Business Process Modelling – Languages, Goals and Variabilities · 2018. 12. 5. · BPEL Metamodel Code Generation M1 MOF Scripts PIM PSM Code BPEL Model ATL Code input output Model

Business Process Modelling – Languages, Goals and

VariabilitiesBirgit KorherrWomen‘s Postgraduate College for Internet TechnologiesInstitute of Software Technology and Interactive SystemsVienna University of [email protected], http://wit.tuwien.ac.at

Introduction

Business processes are often the starting point for software development

Business processes define requirements for the software systems to be designed

2

BUT: No mechanism or formal notion is available for linking business processes with software systems

THE GOAL: Extending existing BPMLs with missing concepts and notations

Outline

Generic business process metamodel for evaluating Business Process Modelling Languages

Performance Measures and Goals in UML 2 Activity Diagrams

A UML 2 Profile for Variability Models and the dependency between Variability models and UML 2 Activity Diagrams

3

Outline




4

5

Goals of the Evaluation

Comprehensive comparison of Business Process Modelling Languages (BPMLs) as well as a general framework is missing

2. Evaluation of six well-established BPMLs

1. Generic business process metamodel

VariabilitiesLanguages Goals

6

Contribution of the Evaluation

Metamodel provides a foundation for an evaluation

Stresses strengths and limitations of BPMLs

Comparison between the BPMLs illustrates the differences and the similarities

Evaluation can be easily extended with further BPMLs

Facilitation of finding the right BPML for a certain purpose


The five Perspectives

7

Functional Perspective

Behavioural Perspective

Informational Perspective

Organi-sational

P.

Business Process Context Perspective

8

Metamodel - The Four Perspectives

9

Metamodel – BP Context Perspective


Results of the Evaluation

10

UML 2 AD

EPC

BPMN

IDEF3

Petri Nets

RAD

Functional Behavioural Informational OrganisationalBP

Context

+ + + ~ ~

+ + ~ ~ ~

+ + ~ ~ ~

+ + ~ - ~

+ + - - -

+ + ~ ~ ~

UML 2 AD

EPC

BPMN

IDEF3

Petri Nets

RAD

Functional InformationalBehavioural OrganisationalBP

Context

Legend: + fully supported

~ partially supported

- not supported at all

Outline




11

Definition about Business Processes

Definition: "A business process is a group of tasks that together create a result of value to a customer." [Hammer, 96]

Definition: "Its purpose is to offer each customer the right product or service, e.g., the right deliverable, with a high degree of performance measured against cost, longevity, service and quality." [Jacobson, 95]

12VariabilitiesLanguages Goals

Goals of the Extension

Process goals and performance measures are available in process definitions


Current BPMLs do not provide explicit notation elements for process goals and their measures

E.g. designer has no possibility to integrate time limits

Time Quality Costs

Extending the metamodel of UML 2 AD business process goals and performance measures

Contribution of the Extension

Modelling of goals and performance measures allow to structure process design, to evaluate the process design, and to evaluate the operating process.

The extended UML 2 AD makes the evaluation criteria for a business process conceptually visible


The Generic Metamodel

15

Example of an AD

16

Actions

Control Flows

Activity Partitions

Activity

The extended UML 2 Metamodel of the AD


Example of anextended AD

18

Goals

Time Alert

Quality

Cost

Outline




19

Introduction into Variability Models

Variability models define the variability of a product line It shows the different variation points and variants of a

software product line.


Variability models can be used during the different life cycle stages of software product lines

Variability modelling is a domain specific modelling technique

Continual integration into traditional software engineering.

21

Motivation

Variability models are not integrated into an modelling framework like the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Variability models have also an impact on processes. Variabilities can change the process flow, e.g.

in a car engine manufacturing process the decision if the variability manufacture a diesel engine or a petrol engine is chosen, changes the process flow.


22

Goals

2. Show the dependency between variability models and Activity Diagrams to make the relationship between structural models and behavioural models visible

1. Provide variability models to software developers as a UML 2 profile


23

Contribution

The UML profile for variability mode

... can be easily created, presented and edited with existing UML modelling tools.

... represents variability requirements to software developers or process engineers in a well-known modelling languages.

... and its shown dependencies onto activity diagrams visualizes the relationship between structural and behavioural models.

The UML profile for variability models ...


A UML Profile for Variability Models


Examples of Variability Dependencies

25

Variability Dependency

Multiplicity Generalisation Set

Class Diagram UML Profile

Mandatory 1 {complete, disjoint}

Alternative 0..1 {incomplete, disjoint}

Alternative 1..* {complete, overlapping}

Optional 0..* {incomplete, overlapping}

Dependency between Variability Models and Business Processes

Variability models show the different variabilities of a software.

Activity Diagrams are a part of the behavioural set of UML 2 diagrams show the control and data flow between different tasks.

The two modelling techniques describe the complementary views variability model describes the structural view and the activity

diagram the behavioural view.

26

Showing the dependency between these metamodels to examine in which way they are related to each other.


Example UML Profile and the Dependency onto UML 2 Activity Diagrams

27

?

28

UML Profile UML 2 AD

Variation Point Activity Partition

Variant Action

29


Alternative (0..1) Decision - Merge Node

30


Alternative (1..*)

Fork - Join Node

requires Control Flow

31

Conclusion

32

Extending BPMLs with goals and performance measures

Providing variability models to software developers, and showing the dependency between variabilities and business processes

Defining a framework for evaluating BPMLs

Transformation of BPMLs to code

33

MOF

M2 M3

Extended UML Metamodel

Weaving Metamodel

XML Code

UMLModel

BPEL Metamodel

Code Generation

M1

MOF Scripts

PIM

PSM

Code

BPEL Model

ATL Code

input

output

Model Trafo

GeneratorWeaving

Model

Publications

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: A UML 2 Profile for Variability Models and their Dependency to Business Processes. 1st International Workshop on Enterprise Information Systems Engineering (WEISE 07), September 2007, Regensburg, Germany, IEEE Press, 2007.

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: Extending the EPC and the BPMN with Business Process Goals and Performance Measures. 9th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 07), June 2007, Madeira, Portugal, ACM Press, 2007.

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: Extending the EPC with Performance Measures (short paper). Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'07), Seoul, Korea, March 11-15, ACM Press, 2007.

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: Extending the UML 2 Activity Diagram with Business Process Goals and Performance Measures and the Mapping to BPEL. 2nd International Workshop on Best Practices of UML (BP-UML'06) at the 25th International Converence on Conceptual Modeling (ER'06), November 2006, Tucson, Arizona, USA, 2006, Spinger Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: Aligning Business Processes and Software - Connecting the UML Profile for Event Driven Process Chains with Use Cases and Components. CAiSE Forum Proceedings at the 18th Conference on Advanced Information System Engineering (CAiSE'06), June 2006, Luxembourg, 2006.

Birgit Korherr and Beate List: A UML 2 Profile for Event Driven Process Chains. Proceedings of the 1st IFIP International Conference on Research and Practical Issues of Enterprise Information Systems (CONFENIS 2006), April 2006, Vienna, Austria, 2006, Springer Verlag, IFIP.

Beate List and Birgit Korherr: An Evaluation of Conceptual Business Process Modelling Languages. Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'06), April 2006, Dijon, France, ACM Press, 2006.

Beate List and Birgit Korherr: A UML 2 Profile for Business Process Modelling. Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Best Practices of UML (BP-UML 2005) at the 24th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2005), Klagenfurt, Austria, 2005, Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Veronika Stefanov, Beate List and Birgit Korherr: Extending UML 2 Activity Diagrams with Business Intelligence Objects. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (DaWaK 2005), August 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark, Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes 34

References

[Curtis, 1992]: Curtis, B., Kellner, M. and Over, J. Process Modeling. Communication of the ACM, Vol. 35, No.9, 1992.

[Hammer, 96]: Hammer, M.: Beyond Reengineering - How the process-centered organization is changing our work and our lives. Harper Collins Publischers, 1996.

[Jacobson 95]: Jacobson, I., Ericson, M., Jacobson, A.: The Object Advantage - Business Process Reengineering with Object Technology. ACM Press, Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1995.

[List, 06]: List B., Korherr B.: An Evaluation of Conceptual Business Process Modelling Languages, Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC‘06), April, Dijon, France, ACM Press, 2006.

35

36

Later BPMLs: Functional & Behavioural P.

37

Earlier BPMLs: Functional & Behavioural P.

Later BPMLs: Informational P.

38

39

Earlier BPMLs: Informational P.

Later BPMLs: Organisational P.

40

Earlier BPMLs: Organisational P.

41

Later BPMLs: Business Process Context P.

42

Earlier BPMLs: Business Process Context P.

43

Example BP, 2nd Hierarchy Level

4414

Time

Organisational Role

EPC BPMN

Example BP, 3rd Hierarchy Level

45

Time

Organisational Role

EPC BPMN

Documents

Business Process Modelling – Languages, Goals and Variabilities · 2018. 12. 5. · BPEL Metamodel Code Generation M1 MOF Scripts PIM PSM Code BPEL Model ATL Code input output Model