Abstract
Business process modeling and design, which has attracted much attention in recent years, emphasizes mainly graphical representation, usually without an underlying theory. The lack of a theoretical foundation causes several important issues to remain intuition- rather than theory -based. In particular, many process-modeling methods, being semi-formal, lack a mechanism for verifying the ”correctness” of a process in terms of completeness, consistency, and feasibility. The paper proposes a generic theory-based process modeling (GPM) framework and criteria for validity evaluation of process models. The framework, which is based on Bunge’s ontology, is formal and notation- independent. Validity is defined as the possibility of the process to achieve its goal. The paper discusses and characterizes causes for process invalidity and suggests ways to avoid these situations. The concepts of the framework and their usefulness for evaluating the validity of process models are demonstrated by applying them to a process taken from the Supply-Chain Operations Reference-model (SCOR).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Arns, M., Fischer, M., Kemper, P., Tepper, C.: Supply Chain Modelling and its Analytical Evaluation. Journal of the Operational Research Society 53, 885–894 (2002)
Bider, I., Johannesson, P., Perjons, E.: Goal-Oriented Patterns for Business Processes. In: Position paper for Workshop on Goal-Oriented Business Process Modeling, GBPM 2002 (2002)
Bunge, M.: Treatise on Basic Philosophy. In: Ontology I: The Furniture of the World, vol. 3, Reidel, Boston (1977)
Bunge, M.: Treatise on Basic Philosophy. In: Ontology II: A World of Systems, vol. 4, Reidel, Boston (1979)
Eshuis, R., Jansen, D.N., Weiringa, R.: Requirements-Level Semantics and model Checking of Object-Oriented Statecharts. Requirements Engineering 7, 243–263 (2002)
Eshuis, R., Weiringa, R.: Verification Support for Workflow Design with UML Activity Graphs. In: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 166–176. ACM Press, New York (2002)
Hammer, M., Champy, J.: Reengineering the Corporation – A manifesto for Business Revolution. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London (1994)
Humphreys, P.K., Lai, M.K., Sculli, D.: An Inter-organizational Information System for Supply Chain Management. International Journal of Production Economics 70(3), 245–255 (2001)
Johannesson, P., Perjons, E.: Design Principles for Process Modeling in Enterprise Application Integration. Information Systems 26, 165–184 (2001)
Kavakli, V., Loucopoulos, P.: Goal-Driven Business Process analysis Application in Electricity Deregulation. In: Pernici, B., Thanos, C. (eds.) CAiSE 1998. LNCS, vol. 1413, pp. 305–324. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Khomyakov, M., Bider, I.: Achieving Workflow Flexibility through Taming the Chaos. In: OOIS 2000 - 6th international conference on object oriented information systems, pp. 85–92. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Kueng, P., Kawalek, P.: Goal-based Business Process Models: Creation and Evaluation. BPMJ 3(1), 17–38 (1997)
Latella, D., Majzik, I., Massink, M.: Automatic Verification of a Behavioural Subset of UML Statechart Diagrams Using the Spin Model-checker. Formal Aspects of Computing 11, 637–664 (1999)
Paulson, D., Wand, Y.: An Automated Approach to Information Systems Decomposition. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 18(3), 174–189 (1992)
Scheer, A.W.: ARIS – Business Process Frameworks. Springer, Berlin (1999)
SCOR Reference model, Supply chain council, www.supply-chain.org
Soffer, P., Golany, B., Dori, D., Wand, Y.: Modeling Off-the-Shelf Information Systems Requirements: An Ontological Approach. Requirements Engineering 6, 183–199 (2001)
Soffer, P., Wand, Y.: On the Notion of Soft Goals in Business Process Modeling. Business Process Management Journal (to appear)
Stephens, S.: Supply Chain Operations Reference Model Version 5.0: a New Tool to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency and Achieve Best Practice. Information Systems Frontiers 3(4), 471–476 (2001)
Van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Verification of Workflow Nets. In: Azéma, P., Balbo, G. (eds.) ICATPN 1997. LNCS, vol. 1248, pp. 407–426. Springer, Heidelberg (1997)
Van der Aalst, W.M.P., And Ter Hofstede, A.H.M.: Verfication of Workflow Task Structure: A Petri-net-based Approach. Information Systems 25(1), 43–69 (2000)
Wand, Y., Weber, R.: An Ontological Model of an Information System. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering 16(11), 1282–1292 (1990)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Soffer, P., Wand, Y. (2004). Goal-Driven Analysis of Process Model Validity. In: Persson, A., Stirna, J. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3084. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25975-6_37
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25975-6_37
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22151-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-25975-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive