Integrated Modeling of Business Processes and Business Rules

Abstract

Two major components in current information system architectures in terms of modeling business requirements are business processes and business rules, both of which focus on creating a representation of the organization's policies and practices. The conceptual and pragmatic overlap between business process models and business rules indicates a need to model the two related aspects together. Over the past two decades the need to model business rules in an integrated manner with business processes has been argued theoretically as well as validated empirically, and a variety of integration methods have been developed. However, the following questions have not yet been answered by current research. First, while researchers have argued that integrated modeling of business process models and business rules can improve the understanding of business processes, this proposition has neither been theoretically analyzed, nor empirically evaluated.Second, there are situations in which a business rule is better modelled independently of a business process model, but also situations in which it is more appropriate to integrate the rule with a business process model. An important aspect of integrated modeling is the understanding of such situations and how they influence business rule representation.Thus, the aim of this thesis is to address the above two questions and then develop a decision framework that guides modelers on whether and how to integrate a business rule with a business process model. Accordingly, the thesis has the following three objectives:(1) theoretically analyze and empirically evaluate if and when business rule integration can improve business process model understanding, (2) identify and evaluate factors that will influence the decision of whether or not a business rule should be integrated with a business process model, and (3) develop a decision framework that guides modelers on whether or not, and if so how, to integrate a business rule with a business process model.

A model‐based solution for process modeling in practice environments: PLM4BS

“…Business rules can be represented in an integrated manner (ie, using graphical mechanisms in a process model; such as graphical links or text annotations) or in a separated manner (ie, using separate documents or rule engines, but the relations and connections of process models and the rules are not explicitly represented in the process models. 33 A fact that reinforces the positive feedback obtained from our evaluation is that we have recently carried out a R&D project 34 (named EMPOWER) whose goal is to deploy PLM 4 BS and its supporting tool in production to improve process management using MDE paradigm.…”

“…Process models mainly focus on the modeling of activities without taking into account aspects very important to support for the remaining stages of the BPM lifecycle. One of these forgotten aspects is the definition of business rules when process engineer models his/her processes . In practice, business rules play an indispensable role in the design and implementation of process models because they could be extracted from laws, policies, procedures, etc.…”

“…One of these forgotten aspects is the definition of business rules when process engineer models his/her processes. 33 In practice, business rules play an indispensable role in the design and implementation of process models because they could be extracted from laws, policies, procedures, etc. Business rules can be represented in an integrated manner (ie, using graphical mechanisms in a process model; such as graphical links or text annotations) or in a separated manner (ie, using separate documents or rule engines, but the relations and connections of process models and the rules are not explicitly represented in the process models.…”

Effects of Visualization Techniques on Understanding Inconsistencies in Automated Decision-Making

“…In the integrated approach, the metric information and the rules are visually presented in a unified manner. This can lower the extraneous cognitive load for processing the information, due to a minimization of the so-called split-attention effect [31,32,33]. This effect can occur when two related pieces of information are visually distributed and need to be linked mentally by the expert, which is not the case in the integrated approach.…”

“…Yet again, while this would advocate using a ranked visualization, the resulting split of information can be expected to introduce more cognitive load during information assimilation [31,33]. As both proposed approaches have advantages and disadvantages, a further investigation based on literature is difficult at this point.…”