Carlos Monsalve

MEASURING SOFTWARE FUNCTIONAL SIZE FROM BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS

ISO 14143-1 specifies that a functional size measurement (FSM) method must provide measurement procedures to quantify the functional user requirements (FURs) of software. Such quantitative information, functional size, is typically used, for instance, in software estimation. One of the international standards for FSM is the COSMIC FSM method — ISO 19761 — which was designed to be applied both to the business application (BA) software domain and to the real-time software domain. A recurrent problem in FSM is the availability and quality of the inputs required for measurement purposes; that is, well documented FURs. Business process (BP) models, as they are commonly used to gather requirements from the early stages of a project, could be a valuable source of information for FSM. In a previous article, the feasibility of such an approach for the BA domain was analyzed using the Qualigram BP modeling notation. This paper complements that work by: (1) analyzing the use of BPMN for FSM in the BA domain; (2) pre...

Representing Unique Stakeholder Perspectives in BPM Notations

Evidence shows that proposals for new modeling notations emerge and evolution of current ones are becoming more complex, often in an attempt to satisfy the many different modeling perspectives required by each stakeholder. This paper presents a method to identify the specific notation construct requirements, at multiple levels of abstraction, which satisfy the needs of a stakeholder when performing a specific task. Initially the focus is on two different stakeholders: software engineers (SE) and business analysts(BA), and one specific software engineering activity: requirements eliciting and analysis. The specific body of knowledge of the two stakeholders (Software Engineering Book of Knowledge (SWEBOK) for the SE, and Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) for the BA) are used to identify each stakeholder specific notation construct requirements, at multiple levels of abstraction, in order to propose a simplification of their notation and constructs set. This paper presents solution avenues to simplify business process modeling notations by identifying the specific constructs preferred by different stakeholders.

On the expressiveness of business process modeling notations for software requirements elicitation

Business process models have proved to be useful for requirements elicitation. Since software development depends on the quality of the requirements specifications, generating high-quality business process models is therefore critical. A key factor for achieving this is the expressiveness in terms of completeness and clarity of the modeling notation for the domain being modeled. The Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) representation model is frequently used for assessing the expressiveness of business process modeling notations. This article presents some propositions to adapt the BWW representation model to allow its application to the software requirements elicitation domain. These propositions are based on the analysis of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and the Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK). The propositions are validated next by experts in business process modeling and software requirements elicitation. The results show that the BWW representation model requires to be specialized by including concepts specific to software requirements elicitation.

Application of Formal Methods to Verify Business Processes

Formal specifications and modeling languages can be used to provide support for Business Process (BP) analysts and designers to verify the behavior of BPs with respect to business performance indicators (i.e., service time, waiting time or queue size). This article presents the application of the Timed Automata (TA) formal language to check BPs modeled with Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) using the model checking verification technique. Also, a set of transformation rules and two algorithms are introduced to obtain TA-networks from BPMN models, allowing the formal specification of a BP-task model equivalent to the BPMN model. The approach presented here contributes to conduct the qualitative analysis of BPMN models.

Formal verification of business processes as timed automata

Despite the representation of a business process (BP) with Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) can provide support for business designers, BPMN models lack of a formal semantics to conduct qualitative analysis. In this work, we describe the use of timed automata (TA) formal language to check BPs modelled with BPMN using the model checking verification technique. Two algorithms are introduced to transform a BPMN model into TA to obtain the formal specification of a BP-task model tantamount to a BPMN model. Our approach allows business analysts and designers to perform evaluation of BPMN models with respect to business performance indicators (e.g., service time, waiting time or queue size) derived from business needs. Our approach also incorporates the UPPAAL MC tool, as it is shown in an instance of an enterprise-project.