Prasad Jayaweera

Process Models and Business Models – A Unified Framework

In e-Commerce, there are two fundamental types of models, business models and process models. A business model is concerned with value exchanges among business partners, while a process model focuses on operational and procedural aspects of business communication. Thus, a business model defines the what in an e-Commerce system, while a process model defines the how. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the contents of business models and process models and to show how they can be integrated. We are using ebXML as a conceptual and notational framework for our approach. The theoretical foundations of our approach are based on the Language/Action approach and REA. We illustrate how our approach can be used to facilitate integration, process specification and process pattern interpretation.

Elicitation of Requirements for a Business Process Model Repository

Today, there exist a number of process repositories with the aim of supporting the reuse of process models. Designing such repositories is a complex task, which should be guided by clear requirements. In order to support the development of future process repositories, we propose and justify a set of requirements for such repositories. These requirements are based on a number of essential properties of process repositories as well as a set of use cases. Furthermore, we carry out a survey and evaluation of a number of existing repositories based on the requirements identified in this paper.

A pattern and dependency based approach to the design of process models

In this paper an approach for building process models for e-commerce is proposed. It is based on the assumption that the process modeling task can be methodologically supported by a designers assistant. Such a foundation provides justifications, expressible in business terms, for design decisions made in process modeling, thereby facilitating communication between systems designers and business users. Two techniques are utilized in the designers assistant, namely process patterns and action dependencies. A process pattern is a generic template for a set of interrelated activities between two agents, while an action dependency expresses a sequential relationship between two activities.

Collaborative process patterns for e-Business

The basic notions in computer supported work coordination in e-Business are communicative, institutional, and deontic notions such as obligation, responsibility, and trust. The Language Action approach that has a significant impact within CSCW, therefore, seems to be a most promising framework for designing e-Business systems. However, the penetration of the Language Action approach in industrial practice is still limited. We discuss some reasons for this state of affairs by identifying a number of problems that hinder an effective application of the Language Action approach. We propose modeling techniques and methodological guidelines that can contribute to the solution of these problems. These techniques and guidelines are based on three building blocks: a business model describing the values exchanged in an e-Business process, a formal and executable language based on communicating state machines, and an automated designer assistant that guides a user from a business model to an executable process model.

Reconciling Physical, Communicative, and Social/Institutional Domains in Agent Oriented Information Systems – A Unified Framework

One of a business system’s roles is to provide a representation of a Universe of Discourse, which reflects its structure and behaviour. An equally important function of the system is to support communication within an organisation by structuring and co-ordinating the actions performed by the organisations agents. These two roles of a business system may be represented in terms of business and process models, i.e. the separation of the declarative aspects from the procedural control flow aspects of the system. Although this separation of concerns has many advantages, the differences in representation techniques and focus of the two model types constitutes a problem in itself.

Process Patterns to Generate E-commerce Systems

In electronic commerce, two fundamental types of models are business models and process models. While a business model is concerned with value exchanges between actors, a process model describes the procedural realization of business requirements. There is a need for methodological guidelines and tool support to move from a business model to a process model, which enables design decisions to be based on requirements captured in the business model. This paper addresses a systematic transformation of business models to process models. We propose a designer assistant that systematically aids a designer in generating a process model in an executable process modeling language.

Three Tier Approach for Hierarchical Business State Engineering

State oriented modeling approaches are popular in designing of IT solutions. When developing eBusiness systems wide spectrum of stakeholder participation is critical for successful system delivery. However, most of the existing state based techniques encourage lower level implementation perspective resulting limitations in communication with non-technical business users. The paper proposes three tier unified framework and a methodology to reach final implementation systematically starting from higher level business design. It is based on well established speech acts theory for business communication modeling.

Modelling Institutional, Communicative and Physical Domains in Agent Oriented Information Systems

One role of a business system is to provide a representation of a Universe of Discourse, which reflects its structure and behaviour. An equally important function of the system is to support communication within an organisation, by structuring and co-ordinating the actions performed by the organisations agents. These two roles of a business system may be represented in terms of business and process models, i.e. separating the declarative aspects from the procedural control flow aspects of the system. Although this separation of concerns has many advantages, the differences in representation techniques and focus of the two model types constitute a problem in itself. Abstracting business semantics out of, for instance, technical messaging protocols poses severe problems for business analysts. The main contribution of this paper is a unified framework based on agent oriented concepts for facilitating analysis and integration of business models and process models in a systematic way. The approach suggested bridges the gap between the declarative and social/ economic aspects of a business model and the procedural and communicative aspects of a process model in a technology independent manner. We illustrate how our approach can simplify business and process models integration, process specification, process pattern interpretation and process choreography.