Model-driven support for business process families with the Common Variability Language (CVL)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19153/cleiej.23.1.3Keywords:
Business Process Families, variability, Common Variability Language (CVL), Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Model Driven Engineering (MDE)Abstract
To achieve a business objective, organizations may require variants of the same business process that depend on the context in which they are enacted. Several proposals have emerged to deal with the variability of business processes, focused on the modeling of a so-called process family. The proposals try to avoid modeling each variant separately, which implies duplication and maintenance of the common parts. Few of them also focus on automatically deriving a process variant from the definition of a process family, which is a central and complex task. One of these proposals is the Common Variability Language (CVL), which allows representing variability transparently in a host language. This article aims to explore the use of CVL together with the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0) for modeling business process families, and the use of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) techniques for the automatic generation of process variants. We also present a graphical tool supporting these ideas and a qualitative evaluation of the variability approach by using the VIVACE framework.
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[2] W. M. P. van der Aalst, A. H. M. ter Hofstede, and M. Weske, “Business process management: A sur- vey,” in Business Process Management, International Conference, BPM 2003, Eindhoven, The Nether- lands, June 26-27, 2003, Proceedings, ser. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, W. M. P. van der Aalst, A. H. M. ter Hofstede, and M. Weske, Eds., vol. 2678. Springer, 2003, pp. 1–12.
[3] M. Reichert and B. Weber, Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems - Challenges, Methods, Technologies. Springer, 2012.
[4] M. L. Rosa, W. M. P. van der Aalst, M. Dumas, and F. Milani, “Business process variability modeling: A survey,” ACM Comput. Surv., vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 2:1–2:45, 2017.
[5] OMG, “Business Process Model and notation (BPMN) v2.0,” Object Management Group (OMG), Tech. Rep., 2013.
[6] G. Valenca, C. Alves, V. Alves, and N. Niu, “A systematic mapping study on business process vari- ability,” International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT), vol. 5, no. 1, 2013.
[7] S. Beydeda and V. Gruhn, Model-Driven Software Development. Springer-Verlag, 2005.
[8] OMG, “Common Variability Language (CVL). Revised Submission,” Object Management Group (OMG), Tech. Rep., 2012.
[9] Ø. Haugen and O. Øg ?ard, “BVR – Better Variability Results,” in System Analysis and Modeling: Models and Reusability. Springer, 2014, pp. 1–15.
[10] L. Pen ?a, D. Fernandez, and G. L ?opez, “BVR+BPMN 2.0 Editor,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://gitlab.fing.edu.uy/open-coal/bpmncvl
[11] C. Ayora, V. Torres, B. Weber, M. Reichert, and V. Pelechano, “VIVACE: A framework for the system- atic evaluation of variability support in process-aware information systems,” Information & Software Technology, vol. 57, pp. 248–276, 2015.
[12] D. Calegari, A. Delgado, and L. Pen ?a, “Automated generation of variants in business process families based on the Common Variability Language (CVL),” in 2019 XLV Latin American Computer Confer- ence, CLEI 2019. IEEE, 2019, pp. —.
[13] A. Delgado and D. Calegari, “Changing the focus of an organization: From information systems to process aware information systems,” in Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling - 16th Int. Conference, BPMDS, Proceedings, ser. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 214. Springer, 2015, pp. 53–67.
[14] O. M. Group, “Metaobject facility,” https://www.omg.org/mof/.
[15] C. Ayora, V. Torres, V. Pelechano, and G. H. Alf ?erez, “Applying cvl to business process variability management,” in Proceedings of the VARiability for You Workshop: Variability Modeling Made Useful for Everyone. ACM, 2012.
[16] F. Jouault, F. Allilaire, J. Bezivin, and I. Kurtev, “Atl: A model transformation tool,” Science of Computer Programming, vol. 72, no. 1–2, pp. 31 – 39, 2008.
[17] A. Delgado and D. Calegari, “BPMN 2.0 based modeling and customization of variants in business process families,” in 2017 XLIII Latin American Computer Conference, CLEI 2017. IEEE, 2017, pp. 1–9.
[18] M. Becker and R. Laue, “Analysing differences between business process similarity measures,” in Busi- ness Process Management Workshops. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012, pp. 39–49.
[19] N. Russell, W. M. P. van der Aalst, and A. H. M. ter Hofstede, Workflow Patterns: The Definitive Guide. MIT Press, 2016. [Online]. Available: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/workflow-patterns
[20] M. Reichert, S. Rechtenbach, A. Hallerbach, and T. Bauer, “Extending a business process modeling tool with process configuration facilities: The provop demonstrator,” in Proceedings of the Business Process Management Demonstration Track (BPMDemos 2009), ser. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 489. CEUR-WS.org, 2009.
[21] M. Terenciani, D. M. B. Paiva, G. Landre, and M. I. Cagnin, “Bpmn* - A notation for representation of variability in business process towards supporting business process line modeling,” in The 27th Inter- national Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, SEKE. KSI Research Inc. and Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School, 2015, pp. 227–230.
[22] R. M. Pillat, T. C. Oliveira, P. S. C. Alencar, and D. D. Cowan, “Bpmnt: A BPMN extension for specifying software process tailoring,” Information & Software Technology, vol. 57, pp. 95–115, 2015.
[23] H. Zhang, W. Han, and C. Ouyang, “Extending BPMN for configurable process modeling,” in Proceedings of the 21st ISPE Inc. International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, ser. Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering, vol. 1. IOS Press, 2014, pp. 317–330.
[24] V. Kulkarni and S. Barat, “Business process families using model-driven techniques,” IJBPIM, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 204–217, 2011.
[25] G. Gr ?oner, M. Boskovic, F. S. Parreiras, and D. Gasevic, “Modeling and validation of business process families,” Information Systems, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 709–726, 2013.
[26] A. Hallerbach, T. Bauer, and M. Reichert, “Capturing variability in business process models: the provop approach,” Journal of Software Maintenance, vol. 22, no. 6-7, pp. 519–546, 2010.
[27] M. D ?ohring and B. Zimmermann, “vbpmn: Event-aware workflow variants by weaving BPMN2 and business rules,” in Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling - 12th International Conference, BPMDS 2011, Proceedings, ser. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 81. Springer, 2011, pp. 332–341.
[28] A. Delgado, D. Calegari, and F. Garc ??a, “Modeling of software process families with automated gener- ation of variants (S),” in The 30th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering. KSI Research Inc. and Knowledge Systems Institute Graduate School, 2018, pp. 330–329.
[29] F. Puhlmann, A. Schnieders, J. Weiland, and M. Weske, “Variability mechanisms for process models,” PESOA-Report TR 17/2005, Process Family Engineering in Service-Oriented Applications (PESOA). BMBF-Project, Tech. Rep., 2005.
[30] E. Santos, J. Pimentel, J. Castro, J. S ?anchez, and O. Pastor, “Configuring the variability of business process models using non-functional requirements,” in Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling - 11th International Workshop, BPMDS 2010, Proceedings, ser. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol. 50. Springer, 2010, pp. 274–286.
[31] I. Machado, R. Bonif ?acio, V. Alves, L. Turnes, and G. Machado, “Managing variability in business processes: An aspect-oriented approach,” in Proceedings of the 2011 International Workshop on Early Aspects, ser. EA ’11. ACM, 2011, pp. 25–30.
[32] T. Nguyen, A. Colman, and J. Han, “Modeling and managing variability in process-based service compositions,” in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing, ser. ICSOC’11. Springer, 2011, pp. 404–420.
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Copyright (c) 2020 Daniel Calegari, Andrea Delgado, Leonel Peña
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