Towards Completeness and Lawfulness of Business Process Models

Abstract

We address the existing gaps between business process models, enterprise architecture (EA) models and, external regulations that hinder completeness and lawfulness of business process models. As a solution we propose a high-level architecture for business process knowledge management that bridges the identified gaps. We use de-facto industry standards for modelling business processes and EA-BPMN and ArchiMate. We propose to use Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) model as a theoretical foundation for storing business process knowledge represented in BPMN and ArchiMate models and storing elements that address lawfulness of the models. BWW model provides a framework for systematically storing internally maintained process knowledge (models) and externally maintained knowledge (regulations), and supporting completeness and lawfulness of the models. Thus, the main contributions of our approach is supporting completeness and lawfulness of business process models and supporting the creation of information services to increase efficiency in the business process modelling context.

Towards Controlling Lawful States and Events in Business Process Models

“…We evaluate how BPMN and ArchiMate elements support BWW model using definitions from BPMN specification [1], ArchiMate specification [4], and definition of BWW elements from [11], and we base this evaluation on previous research presented in [10] and [11]. This step extends the results presented in [12] and [13] [20]. This step is a part of further work.…”

“…This paper presents a continued research based on the previous published papers ( [12], [13], and [19]) concerning BPMN, ArchiMate and BWW linkage, and gaps between BWW, ArchiMate and BPMN that must be addressed for lawful business process and enterprise architecture models. The original contribution of this paper is the method for defining conceivable and lawful state and event spaces in linked BPMN-ArchiMate models.…”

“…BWW model defines elements of information system that are supported by BPMN and ArchiMate modelling languages as well as a set of elements that are not supported by these standards (see [11] and [13] 3. Provides a possibility to link BPMN and ArchiMate model elements using relationship types that are partially described in Table 1.…”

“…BWW model contains general concepts that are necessary for description of information systems [10]. A number of studies have been dedicated to evaluate different versions of BPMN against BWW model and have revealed limitations of BPMN to depict some important aspects of business processes: e.g., describing lawful states and events in BPMN models (see [11], [12], [13] for detailed analysis). BWW model allows straightforwardly addressing: (1) states of things, (2) lawful state space and lawful event space of things, (3) conceivable state space and conceivable event space of things, (4) state law that restricts values of the properties of things to a lawful subset, and (5) lawful transformations that define which events in things are lawful.…”

“…BWW model allows straightforwardly addressing: (1) states of things, (2) lawful state space and lawful event space of things, (3) conceivable state space and conceivable event space of things, (4) state law that restricts values of the properties of things to a lawful subset, and (5) lawful transformations that define which events in things are lawful. The previous research has shown that these aspects are supported to the full extent neither in BPMN nor in ArchiMate (see [11], [12], [13]). Thus there is a gap between BPMN-ArchiMate models and a set of conceivable and lawful states and events that motivates the research presented in this paper: we state that BWW aspects missing from BPMN and ArchiMate metamodels are essential for supporting compliance of business process models and must be addressed in meta-models.…”