Modelling Flexible Collaborative Process:
The VCP2M Approach
Fatma Ellouze
1
, Mohamed Amine Chaabane
1
, Eric Andonoff
2
and Rafik Bouaziz
1
1
MIRACL, University of Sfax, Route de l’aéroport, BP 1088, 3018 Sfax, Tunisia
2
IRIT, University of Toulouse 1, 2 rue du Doyen Gabriel Marty, 31042 Toulouse Cedex, France
Keywords: Collaborative Process, Flexibility, Version, VCP2M.
Abstract: This paper addresses the collaborative processes flexibility issue, which is an important issue in Business
Process (BP) Management. Indeed, the strong competition in which organizations are involved lead them to
frequently change and adapt their collaborative processes to face new client requirements or to benefit from
new collaboration opportunities. More precisely, this paper proposes to adopt a version-based approach to
support the modelling of flexible collaborative processes. First it introduces the VBP2M meta-model
(Version of BP meta-model) supporting the modelling of flexible internal (i.e., intra-organizational)
processes, and then explains how to extend it to define the VCP2M meta-model (Version of Collaborative
Processes meta-model) to design flexible collaborative processes, which correspond to processes crossing
the boundaries of companies. A specific case study illustrates the modelling of collaborative process
versions as instances of VCP2M.
1 INTRODUCTION
Process flexibility is a major challenge that process-
aware information systems have to address before
their definitive acceptance and use in companies
(Reichert and Weber, 2012). This is mainly due to
the more and more dynamic, open and competitive
context in which companies operate, which lead
them to frequently change both their centralized and
collaborative processes. Indeed change support is
important for processes running within a single
company, but also for Collaborative Processes (CPs)
crossing the boundaries of companies. More
precisely, a CP is a set of independent processes,
where several partners are involved in one global
process and each partner has its own process (Aalst,
2000).
(Reichert and Weber, 2012) have proposed a
taxonomy for process flexibility. This taxonomy
serves as a basis for evaluating the ability of systems
and models to support both centralized and
collaborative process flexibility. More particularly,
this taxonomy identifies four types of flexibility: (i)
flexibility by variability, for representing a process
differently, depending on the context of its
execution, (ii) flexibility by adaptation, for handling
occasional situations or exceptions which have not
been necessarily foreseen in process schemas, (iii)
flexibility by evolution, for handling changes in
processes, which require occasional or permanent
modifications in their schemas, and finally (iv)
flexibility by looseness, for handling knowledge
intensive processes whose schemas are not known a
priori and which correspond to non-repeatable,
unpredictable, and emergent processes. Such
processes require loose specifications.
Flexibility of processes has been investigated in
the context of centralized processes. We distinguish
between two different approaches: the variant-based
approach and the version-based approach. In the
variant-based approach, the main notion is the
notion of variant, which is an adjustment at run-time
of a process schema (Rosemann and Aalst, 2007),
(Hallerbach et al., 2010). This approach mainly
deals with flexibility by variability, which is one of
the four types of flexibility introduced in (Reichert
and Weber, 2012). In the version-based approach,
the notion of version has been introduced for
capturing process changes over time (Zhao and Liu,
2007), (Dadam and Reichert, 2009), (Chaâbane,
2012). This approach is interesting since it addresses
flexibility by evolution as the different significant
changes on processes are modelled within process
versions, flexibility by variability since it is possible
56
Ellouze F., Amine Chaabane M., Andonoff E. and Bouaziz R..
Modelling Flexible Collaborative Process: The VCP2M Approach.
DOI: 10.5220/0005544000560063
In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B-2015), pages 56-63
ISBN: 978-989-758-113-7
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
to model alternative versions, depending on the
context, and flexibility by adaptation if adaptation
can be defined at design-time.
Process flexibility has been less investigated in
the context of CPs. In such a context, flexibility may
be related to the availability of involved processes or
to the update of schema collaboration. Research
efforts about CP flexibility mainly address process
availability in the context of dynamic inter-
organizational processes. Dynamic inter-
organizational processes refer to processes where the
different partners involved are not necessarily
known at design-time, or can evolve at run-time
(Chebbi et al., 2006), (Andonoff et al., 2005). The
provided solutions support finding new partners
offering requested services, along with negotiation,
contracting and service execution in separate or
comprehensive frameworks.
The main contributions addressing the update of
CP schemas have been done in the SOA context
(Boukhedouma et al., 2012a), (Boukhedouma et al.,
2012b). These contributions mainly consider
chained execution and subcontracting CPs, and they
provide some patterns for service adaptation. They
deal with CPs flexibility by evolution only keeping
the last CP schema, but they do not address
flexibility by variability and flexibility by
adaptation.
Therefore, this paper addresses CP flexibility
issue focusing on the update of CP schemas, taking
into account not only chained execution and
subcontracting CPs but also loosely coupled CPs
(Aalst, 2000). It advocates a version-based approach
as versions are known to be a powerful technique to
address process flexibility and more precisely
flexibility by evolution, flexibility by variability and
flexibility by adaptation. In this paper we extend the
VBP2M meta-model (Versioned of Business Process
Meta-Model) (Chaâbane, 2012), which is a previous
contribution for modelling centralized process
flexibility using the versioning technique and
considering the main perspectives of processes.
Moreover, flexible centralized processes modelled
as instances of VBP2M can be graphically
visualized, simulated and validated (Ben Said et al.,
2010) (Ellouze et al., 2013). Unfortunately VBP2M
does not address the flexibility of CPs. Thus we
propose VCP2M (Version of Collaborative Process
Meta Model), an extension of VBP2M supporting
the modelling of versions of CPs.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2
introduces the background of the paper, i.e., the
version concept and the VBP2M meta-model for
modelling flexible centralized processes. Section 3
presents the necessary concepts for CPs and
illustrates these concepts within the Subsea Pipeline
CP example that will be used throughout the
remainder of the paper. Section 4 is dedicated to the
presentation of VCP2M, an extension of VBP2M for
flexible CPs modelling using versions. More
precisely, this section introduces the VCP2M meta-
model and illustrates how to model two versions of
the Subsea Pipeline example by instantiation of this
meta-model. Finally, section 5 recaps our
contribution and gives some perspectives for future
works.
2 BACKGROUND: MODELLING
FLEXIBLE PROCESSES
This section presents VBP2M (Version of Business
Process Meta-Model), our previous contribution
supporting flexible centralized process modelling
(Chaâbane, 2012). However, this section foremost
introduces the notion of version as it is defined in
database and software engineering fields, before
presenting VBP2M.
2.1 The Version Concept
A version corresponds to one of the significant states
an entity (in the context of the paper, a process, an
activity…) may have during its life cycle.
When created, an entity is described by only one
version. The definition of every new entity version is
done by derivation from a previous one. Such
versions are called derived versions. Derived entity
versions are linked by a derivation link: they form a
derivation hierarchy. Moreover, several versions
may be derived from the same previous one. They
are called alternative versions (or variants).
We defend that the notion of version subsumes
the notion of variant, which rather corresponds to the
different alternative’ states (i.e., states representing
choices) an entity may have during its life cycle.
When considering versions, we also model
‘evolutionary’ states (i.e., states representing the
evolution of an entity, independently from any
choice) in addition to the ‘alternative’ ones. Thus,
with using versions, it is possible to address
flexibility by evolution as the different significant
changes on processes are modelled within process
versions, flexibility by variability since it is possible
to model alternative versions, depending on the
context, and even flexibility by adaptation if
adaptation can be defined at design-time.
ModellingFlexibleCollaborativeProcess:TheVCP2MApproach
57
2.2 VBP2M
Figure 1 below gives an UML class diagram of
VBP2M.
Figure 1: VBP2M for Modelling Flexible Processes using
Versions.
This meta-model has the following features: it
supports the modelling of the five main perspectives
of processes, and, as defended in (Chaâbane et al.,
2009), it is simple as it only defines the core (basic)
concepts of each of these perspectives. Moreover, it
distinguished between versionable classes (i.e.,
classes for which we handle versions) which are
visualized in grey, from normal classes (i.e., classes
for which we do not handle versions), which are
visualized in white.
The main concepts of VBP2M are Process,
Activity, Control Pattern, Operation, Informational
Resource and Role. A process performs activities
which can be atomic or composite. The first activity
of a process is explicitly linked to it via the
start_with_CA or start_with_AA relationships, and
the next activities are found via the
is_composed_of_CA or is_composed_of_VAA
relationships. A composite activity is composed by
other activities, which may be in turn composite or
atomic, and which are coordinated by control
patterns. Control pattern may be conditional (e.g., if,
while, etc.), or not (e.g., sequence, fork, etc.). An
atomic activity executes one or several operations
(from the operation perspective). It has a start
condition (precondition), final conditions (post-
conditions) and manipulates (i.e., consumes and/or
produces) informational resources (form the
informational perspective). An atomic activity is
performed by role, which can be played by actors
belonging to organizational unit (from the
organizational perspective).
Moreover, a versioning pattern is introduced to
make some classes of VBP2M versionable, i.e., able
to handle versions. For each of these classes, the
versioning pattern permits to model both entity of
the versionable concept (e.g., Process) and
corresponding versions (e.g., Version of Process). In
addition, two relationships are introduced: (i) the
is_version_of relationship links a versionable
concept with its corresponding versions and, (ii) the
derived_from relationship describes version
derivation hierarchy between versions of a same
versionable concept. This later relationship is
reflexive and the semantic of the both sides of the
relationship are: a version (SV) succeeds another
one in the derivation hierarchy and, a version (PV)
precedes another one in the derivation hierarchy.
Regarding versionable concepts, VBP2M
proposes to model versions for concepts belonging
to the five perspectives of processes. The idea is to
keep change history for each concept involved in the
description of the way business is carried out.
Therefore, the versioning pattern is used to model
versions of the following concepts: Process,
Activity, Operation, Informational resource, Role
and Organizational Unit, respectively belonging to
the process, functional, operation, informational and
organizational perspectives of processes. (Chaâbane,
2012) defends the idea that versioning these
concepts is enough to guide companies facing the
fast changing environment in which they are
involved nowadays.
3 COLLABORATIVE
PROCESSES: CONCEPTS AND
RUNNING EXAMPLE
First, this section introduces the main concepts of
CPs and then illustrates these concepts within the
Subsea Pipeline CP, from the TPS Tunisian
petroleum company.
3.1 Concepts for CPs
As indicated in the introduction, a CP is a set of
independent partner processes interacting together to
reach a common goal corresponding to a value-
added service. Such a process is not in control of a
single partner process, it is enacted by the different
partner processes involved in the collaboration.
ICE-B2015-InternationalConferenceone-Business
58
These partner processes may belong to one or
several companies. If they belong to a single
company, we are in an intra-organizational context
(centralized context), while if they belong to
different companies we are in an inter-organizational
process context (collaborative process context),
crossing the boundaries of each company.
In a CP, the different partner processes playing
different roles in the collaboration exchange
messages which correspond to synchronisation
activities between them (Aalst, 2000). Thus we
distinguish the activities supporting message
exchange, called public activities, from the ones
which do not support message exchange. Public
activities define how the different partner processes
interact together: some of them correspond to the
sending of messages while others correspond to the
receiving of messages. Other activities correspond to
private activities; they are performed to achieve a
specific goal within a partner process (they
correspond to pieces of work of the partner process).
Consequently, for each partner process, we
distinguish between public and private processes
(Chebbi et al., 2006): a public process gathers the
public activities, i.e. the send and receive activities
of the considered partner process, while a private
process gathers the private activities of the
considered partner process, which are local to the
partner.
In addition, we define, for each partner process, a
local view of the CP. This local view is composed of
the (public and private) processes of the considered
partner, and of the public processes of the other
partners to which the considered partner directly
interacts. Finally, we define the global view of the
whole CP as the merge of all the public processes of
the involved partner processes. The section below
will illustrate these notions within the Subsea
Pipeline example.
3.2 Subsea Pipeline CP Example
The Subsea Pipeline CP from the TPS Tunisian
petroleum company involves two partner processes:
TPS, which needs to replace any one of its old
damaged subsea pipeline, and SAROST, which will
be solicited for this replacement. The CP is the
following.
The petroleum company TPS initiates the
process and prepares a Tender Specifications (TS)
describing the requested pipeline replacement, and
submits it to SAROST, a company specialized in
subsea pipeline installing and maintenance. Then,
SAROST carries out a feasibility study and answers
either in a positive way sending back to TPS a quote
for the pipeline replacement, or in a negative way
explaining why it refuses to do the requested job.
When the quote is received and accepted by TPS,
then it prepares an order for replacement and sends it
back to SAROST which proceeds to the subsea
pipeline replacement. To do so, SAROST first
specifies the necessary team and equipment and then
proceeds to the assembling and the welding of pipes
on shore by welders and controller’s inspectors. The
next activity is the laying of pipes offshore by the
divers. Finally, when the installation is over, tests
have to be performed and then an acceptance
certificate is prepared and sent to TPS which signs it
in turn. Note that the assembling and welding, laying
and subsea control have to be repeated until reaching
the pipeline length. Figures 2 and 3 below illustrate
the different private views of partner processes.
To illustrate the concepts introduced in section
3.1 within the Subsea Pipeline example, we give
below the process of TPS in Figure 2, the local view
of the collaboration for TPS in Figure 3 and the
global view of the collaboration for both TPS and
SAROST in Figure 4. The BPMN notation (OMG,
2011) is used to illustrate these concepts.
Section 4 below deals with modelling of versions
of collaborative processes using VCP2M, an
extension of VBP2M taking into account CP
concepts. To illustrate CP version modelling, we
extend the previous example considering a second
version of this CP.
In this new version, TPS subcontracts the activity
Figure 2: TPS’s Process.
ModellingFlexibleCollaborativeProcess:TheVCP2MApproach
59
Figure 3: TPS’s Local View.
Figure 4: Global View of the Collaboration for both TPS and SAROST.
Figure 5: COff’s Local View.
of tender specifications preparation to a consulting
office. Thus the new COff (Consulting Office)
partner is added and the TPS’s private activity
Prepare TS is replaced with public activities asking
COff to prepare the tender specification and
receiving the result of this preparation. From the
COff point of view, we have two public activities:
receiving a tender specification request and sending
the prepared tender specification. Note that the
public activity Receive and Send TS is a second
version of the activity Send TS from the first version
of the collaboration. In order to illustrate the notion
of local view in a comprehensive way, we provide in
Figure 5 COff’s local view of the collaboration.
The global view of this second collaborative
process version consists of the public process of
TPS, the public process of SAROST and the public
process of COff.
4 MODELLING VERSIONS OF
COLLABORATION USING
VCP2M
This section presents the VCP2M meta-model for
modelling flexible CPs. It also illustrates how to use
the meta-model to define the two versions of the
Subsea Pipeline CP.
ICE-B2015-InternationalConferenceone-Business
60
4.1 The VCP2M Meta-model
Figure 6 below presents the new obtained meta-
model in terms of UML classes and relationships.
Added classes to VBP2M are in grey while added
relationships are in blue.
The added concepts in VCP2M are
Collaboration, Message, Partner Role, Public
Atomic Activity, Private Atomic Activity,
Component and Event. Note that the notion of view
is not explicitly represented as it is deduced from the
public and private processes of partners involved in
the collaboration. In the same vein, public and
private processes are not represented within a
specific concept as they can be deduced from the
public and private activities of the corresponding
process.
Figure 6: VCP2M for Modelling Flexible CPs using
Versions.
First, we have extended VBP2M with the concept of
event, which is essential for modelling both intra-
organizational and collaborative processes. Indeed,
events define when processes or activities have to be
executed: VBP2M models this dimension only
considering availability of informational resources
(Chaâbane, 2012), but it is undeniable that the event
notion is broader and has to be introduced in the
meta-model as a first class citizen concept. Thus we
introduced the notions of event and of version of
event, this latter being introduced to model the
different ways an event can be concretized in a
process. We consider two specific properties for
versions of events: its semantics and when it occurs.
More precisely, an event may be a temporal event, a
message event, an exception event, a cancelation
event, a none event (without any specific semantics).
On the other side, an event may occur at the
beginning of process execution (it is a start event),
at the end of process execution (it is an end event),
or it may occur in the course of process execution (it
is an intermediate event). In addition, a message
event can also refer to an information resource,
attached to the message. As a consequence of event
and version of event notions, we introduced the class
Component as a super class of the classes Activity
and Event, along with the relationship
is_composed_of to model the process and functional
perspectives of process versions.
Then we have added new concepts to model
versions of CPs. We have defined the classes Private
Atomic Activity and Public Atomic Activity as
subclasses of Version of Atomic Activity to model
versions of public and private activities for
processes. Regarding collaborations, we have
introduced the classes Collaboration and Version of
Collaboration. In addition, collaborations involve
two or more partner processes, each playing a role in
the collaboration. This is described within the
relationship involve and the associative class Version
of Partner Role, defined as a subclass of the class
Version of Role. Finally, collaborations are achieved
by exchange of messages, i.e., by sending and
receiving messages. Thus we introduced the classes
Message and Version of Message. More precisely,
public atomic activities are source or target of
messages (represented using the receive and the send
relationships). Each message may refer to one or
more informational resources.
To sum up, we manage versions for only
collaborations, messages, and roles that partner
processes play in collaborations. Indeed, we have to
keep changes history representing both evolution
and variability, to define the way collaborations are
modified according to the moving economic context
in which participating partners are involved. In the
same vein, we have to keep the way messages
change (mainly when the referred informational
resources change) along with the changing roles that
partners can play in collaborations.
4.2 Subsea Pipeline Collaborative
Process Modelling using VCP2M
This sub-section gives in Figure 7 a partial
instantiation of VCP2M to model the two versions
of the Subsea Pipeline CP presented in section 3.2.
The first version of the CP (identified by V1C1 in
Figure 7), involves two partners (versions of
processes), respectively V1P1 (which refers to the
first version of the TPS process) and V1P2 (which
ModellingFlexibleCollaborativeProcess:TheVCP2MApproach
61
refers to the first version of the SAROST process).
V1P1 starts with a composite activity, CA1, which is
a sequence involving the first version of TPS’ start
event, the activities to be performed, and the first
version of TPS’ end event. Due to lack of space and
for clarity reasons, we only show the start event of
TPS, V1E1, along with the two first activities of
TPS: Prepare TS represented as the version V1AA1,
and Send TS, represented as the version V1AA2. We
do not detail the others activities but just indicate
that another composite activity is used to indicate
that, after Send TS, there is a choice to perform.
Regarding V1P2, its starts with a composite activity,
CA5, which is a sequence involving the first version
of SAROST’ start event, the activities to be
performed, and the first version of SAROST end
event. For the same reasons, we only focus on
SAROST’ start event and the Receive TS and
Feasibility Study activities, represented as versions
respectively denoted as V1AA4 and V1AA5.The
first version of the collaboration, V1C1, involves the
two versions of TPS’s and SAROST’s processes,
V1P1 and V1P2 (green relationship), and each of the
process plays a specific role in the collaboration
(respectively customer and supplier). In addition, the
message M1 is exchanged in this collaboration
(green relationship); it refers to the V1IR1
informational resource and it is involved in the
receive/send relationship (between V1AA2 and
V1AA4), represented in blue.
The second version of the collaboration involves
(red relationship) a second version of TPS’s process
(V2P1), the first version of the SAROST’s process
(V1P2, it means it is the same version of this process
involved in the two versions of the collaboration),
and the first version of the COff’s process (V1P3).
This version is a sequence of P3 start event, three
versions of the Receive Request for TS, Prepare TS,
and Send TS activities, and P3’ end event. Regarding
V1P2, it is a sequence of P1’ start event, V1AA3
(first version of Send Request for TS activity), and
V2AA2 (second version of Send TS activity, derived
from V1AA2). Because of space limitation, we do
not detail anymore this process version. In this
collaboration, two messages are exchanged (red
relationship): V1M1 exchanged between TPS and
SAROST as in the first collaboration version, and
V1M2, correspond to a message exchanged between
the two public activities Send Request for TS
(V1AA3) from TPS and Receive Request for TS
(V1AA6) from COff (represented in blue).
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented VCP2M, a meta-model
addressing CP flexibility issue. VCP2M extends
VBP2M, a previous contribution for modelling
flexible business processes using versions. More
precisely, VCP2M extends VBP2M introducing
Figure 7: Partial Instantiation of VCP2M.
ICE-B2015-InternationalConferenceone-Business
62
necessary concepts for modelling versions of
collaborations such as participant, message, private
and public processes for collaborations. The paper
also highlights how VCP2M can be instantiated to
model versions of collaboration for the Subsea
Pipeline example.
The advantages of VCP2M are the following.
First, the notion of version is well-suited to address
process flexibility in a collaborative context since it
supports the modelling of process evolution,
variability and adaptation. Second, VCP2M
considers chained, subcontracting and loosely
coupled CPs whose control may be centralised or
distributed (Breu et al., 2013). Third, VCP2M
defines the core concepts of collaborative process
modelling (Malekan and Afsarmanesh, 2013).
As future works, we have planned to address
dynamic aspects of VCP2M defining operations for
both managing collaboration versions, and
automatically deducing from public and private
activities of processes, the corresponding private and
public processes along with their local and global
views. In addition we will also introduce the notion
of context for collaborations in order to feature them
and ease their reuse.
REFERENCES
Aalst, W. M., 2000. Loosely coupled inter-organizational
workflows: modeling and analyzing workflows
crossing organizational boundaries, Information &
Management, vol. 37, n°2, pp. 67–75.
Aalst, W. M., 2004. Business Process Management
Demystified: a tutorial on Models, Systems and
standard for workflow Management, Lectures on
concurrency and Petri Nets, Advances in Petri-Nets,
LNCS 3098, 2004. pp 1-65.
Hallerbach, A., Bauer, T., Reichert, M., 2010. Capturing
Variability in Business Process Models: the Provop
Approach. Software Maintenance, vol. 22, n°6-7, pp.
519–546.
Andonoff, E., Bouzguenda, L., Hanachi, C., 2005.
Specifying Web Workflow Services for Finding
Partners in the Context of Loose Inter-organizational
Workflow, Int. Conference on Business Process
Management, Nancy, France, pp. 120–136.
Ben Said, I., Chaabane, MA., Andonoff, E., 2010. A
Model Driven Engineering Approach for Modelling
Versions of Business Processes using BPMN. Int.
Conference on Business Information Systems, Berlin,
Germany, pp. 254–267.
Boukhedouma, S., Oussalah, M., Alimazighi, Z., Tamzalit,
D., 2012. Service based Approach for Adaptability of
Workflow Models - the Subcontracting Architecture.
Int. Conference on Enterprise Information Systems,
Wroclaw, Poland, pp. 224–231.
Boukhedouma, S., Oussalah, M., Alimazighi, Z., Tamzalit,
D., 2012. Adaptability of Service Based Workflow
Models the Chained Execution Architecture. Int.
Conference on Business Information Systems, Vilnius,
Lithuania, pp. 96–107.
Breu, R., Dustdar, S., Eder, J., Huemer, C., Kappel, G.,
Kopke, J., Weber, B., 2013. Towards Living Inter-
Organizational Processes. Int. Conference on Business
Informatics, Vienna, Austria, pp. 363–366.
Chebbi, I., Dustdar, S., Tata, S., 2006. The view-based
approach to dynamic inter-organizational workflow
cooperation, Data & Knowledge Engineering, vol. 56,
n°2, pp. 139–173.
Chaâbane, MA., Andonoff, E., Bouzguenda, L., Bouaziz,
R., 2009. Versions to Address Business Process
Flexibility Issue, Int. Conf. on Advances in Databases
and Information Systems, Riga, Latvia, pp. 2–14.
Chaâbane, MA., 2012. De la modélisation à la
spécification des processus flexibles: une approche
basée sur les versions. PhD thesis dissertation.
University of Toulouse, September 2012.
Dadam, P., Reichert, M., 2009. The ADEPT Project: a
decade of research and development for Robust and
Flexible Process Support. Computer Science – R&D,
vol. 23, pp. 81–97.
Fdhila, W., Rinderle-Ma, S., Reichert, M., 2012. Change
propagation in collaborative processes scenarios. Int.
Conference on Collaborative Computing, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, USA, pp. 452–461.
Ellouze, F., Chaâbane, M.A., Bouaziz, R., Andonoff, E.,
2013. Modelling and Simulation Versions of Business
Process using Petri Nets. Int. Conference on Advances
in Databases, Knowledge, and Data Applications,
Sevilla, Spain, pp. 150-158.
OMG 2011. Business Process Model and Notation
(BPMN), Version 2.0. Available at: http://www.omg.
org/spec/BPMN/2.0/.
Reichert, M., Weber, B., 2012. Enabling Flexibility in
Process-Aware Information Systems: Challenges,
Methods, and Technologies. Springer (eds).
Rosemann, M., van der Aalst, W., 2007. A Configurable
Reference Modeling Language. Information Systems,
vol. 32, n°1, pp. 1–23.
Malekan, S., Afsarmanesh, H., 2013. Overview of
Business Process Modeling Languages Supporting
Enterprise Collaboration. Int. Conference on Business
Modeling and Software Design, Noordwijkerhout, The
Netherlands, pp. 24-45.
Zhao X., Liu, C., 2007. Version Management in the
Business Change Context, Int. Conference Business
Process Management, Brisbane, Australia, pp 198–
213.
ModellingFlexibleCollaborativeProcess:TheVCP2MApproach
63