ENHANCING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESS

MODELLING

Nikos Karacapilidis and Emmanuel Adamides

IMIS Lab, MEAD, University of Patras, 26500 Rio Patras, Greece

Keywords: Collaborative Business Process Modelling, Argumentation, Simulation, Knowledge Management

Abstract: Business process modelling is widel

y considered as the most critical task in the development of enterprise

information systems that address the actual needs of a company. As business processes cross functional and

sometimes company boundaries, the coordinated inclusion of diverse perspectives and knowledge sources is

necessary. Towards this end, this paper presents an information systems framework that aims at the

exploitation of personalised knowledge through a structured process of collaborative and argumentative

business process model construction. By integrating an argumentation system that is specific to business

process modelling with a discrete-event modelling simulation tool, we provide the appropriate infrastructure

to increase the productivity and effectiveness of process design and re-engineering efforts. The paper

presents the design rationale, the structure and the functionality of the proposed framework through a

comprehensive example of collaborative work towards building a model of a typical business process in a

manufacturing company.

1 INTRODUCTION

To respond to the e-business challenge,

organizations need to gain a better understanding of

their business models and the existing information

technologies and applications. As noted in

(Jayaweera et al., 1999), new ways of working, new

forms of organization and new business models are

emerging to efficiently and effectively carry out e-

business transactions. Intra- and inter-organizational

collaboration is certainly an issue that needs to be

carefully addressed in the above transformations. At

the same time, information technologies are

progressively getting more business-centric, in that

they promote a more situational understanding of

communication and organizational changes

(Hirschheim et al., 1995). The aim of these

developments is to achieve an easier mapping of the

business processes into an information system, while

ensuring a rapid, reliable and low cost information

supply.

Towards this end, the first and most critical step

is to

model the existing organisational processes

with as much accuracy as possible. The modelling of

business processes, however, is a highly complex

task that has to clearly define, enable and manage

sources of information from both within the

organization as well as beyond its boundaries. In

addition, it has to address the totality of related

issues, such as process development and

deployment, execution, administration, monitoring

and reporting. Moreover, it has to reflect the

organization’s strategy and its relationships with

other organizations by integrating entire business

processes not only within the specific organization,

but also with their customers, suppliers and business

partners. Due to the above complexity, business

process modelling needs to be supported by

advanced information technology in its multiplicity

of aspects, such as the collection and dissemination

of information and knowledge produced by diverse

sources, the evaluation of alternative schemes, the

construction of shared meaning, and the feedback

learning processes (Clases and Wehner, 2002;

George et al., 1992). Since most processes cross the

boundaries of a single function, they can only be

considered in their entirety by exploiting the

collective cross-functional knowledge and

experience through an apparent process of

constructive discussion and collaboration among the

parties (managers) involved, as well as through

mechanisms that organize and maintain the shared

context of the issue. Modelling is a decision-making

process itself; as knowledge and experience reside in

a diverse set of organizational assets (including

employees, structure, culture and processes), a

403

Karacapilidis N. and Adamides E. (2004).

ENHANCING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING.

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 403-410

DOI: 10.5220/0002634604030410

 SciTePress

consistent approach for synthetic, problem-specific

use of tacit and codified knowledge for its

accomplishment is required. This advocates the

synergy between the decision support and

knowledge management processes of the

organization. Decision-making processes generate

new knowledge. For instance, the evidence that

justifies or challenges an alternative to a specific

business modelling problem, and the practices to be

followed or avoided after the evaluation of the

decision provide a refined understanding of the

problem. On the other hand, knowledge

management activities, such as knowledge

elicitation, representation and distribution influence

the creation of the decision model to be adopted,

thus enhancing the decision making process (Bolloju

et al., 2002).

A series of methodologies and systems has been

suggested in the literature to address the issue of

collaborative business modelling. The majority of

them concentrate on static, conceptual or activity,

models for visualisation purposes (e.g. CM (Sierhuis

and Selvin, 1996), or on how to combine simulation

models developed by different parties (e.g.

Sarjoughian et al., 2000; Miller et al., 2001). Only a

limited number of efforts has been reported towards

the collaborative development of business process

simulation models, which pay particular attention on

the collaboration process itself and its associated

social and knowledge construction dynamics

(Taylor, 2001).

The approach proposed in this paper extends the

latter stream of research by presenting an IS

framework for distributed and asynchronous

collaborative process simulation modelling. It aims

at strengthening the abovementioned synergy of

knowledge management and decision making by the

integration of argumentation and experimentation in

the process of understanding how an organisation

works and how it can be better supported by

information technology. The need for argumentation

is ubiquitous in most collaborative decision making

problems that can be solved through debate and

negotiation among a group of people. In such

contexts, conflicts of interest are unavoidable and

support for achieving consensus and compromise is

required. Each decision maker may formulate and

put forward his own (part of a) business model that

fulfils some goals at a specific acceptance level.

Moreover, he may have arguments in favour or

against alternative solutions, as well as preferences

and constraints imposed on them. Depending on the

role and the goals of each decision maker, subjective

estimates of the problem should be taken into

consideration. Independently of the model used for

the necessary decision making, argumentation is

valuable in shaping a common understanding of a

complex issue, such as a business process in its

entirety. It provides the means to decide which parts

of the information brought up by the decision

makers are of any use or should be discarded.

Furthermore, it has been shown that argumentation

may stimulate the participation of decision makers

and encourage constructive criticism (Karacapilidis

and Papadias, 2001).

On the other hand, in-vitro experimentation is the

missing part of many process design tools, not

paying the necessary attention to the phase of

process evaluation under different scenarios. In

conjunction with a discourse-based decision support

environment for business modelling, a simulation

model can map organizational knowledge onto

appropriate graphs, thus quantifying the problem

under consideration and providing a clearer

understanding of which alternative solution seems to

be more prominent at the moment. Moreover, it can

provide the means for an individual to conceptually

define a proposition and perform experiments with

(before asserting it as a dialogue item in the

modelling process). Taking into account the current

state of a discourse organized in an intelligent way,

individuals may thoroughly contemplate on their

next move to assure that it will have the best impact

to the ongoing discussion.

The remainder of this paper describes the

structure and operation of a platform that integrates

simulation and argumentation into a knowledge-

based tool for collaborative business process

simulation modelling. The paper concentrates on the

modelling phase. More specifically, Section 2

discusses related works highlighting their

contributions on the business modelling area, while

Section 3 illustrates the proposed integrated

framework. Section 4 presents the features and

functionalities of our approach by means of an

illustrative example. Finally, Section 5 concludes

the paper and outlines future work directions.

2 RELATED WORK

Real-life business process modelling may be

undertaken by a group of people, who represent

different units of the same or different organizations.

In this way, the diversity of perspectives and the

completeness of the model are augmented. However,

different people usually have different and probably

contradicting perspectives. Argumentative discourse

provides the means to accommodate different views

in the underlying process of considering,

coordinating and evaluating activities. Reaching a

high quality team decision requires thorough and

accurate understanding of the problem, marshalling

ICEIS 2004 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION

404

a realistic and acceptable range of alternatives and

careful consideration of the positive and negative

consequences that are associated with each

alternative considered (Hirokawa, 1992). In

addition to a well structured discourse output that

clearly addresses “know-what”, “know-why”,

“know-how” and “know-who” issues, the

precautionary manipulation of competing or even

conflicting problem interpretations, interests,

objectives, priorities and constraints leads to the

objective evaluation, synergy, stimulation and

construction of new knowledge. In this respect,

maximum exploitation and enhancement of the flow

of the underlying organizational knowledge are two

crucial requirements for efficient and effective

decision making in building a business process

model.

From the knowledge management perspective,

we can distinguish two different strategies towards

increasing the quality of business processing

modelling. The first addresses the codification of

knowledge by providing richer modelling

formalisms, whereas the second is focused on the

rigorous exploitation of personalised knowledge

(Hansen et al., 1999). In the context of the first

perspective, approaches originating from the area of

information systems development, such as the life-

cycle and the structured paradigm, or even

Prototyping and Rapid Application Development,

have been extremely criticized in that they do not

provide a sound understanding of business processes

and organizational change. To remedy this, new

methodologies emphasizing what people do while

communicating, how they create a common reality

by means of language and how communication

brings about the coordination of their activities (van

Reijswoud et al., 1999), have been proposed. These

have been basically founded on the

Language/Action perspective (Dignum et al., 1996)

and the Speech Act Theory (Searle, 1969), and

consider the utterance of various types of

communicative actions as the backbone of the

business process models.

More specifically, the Business Design Language

(Medina-Mora et al., 1992), based on the

Conversation for Action theory (Winograd and

Flores, 1986) that was conceptualized as an interplay

of requests and commitments during a collaborative

process, has as its basic modelling unit the so called

four-step action workflow protocol. SAMPO

(Auramäki et al., 1988) views organizational

activities as a series of speech acts that create,

maintain, modify, report and terminate

commitments, aiming at detecting the principles

needed in the set-up and control of commitments,

the inconsistencies in the coordination of

commitments and the possibilities for organizational

development that simplify communication and

control mechanisms. Business Action Theory

(Goldkuhl, 1996) has been proposed as a generic

model of business communication that explains

business processes as action and interaction, and can

be used as an interpretative framework for business

process reconstruction, evaluation and redesign.

Finally, DEMO (Dynamic Essential Modelling of

Organizations) provides a domain-independent

theory that describes and explains the

communicational dynamics of an organization

together with a modelling facility based on it (van

Reijswoud et al., 1999). DEMO considers the

business transaction as its key concept and views the

functioning of an organization from three levels,

namely the documental level, where the organization

is considered as a system of operators producing,

forwarding, storing and deleting documents, the

informational level, where the organization is

regarded as a system of processors that send, receive

and transform information, and the essential level,

where the organization is conceptualized as a

network of interrelated business transactions, which

in turn are composed of interrelated communicative

acts.

The above methodologies concentrate on the

representation of knowledge, but they do not

consider the knowledge creation process which is a

far more important issue. No matter how a richer

modelling formalism is used, if the process-related

knowledge is limited or incorrect, the model does

not correctly represent the real process.

On the other hand, IS infrastructure to support

people working in teams has been the subject of

interest for quite a long time. Such systems are

aiming at structuring group decision-making

processes and helping group members in reaching a

shared understanding of the issue by supporting

knowledge elicitation, knowledge sharing and

knowledge construction. Moreover, they exploit

intranet or internet technologies to connect decision-

makers in a way that encourages dialogue and

stimulate the exchange of tacit knowledge.

Representative systems falling in this category are

QUESTMAP (Conklin, 1996), EUCLID (Smolensky

et al., 1987), JANUS (Fischer et al., 1989), SEPIA

(Streitz

et al., 1989), QOC (Shum et al., 1993),

SIBYL (Lee, 1990), and BELVEDERE (Suthers,

2001). One can also add here attempts to use

Microsoft’s Netmeeting as a platform for combining

a chat-based dialogue with a simulation tool to

facilitate developer-client interactions during the

modelling process (Taylor, 2001), as well as

attempts to use tools of this category in connection

with static models (e.g. QUESTMAP in CM

(Sierhuis and Selvin, 1996)).

ENHANCING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING

405

With respect to business process modelling, all

the above works provide limited knowledge

management and decision-making support. Business

process modelling is a social process, and as such it

results in the formation of groups whose knowledge

is clustered around specific views of the problem.

Aiming at providing an integrated approach, this

paper presents a web-based system that provides

teams engaged in business process modelling with

the appropriate means to collaborate towards the

solution of the underlying issues. In addition to

providing a platform for brainstorming and

capturing organizational memory, our approach

augments teamwork in terms of knowledge

elicitation, sharing and construction, thus enhancing

the quality of the resulting model. This is due to its

structured model-specific language for conversation

and its mechanism for evaluation of alternatives.

Taking into account the input provided by the model

builders, the system constructs an illustrative

knowledge graph that is composed of the ideas

expressed so far, as well as their influence

connections. Moreover, through the integrated

simulation environment, discussants are able to

evaluate the model under construction by using

different performance measures.

3 THE OVERALL FRAMEWORK

Adopting the general systems view of an

organisational process, we consider entities,

activities, resources and decisions as the basic

building blocks used in collaborative business

process modelling (BPM). The architecture of our

framework is illustrated in Figure 1. The Discourse-

Based BPM Graph module provides users with the

appropriate structured and task-specific interface to

express their beliefs towards the construction of a

business process model in a modelling tool-

independent way. More specifically, users are able

to put forward positions regarding the activities that

are to be considered, their topology, the decision

points needed, and the resources involved.

Discussion about activities may be further extended

by placing positions conveying information

regarding their processing time, cost, requirements

for queues which may exist in front of them etc. In a

similar way, discussions about resources may be

further refined with the supply of information

regarding their type (i.e., consumable or not), the

activities they are used in, etc. For each of the above

BPM objects, users may also provide links to related

data and knowledge sources, such as MS Office or

Adobe Acrobat documents, html or xml files, etc.

Figure 1: The proposed BPM framework.

For the graph items, users are able to assert

arguments speaking in favour or against them. For

instance, a user x may insert an argument that further

validates his position about a certain decision point;

the same user may also put forward an argument

against an alternative decision point, which has been

earlier submitted by a user y. Argumentation may be

carried out in multiple levels, upon users’ wish. The

procedures that are responsible for the construction

and maintenance of the discourse graph build on the

functionalities of Hermes (Karacapilidis and

Papadias, 2001), a fully implemented web-based

system that supports argumentative discourse and

decision making.

On the other hand, the BPM Experimentation

Module builds on a commercial simulation tool,

namely Extend (

www.imaginethatinc.com), and

provides users with the appropriate interface to see

the progressive construction of the model. It should

be noted here that other process modelling and

simulation environments can be easily employed.

The construction of the model is undertaken by a

user (facilitator) who is proficient in the use of the

specific modelling environment. He constructs the

model by taking into account the current state of the

argumentation (Discourse-Based BPM Graph). The

other participants can load copies of the model and

experiment with them at their own pace. This

implicitly provides the means for data and

knowledge acquisition at any instance of the overall

process. Having considered the current status of the

discourse graph, users may contemplate and shape

their tacit or explicit knowledge according to the

model built so far. Then, they may either directly

“load” their input in the discourse or evaluate it

further by using the integrated experimentation tool.

In other words, users are able to make a series of

experimentations by simultaneously considering the

current status of the graph and the contributions they

intend to make. By analyzing the corresponding

results, they are able to explore the potential and the

dynamics of their contribution before putting it in

the graph and “share” it with their peers.

Obviously, the BPM Experimentation Module

can be deployed at any time, thus enabling

participants to get a quantified representation of the

ICEIS 2004 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION

406

current outcome of the discussion. The module

supports an extensive range of graphing and

visualization features for a clear and easy reflection

on the parameters of the model being considered.

The system’s Knowledge Base keeps an archive

of the position-based knowledge submitted so far

during the design and re-engineering of the business

process models of the company. Such knowledge

integrates information about the objects of the

business process model per se (i.e., activities,

resources, topologies, processing costs, etc.) with

information concerning the argumentative discourse

and the experimentations carried out around them.

This is handled through the definition of a specific

BPM ontology. Due to space limitations, this issue is

not comprehensively discussed in this paper. We

only mention here that at the current stage of the

system’s implementation, the above information is

stored in XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

Since XML does not fully support ontology

management issues, we are in the process of

considering alternative solutions. Probably, the most

promising one at the moment is BPML (Business

Process Modelling Language), which is actually an

XML Schema that provides a standard way to model

business processes. BPML has been proven to

enable the efficient handling of business process

modelling issues such as business rules, security

roles, distributed and compensating transactions, and

exception handling (

www.bpmi.org/bpml.esp).

The system’s knowledge base is actually the

place where the organizational knowledge regarding

business processes of the company is developed and

maintained, and serves storage and retrieval

purposes. Storage of positions being asserted in the

overall process takes place in an automatic way, that

is upon their insertion in the Discourse-Based BPM

Graph. On the other hand, retrieval of knowledge is

performed through appropriate interfaces, which aid

users explore the contents of the knowledge base

and exploit previously stored or generated

knowledge for their current needs. For instance,

when a user intends to argue about the modelling of

a particular process block, he may retrieve pieces of

knowledge concerning the performance of this very

block in an already constructed and validated

business process model, thus further justifying his

arguments.

4 AN EXAMPLE OF USE

This section presents the features and functionalities

of the proposed BPM framework through an

example concerning the modelling of a typical

“order fulfilment” process. Three managers, namely

the Sales Manager, the Factory Manager and the

Warehouse Manager, are involved in the above task.

The main window of Figure 2 (top left) illustrates an

instance of the related BPM graph. As shown,

managers have put forward their views (pieces of

knowledge) concerning the activities, resources,

topology, and decision points involved in the

process under consideration, the aim being to

“shape” the model that clearly represent the actual

process of the company. Referring to the activities of

the process, the Sales Manager had initially claimed

that “Order Processing” and “Dispatch from

Warehouse” are two necessary units; then, the

Factory Manager added “Production” as a third one.

The insertion of items related to the resources takes

place in a similar fashion. In the instance shown in

Figure 2, the resources proposed so far are “Office

Employee”, “Warehouse Employee” and “Fork

Lift”. Insertion of items related to the topology of

the model is accomplished through an appropriately

designed interface that keeps a dynamic list of the

activities proposed so far and enables users to easily

specify their order (i.e., to express knowledge of the

form “[activity_1] precedes [activity_2]”). In the

instance shown, the items “[Order Processing]

precedes [Dispatch from Warehouse]” and “[Order

Processing] precedes [Production]” have been

submitted by the Sales Manager and the Factory

Manager, respectively. Finally, insertion of items

related to the required decision points is also

performed through a user-friendly interface. In this

case, users have to specify when a decision should

be made. To do so, they “construct” an item by

employing the temporal relations holding among

activities (e.g., after, before, in parallel, etc.), as

well as logical operators (e.g., AND, OR, NOT, etc.).

The only such item submitted in our example

declares that a decision point is needed after the

“Order Processing” activity and before the

activities “Dispatch from Warehouse” and

“Production”.

As noted in Section 3, users are also able to

argue in favour or against each graph item.

Exploiting this feature, the Factory Manager has

asserted the argument “There are orders that cannot

be fulfilled from stock” to further justify his

previously inserted position about the need of a

“Production” activity. Note that the Sales Manager

has also submitted the argument “We do not

produce to order; we group orders”, which actually

speaks against the need of inclusion of the

“Production” activity in the model under

construction. To defeat this last statement (and

resolve the misunderstanding of the Sales Manager),

the Factory Manager submits the argument “The

model should show how a SPECIFIC order is

fulfilled”. According to the underlying

ENHANCING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING

407

ure 2: The interface of the discourse-

ased BPM

argumentation’s formal dialectics (for details, see

(Karacapilidis and Papadias, 2001)), the argument

“We do not produce to order; we group orders” is

now defeated and it is consider as “inactive”.

Graph items corresponding to activities and

resources are accompanied (at the end) by a

“magnifying glass” icon. By clicking on it, users

may both view the existing (more detailed)

information about the item and further refine it. For

instance, by clicking on the icon of the “Order

Processing” activity, the window appearing in the

bottom part of Figure 2 pops up, where pieces of

knowledge related to various characteristics of this

activity, such as its cost and processing time, are

shown. As in the main BPM graph, users may also

submit here arguments and alternative positions. In

the instance shown, the position “As in METHODS

S.A. report” has been defeated by the argument

“The report is based on last year’s salaries”, thus

the only position that stands for the activity’s cost is

to “Use data from METHODS S.A. report inflated

by 8%”. Similar features and functionalities are

provided for resources. The middle window of

Figure 2 pops up when a user clicks on the

“magnifying glass” icon of the resource “Warehouse

Employee”.

The information layout in the windows provided

by the BPM graph module can be modified upon a

user’s wish. There are buttons serving folding and

unfolding purposes, thus enabling one to concentrate

on the model’s part that he is interested in. This is

particularly useful in models of considerable length

and complexity. In addition, information about when

and by whom each graph item has been submitted

can be either shown (as in Figure 2) or hidden.

Based on the outcome of the dialogue shown in

Figure 2, the facilitator constructs the business

process model in the experimentation environment

(Figure 3). This model consists of the building

blocks discussed in the BPM graph as well as of

additional simulation-specific blocks, which may be

the subject of additional dialoguing (e.g., what is the

rate of order arrivals).

5 CONCLUSIONS

We have presented a framework for collaborative

business process modelling that offers a series of

argumentation and experimentation features to the

users involved. Through the interfaces provided,

users are able to deploy and share their knowledge,

the aim being to design the business model that suits

best to the requirements of the company.

Experimentation and argumentation have been

ICEIS 2004 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION

408

ure 3: The BPM Ex

erimentation module interface for the

rocess shown in Fi

ure 2.

considered as two complementary mental processes

that increase the quality of organizational decision

making while, at the same time, contribute to the

creation and maintenance of organizational

knowledge. We argue that the overall approach

provides users with the appropriate means to

overcome motivational (Davenport and Prusak,

1998) and cognitive (Huber, 2001) problems, which

are ubiquitous in team work settings. The BPM

graph and experimentation modules are easily

conceived and motivate participants for creative

knowledge sharing and evaluation.

The proposed framework is currently evaluated

through a series of real cases of process design and

re-engineering. Preliminary results show that its

adoption aids participants to define, understand,

document, analyze and improve business processes

through the visual process representation diagrams.

In addition, the interrelation of a business model’s

components is proven to be simple and easily

comprehensible, while participants may also check

their proposals for validity, correctness and

completeness. More significant, the framework

provides the means for effective communication on

what is the current process and where improvements

are possible, and enables all parties share a common

understanding.

Future work is directed towards the automation

of the inter-process communication (IPC) of the

BPM graph and experimentation modules. This will

be based on Extend’s connectivity abilities through

blocks that utilize the system’s IPC functions,

ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity), embedded

ActiveX or OLE (Object linking and Embedding)

objects and DLL (Dynamic-Link Library).

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