Claudia Cappelli

An aspect-oriented approach to business process modeling

Traditional methods to business process modeling build the model in a unified way, which gives rise to complex models, where different concerns are scattered and tangled. In this paper we propose the use of an aspect-oriented approach to modularize business process modeling. We propose a meta Aspect Oriented Process Modeling Language (AOPML) that is independent of any specific business process language. In order to show the applicability of the approach we instantiate it using the Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) in a case study that takes advantage of AOPML.

Reflections on the modularity of business process models: The case for introducing the aspect‐oriented paradigm

Purpose – The aspect‐oriented (AO) paradigm is first proposed to deal with programing modularity issues, but different researchers have been exploring AO concepts in the designing and definition of software systems. The goal of this paper is to discuss and present a proposal that addresses the application of AO concepts to the design of business processes (BPs) in order to improve usability and understandability of process models.Design/methodology/approach – The paper departs from previous work on analyzing the application of AO for software design. The observations were backed by a case study, which was used to illustrate the issues by means of examples.Findings – The paper presents findings on important issues related to the integration of AO paradigm and BP modeling, such as crosscutting representation, crosscutting composition, quantification, and join point exposure.Originality/value – The paper explores a new frontier: the application of AO concepts to the design of BPs. As of now, few works have e...

Towards Collaboration Maturity in Business Processes: An Exploratory Study in Oil Production Processes

Abstract Organizations have been relying on collaboration for knowledge sharing and productivity improvement in order to reduce costs or boost revenue. However, organizations still cannot assure that collaboration is properly conducted in daily work. This paper presents an approach to stimulating collaboration between professionals in an organization. The approach, combining a BPM methodology with the CollabMM collaboration maturity model and its corresponding method, is a result of an exploratory study in a real setting in an oil company in Brazil. The project is a move towards improving decision-making during one of the companys business processes and establishing collaboration among professionals through information sharing.

Exploring Business Process Transparency Concepts

Transparency has been, for long, a general requirement for democratic societies. According to Leite [6], transparency will be a central issue in producing software. This work assumes that, for providing software transparency, it is necessary that the processes to be supported or automated be transparent as well. As such, using a requirements point of view, it is necessary that organizations implement process transparency to enable transparency in their automation or support. This work is based on Business Process Management concepts, NFR framework and quality management.

Using goals to identify aspects in business process models

Modularization of business process models using aspects is a new line of research. Aspectual languages in this context have been proposed and are still under development. However, most of the guidelines for aspects identification in this domain is still dependent on the idea of process model elements repetition. In this paper, we explore a new way of identifying aspects, based on the ideas of the GPM (Generic Process Model) and process goals. We present a procedure for aspect identification and provide an example to illustrate its application

Aspect‐oriented business process modeling: analyzing open issues

Purpose – The aspect‐oriented paradigm provides mechanisms to modularize crosscutting concerns. Applying aspect‐oriented concepts in business process modeling raises the possibilities of modularization, but brings out several concerns related both to process and to product. This paper aims to provide an overview of the aspect‐oriented business process modeling area, point out the open issues and analyze possible solutions to such issues.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a research project, where real business process models from a large oil and gas organization were analyzed, re‐modeled and re‐analyzed to put the AO‐BPM approach in practice.Findings – The paper indicates the need for more research on aspect‐orientation applied to business process models, backed by open issues that are faced in this research. The authors categorized the open issues as: aspects identification, elements used in the models, levels used to modularize business process models, assignment of aspects to organiza...

Transparency versus security: early analysis of antagonistic requirements

Information systems designers have been increasingly convinced about the importance of dealing with quality issues at early stages of development. Over the landscape of quality issues, several proposals have been published as to help with respect to security. On the other hand, designers do also need to care about other quality issues; for instance, transparency. Transparency is the quality of having open information to the public. At first, the general intuition is that security and transparency conflict, but how should designers deal with these antagonistic issues? Departing from the use of the Non-Functional Requirements Framework we propose a process, based on Personal Construct Theory, to perform early analysis of antagonistic design issues. Having early analysis of antagonistic quality issues makes it possible for informed decision to be taken early on during IS design. We use the election domain to illustrate the application of our proposal.

Eliciting Multi-Agent Systems Intentionality: from Language Extended Lexicon to i* Models

MAS methods still lack coverage to the goal elicitation process, especially on how to identify goals from corporate information, mission statements and from interviews with stakeholders. Only after eliciting goals we will be able to properly deal with goal models. On the other hand, intentionality models, for example the i* framework, are, usually, complex and difficult to read. By contrast, this paper proposes an indirect inquire process that can identify goals in a bottom-up and simple elicitation approach together with a proposal to reduce the problem of scalability of i* models.

Increasing Information Auditability for Social Network Users

This paper sets out the challenge of how to provide information auditability to citizens regarding social networks. The aim is to discuss the issues concerning information published on social networks and specifically to describe how to verify the veracity of this information. It is based on the idea that it urgent improvement of interface requirements is necessary for this kind of software to provide users with ways to account for, validate, verify and control information. The paper reports the construction of a catalog of characteristics for information auditability in social networks. An exploratory study suggests mechanisms that can be used to implement these characteristics into this kind of software interface. The conclusion presents remarks on challenges and future studies.

Analysis of heuristics to identify crosscutting concerns in business process models

One of the results of BPM (Business Process Management) is the knowledge about the business processes performed by an organization. Conventional process modeling notations and languages are used to document these processes. Principles for functional decomposition and organization of elements are generally applied. However, they are not enough to separate orthogonal concerns that appear within different elements of the same process or in different process. Incorporation of aspect-orientation ideas in the modularization of business process models is a new line of research to address this problem. In such context most of the guidelines to aspect identification are dependent on the idea of concepts repetition. In this paper we analyze some heuristics used to identify the crosscutting concerns in business process models to show that repetition criteria is not enough to identify an aspect.