M. La Rosa

Managing Process Model Complexity via Concrete Syntax Modifications

While Business Process Management (BPM) is an established discipline, the increased adoption of BPM technology in recent years has introduced new challenges. One challenge concerns dealing with the ever-growing complexity of business process models. Mechanisms for dealing with this complexity can be classified into two categories: 1) those that are solely concerned with the visual representation of the model and 2) those that change its inner structure. While significant attention is paid to the latter category in the BPM literature, this paper focuses on the former category. It presents a collection of patterns that generalize and conceptualize various existing mechanisms to change the visual representation of a process model. Next, it provides a detailed analysis of the degree of support for these patterns in a number of state-of-the-art languages and tools. This paper concludes with the results of a usability evaluation of the patterns conducted with BPM practitioners.

Managing Process Model Complexity Via Abstract Syntax Modifications

As a result of the growing adoption of Business Process Management (BPM) technology, different stakeholders need to understand and agree upon the process models that are used to configure BPM systems. However, BPM users have problems dealing with the complexity of such models. Therefore, the challenge is to improve the comprehension of process models. While a substantial amount of literature is devoted to this topic, there is no overview of the various mechanisms that exist to deal with managing complexity in (large) process models. As a result, it is hard to obtain an insight into the degree of support offered for complexity reducing mechanisms by state-of-the-art languages and tools. This paper focuses on complexity reduction mechanisms that affect the abstract syntax of a process model, i.e., the formal structure of process model elements and their interrelationships. These mechanisms are captured as patterns so that they can be described in their most general form, in a language- and tool-independent manner. The paper concludes with a comparative overview of the degree of support for these patterns offered by state-of-the-art languages and tools, and with an evaluation of the patterns from a usability perspective, as perceived by BPM practitioners.

Open Source Software for Workflow Management: The Case of YAWL

Workflow management systems support business process design, execution, and analysis. They must guarantee that work is conducted at the right time-and by the right person or software application-through the execution of a workflow process model. YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) was developed in 2002 to show that comprehensive support for workflow patterns is achievable. Soon after the lan guages inception, a prototype system was built to show that system support for such a complex language was possible. From that initial prototype, YAWL has grown into a full-fledged open source workflow management system and support environment.

Business Process Drift

A synthetic dataset of 72 event logs based on Loan Assessment process, containing different types of process drift.