Luis E. Mendoza Morales

Integration of Systemic Quality and the Balanced Scorecard

Abstract This article presents the integration of systemic quality (balance between product and process effectiveness and efficiency) as a strategy of systems development organizations, through the balanced scorecard (BSC) method, to balance the different forces that drive the organization. the proposal contemplates a series of tasks that would be undertaken through the strategic plan. Each task assures one aspect of the organization, in addition to creating a strategic map and a series of indicators that demonstrate the cause and effect relationship between systemic quality and the organization. This article also illustrates a case study in which a dynamic simulation technique was used, recreating the present situation of a Venezuelan organization over a five-year period. This strategy was used to try to determine the impact of systemic quality on financial prospects, especially in increasing shareholder value, starting with the simulation of the present state of the company and then introducing systemic quality.

A Formalization Proposal of Timed BPMN for Compositional Verification of Business Processes

The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is currently being used by companies as the Business Process (BP) standard modeling language. In this work, we define a timed semantics of BPMN in terms of the Communicating Sequential Processes + Time (CSP+T) process calculus in order to detail the behaviour of processes within a fixed time span. By adding a formal specification to the response times of activities, temporal constraints, and temporal constraints in communications and task collaboration, we are able to specify and develop the Business Process Task Model (BPTM) of a target BP. We also demonstrate how our proposal can be integrated into the Formal Compositional Verification Approach (FVCA) to allow the use of state–of–the–art MC tools to automatically verify BPTMs. Finally, we examine the application of the proposal to a BPTM verification related to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enterprise–business. .

Business process verification using a Formal Compositional Approach and Timed Automata

Several firms are defining their Business Processes (BPs) using the standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). BPs modelled with BPMN are maintained and used by different workers within a company, thus the correctness of critical BPs should be validated and verified. In this work we present how Model Checking verification technique for software has been integrated within a Formal Compositional Verification Approach (FVCA) and Timed Automata (TA) to allow the automatic verification of critical BPs modelled with BPMN. The use of our FVCA support business analysts and designers in the formal specification of BP-task model with TA. The application of the FVCA is aimed at guaranteeing the correctness of the BP-task model with respect to initial properties specification derived from business rules. In order to show a practical use of our proposal and Uppaal tool, one instance of an enterprise-project related to Customer Relationship Management business is discussed.

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.

Checking Critical Software Systems: A Formal Proposal

As a contribution to the specification and verification of critical software systems, this article presents a formal proposal for compositional verification, which uses model checking technique and integrates a modelling infrastructure that propitiates the target system decomposition into separate components aimed at being individually specified and verified. Our goal with this proposal is to provide an infrastructure for developing and verifying critical software systems by fostering extensibility and modifiability of the software. In this way, validated components can be integrated into large computer programs readily. The compositional verification approach guarantees the correctness of the entire system during its execution. Also, is discussed a practical application of our proposal to a realistic industry project related to mobile phone communication.

Specifying BPMN diagrams with Timed Automata: Proposal of some mapping rules

The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) has come to be the most important result to standardize the notation for graphical representation of Business Processes (BPs). Nevertheless, BPMN models are not appropriate to support the analysis phase; do not have formal semantics to conduct qualitative analysis (validation and verification). In this work is introduced a set of guidelines to transform BPMN diagrams into Timed Automata (TA) networks (TA-networks) in order to make possible that business analysts and designers can perform evaluation (i.e., qualitative analysis) of BPs, based on the formal specification of BP-task model with TA. The application of the approach is aimed to evaluate the behavior of the BP-task model with respect to business performance indicators (for instance, service time, waiting time or queue size) derived from business needs. Also is shown an application example related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM).