different labeling styles and their use in process modeling praxis. We perform a grammatical analysis of these styles and use data from an experiment with process modelers to examine a range of hypotheses about the usability of the different styles. Based on our findings, we suggest specific programs of research towards better tool support for labeling practices. Our work contributes to the emerging stream of research investigating the practice of process modeling and thereby contributes to the overall body of knowledge about conceptual modeling quality.     

Process modeling and analysis of manufacturing supply chain networks using object-oriented Petri nets

This paper presents a systematic methodology for modeling and analysis of manufacturing supply chain business processes. The proposed approach first employs Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open System Architecture (CIMOSA) behavior rules to model the business process routing structures of manufacturing supply chain networks. Object-oriented predicate/transition nets (OPTNs) are then developed for the modular modeling and analysis of process models. Based on the structure of OPTNs, a procedure to obtain the system's P-invariants through objects’ P-invariants is suggested. From the P-invariants obtained, system structural properties such as deadlock and overflow can be analyzed. By using Petri net unfolding techniques and by extracting the process model of each object from the entire process model, the sequencing analysis for operations in supply chain processes becomes possible. Several manufacturing supply chain examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

The impact of process standardization on business process outsourcing success

What is the impact of business process standardization on business process outsourcing (BPO) success? This paper argues that there is a direct impact of process standardization on BPO success, due to production cost economies, and also an indirect effect via improved contractual and relational governance resulting from better monitoring opportunities and facilitated communication and coordination. This threefold impact of standardization on BPO success is empirically confirmed using data from 335 BPO ventures in 215 German banks.     

Process vs resource‐oriented Petri net modeling of automated manufacturing systems

Since the 1980s, Petri nets (PN) have been widely used to model automated manufacturing systems (AMS) for analysis, performance evaluation, simulation, and control. They are mostly based on process‐oriented modeling methods and thus termed as process‐oriented PN (POPN) in this paper. The recent study of deadlock avoidance problems in AMS led to another type of PN called resource‐oriented PN (ROPN). This paper, for the first time, compares these two modeling methods and resultant models in terms of modeling power, model complexity for analysis and control, and some critical properties. POPN models the part production processes straightforwardly, while ROPN is more compact and effective for deadlock resolution. The relations between these two models are investigated. Several examples are used to illustrate them. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Model checking for process rewrite systems and a class of action-based regular properties

We consider the model checking problem for Process Rewrite Systems (PRS), an infinite-state formalism (non Turing-powerful) which subsumes many common models such as Pushdown Processes and Petri Nets. PRS can be adopted as a formal model for programs with dynamic creation and synchronization of concurrent processes, and with recursive procedures. The model-checking problem of PRS against action-based linear temporal logic (ALTL) is undecidable. However, decidability for some interesting fragment of ALTL remains an open question. In this paper, we state decidability results concerning generalized acceptance properties about infinite derivations (infinite term rewriting) in PRS. As a consequence, we obtain decidability of the model-checking problem (restricted to infinite runs) of PRS against a meaningful fragment of ALTL.     

应急预案流程的Petri网建模方法研究

为了提高应急信息系统模型的语义基础,提出了一种基于Petri网的应急预案流程的建模方法。以ABC模型为上位本体建立了应急预案流程本体,提出了应急预案流程的Petri网建模过程,并定义了应急预案流程中本体和层次Petri网的映射规则。使用该方法对某公路桥梁抢修应急预案流程进行Petri网建模,并通过仿真分析验证了建模方法的有效性。     

基于活动依赖实现业务流程可变性的BPMS模型*

从活动依赖性的角度提出一种支持业务专家修改业务流程的BPMS模型D-BPMS(dependence based business process management system), 即能够使业务专家按照业务需求通过调整业务活动之间的依赖关系和配置业务活动的属性达到调整业务流程的目的。它在体系结构上分为表示层、流程逻辑层、业务逻辑层和数据层四个层次。在流程逻辑层采用消息传递机制设计算法实现流程结构变化模式,证明了D-BPMS模型变化模式的完备性和变化的可验证性,并可用Petri网来验证流程变化的正确性     

Modeling, scheduling and simulation of product development process by extended stochastic high-level evaluation Petri nets

This paper presents a methodology for modeling and simulating product development process-based on the extended stochastic high-level evaluation Petri nets (ESHLEP-N). A product development process is composed of many design activities and the ESHLEP-N model can describe some special features of design activity in detail, such as randomness of its duration, uncertainty of its interruption and complexity of design iteration. Therefore, the ESHLEP-N model is employed to simulate a product development process. The initial product development plan obtained by a mathematical method beforehand is taken as the input of the simulation. Then the simulation procedure is proposed, along with four types of rules, i.e. activity-sequencing rules, resource-assigning rules, state-changing rules and the simulation-terminating rule, for scheduling the design activities. An example of the development process of an automobile drive system in concurrent engineering environment is presented to illustrate the method of the ESHLEP-N-based modeling, simulation procedure and scheduling rules. The simulation results show that the simulation procedure and the scheduling rules are effective.     

Detecting approximate clones in business process model repositories

Empirical evidence shows that repositories of business process models used in industrial practice contain significant amounts of duplication. This duplication arises for example when the repository covers multiple variants of the same processes or due to copy-pasting. Previous work has addressed the problem of efficiently retrieving exact clones that can be refactored into shared subprocess models. This paper studies the broader problem of approximate clone detection in process models. The paper proposes techniques for detecting clusters of approximate clones based on two well-known clustering algorithms: DBSCAN and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC). The paper also defines a measure of standardizability of an approximate clone cluster, meaning the potential benefit of replacing the approximate clones with a single standardized subprocess. Experiments show that both techniques, in conjunction with the proposed standardizability measure, accurately retrieve clusters of approximate clones that originate from copy-pasting followed by independent modifications to the copied fragments. Additional experiments show that both techniques produce clusters that match those produced by human subjects and that are perceived to be standardizable.