Authors:
Christine Natschläger
1
;
Verena Geist
1
;
Christa Illibauer
1
and
Robert Hutter
2
Affiliations:
1
Software Competence Center Hagenberg, Austria
;
2
Prologics IT GmbH, Austria
Keyword(s):
Business Process Management, Variability Modelling, Variant Management, Graph Transformation.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Business Process Management
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Engineering
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Methodologies, Processes and Platforms
;
Model Transformation
;
Model Transformations and Generative Approaches
;
Model-Driven Software Development
;
Models
;
Paradigm Trends
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Business process variability is an active research area in the field of business process management and deals with variations and commonalities among processes of a given process family. Many theoretical approaches have been suggested in the last years; however, practical implementations are rare and limited in their functionality. In this paper, we propose a new approach for business process variability based on well-known graph transformation techniques and with focus on practical aspects like definition of variation points, linking and propagation of changes, as well as visual highlighting of differences in process variants. The suggested concepts are discussed within a case study comprising two graph transformation systems for generating process variants; one supports variability by restriction, the other supports variability by restriction and by extension. Both graph transformation systems are proven to be globally deterministic, but differ regarding their complexity. The overa
ll approach is being implemented in the BPM suite of our partner company.
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