Modelling families of business process variants: A decomposition driven method |
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Affiliation: | 1. Central European Institute of Technology – Veterinary Research Institute, Hudcova 70, 621 00 Brno, Czech Republic;2. Repromeda, Centre for Assisted Reproduction, Vinicni 235, 615 00 Brno, Czech Republic;1. NICTA, 13 Garden St, Eveleigh, NSW 2015, Australia;2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia;3. Institute of Information and Decision Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, PR China;4. China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, PR China |
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Abstract: | Business processes usually do not exist as singular entities that can be managed in isolation, but rather as families of business process variants. When modelling such families of variants, analysts are confronted with the choice between modelling each variant separately, or modelling multiple or all variants in a single model. Modelling each variant separately leads to a proliferation of models that share common parts, resulting in redundancies and inconsistencies. Meanwhile, modelling all variants together leads to less but more complex models, thus hindering on comprehensibility. This paper introduces a method for modelling families of process variants that addresses this trade-off. The key tenet of the method is to alternate between steps of decomposition (breaking down processes into sub-processes) and deciding which parts should be modelled together and which ones should be modelled separately. We have applied the method to two case studies: one concerning the consolidation of existing process models, and another dealing with green-field process discovery. In both cases, the method produced fewer models with respect to the baseline and reduced duplicity by up to 50% without significant impact on complexity. |
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Keywords: | Business process modelling Business process variant Business process model consolidation |
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