A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive

Business Processes Modeling Formalism

Mariam Ben Hassen, Mohamed Turki and Faïez Gargouri

ISIMS, MIRACL Laboratory, University of Sfax, P.O. Box 242, 3021 Sfax, Tunisia

{mariembenhassen, mohamed_turki}@yahoo.fr, faiez.gargouri@isims.rnu.tn

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Sensitive Business Process, Business Process Modeling, Business Process

Meta-model.

Abstract: Sensitive business process (SBP) modeling has become primary concern for any successful organization to

improve the management of their individual and collective crucial knowledge on which it is necessary to

capitalize. This paper presents a multi-perspective evaluation framework for assessing the expressiveness of

current widely used BPM formalisms, in order to select the most suitable for the SBP representation and

improve the identification of crucial knowledge that is mobilized by these processes. Furthermore, the result

of the evaluation led us to justify the choice of the better one positioned nowadays, the standard BPMN 2.0.

Besides, we have illustrated the practical applicability of this notation on a medical process in the context of

the association of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS).

1 INTRODUCTION

Today’s organizations has been characterized by

collaborative, highly dynamic, complex and

knowledge-intensive actions. In order to improve

competitive advantage, they have been increasingly

conscious of the necessity to formalize and

capitalize knowledge produced and mobilized by

their business processes (BPs). According to this

view, business process modeling (BPM) has become

crucial concern for successful organizations to

improve the identification, acquisition, storage,

dissemination, sharing, creation and (re) use of their

individual and organizational knowledge.

Considering the large amount of knowledge to be

preserved and enhanced, such organizations must

first identify and model the SBPs which are likely to

mobilize crucial knowledge on which it is necessary

to capitalize. In fact, the more organization’s BPs

are sensitive, the more they can mobilize crucial

knowledge. Few existing research on Knowledge

Management (KM)-BPM focusing on the

identification, analysis and modeling of SBPs in

order to localize and identify the crucial knowledge.

We quote: the Global Analysis METHodology

(GAMETH) proposed by Grundstein (2000), the

identifying crucial knowledge methodology (Saad et

al., 2009) and the Sensitive Organization's Process

Identification Methodology (Turki et al., 2014a).

However, these methods do not explicitly and

conveniently address the critical operation of « SBPs

modeling ». A SBP typically lacks a description and

a representation that allow to explicit the rich

semantics embedded into a SBP. So, the

specification of a precise conceptualization, with a

subjacent representation notation, that explicitly and

adequately integrate the knowledge dimension

within their actions and other relevant SBP aspects,

is still an open issue. In fact, a SBP has its own

characteristics that distinguish them from classical

BPs. In fact, a SBP commonly mobilizes a high

number of critical activities with very specific

knowledge « crucial knowledge» (tacit and explicit).

It presents a diversity of knowledge sources and

possesses a high degree of dynamism in the

objectives’ change and high complexity.

Some conventional graphical BPM formalisms,

include, amongst others, Event Driven Process

Chain (EPC) (Korheer and List, 2006), Business

Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 2.0) (OMG,

2011a), Unified Modeling Language (UML 2.0)

activity diagram (OMG, 2011b), Specification

Language (PSL) (Schlenoff et al., 2000), Process

Business Process Modeling Ontology (BPMO)

(Cabral et al., 2009) and Role Activity Diagram

(RAD) (Weidong and Weihui, 2008), have been

adapted to allow the representation of the intrinsic

Ben Hassen M., Turki M. and Gargouri F.

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism.

DOI: 10.5220/0006222500840097

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2016), pages 84-97

ISBN: 978-989-758-190-8

elements of knowledge within BPs. But, these

languages/notations do not include all the required

features to describe a SBP. In addition, the literature

shows a set of approaches dedicated to knowledge

highly intensive processes (KIPs) representation,

originate from the knowledge modeling context,

including the Business Process Knowledge Method

(BPKM) (Papavassiliou and Mentzas, 2003),

DECOR (Abecker, 2001), CommonKADS

(Schreiber et al., 2002), Knowledge Transfer Agent

(KTA) Modeling Method (Strohmaier et al., 2007),

PROMOTE (Woitsch and Karagiannis, 2005), the

work of Donadel (Donadel, 2007), DCR Graphs

(Hildebrandt and Mukkamala, 2010), Knowledge

Modeling Description Language (KMDL 2.2)

(Gronau et al., 2005) (Arbeitsbericht, 2009), GPO-

WM (Heisig, 2006), Oliveira’s methodology

(Oliveira, 2009), and the Notation for Knowledge-

Intensive Processes (NKIP) (Netto et al., 2013), etc.

However, none of these proposals, as shown in (Ben

Hassen et al., 2015a), adequately addresses all the

relevant SBP elements.

In order to address existing limitations and

improve the SBP representation, we proposed, in

previous work (Ben Hassen et al., 2015a) (Ben

Hassen et al., 2015b), the Business Process Meta-

Model for Knowledge Identification (BPM4KI)

BPM4KI comprises concepts from several

perspectives that are crucial for a complete

understanding, characterization and representation of

a SBP, namely the functional perspective, the

organizational perspective, the behavioral

perspective, the informational perspective, the

intentional perspective and the knowledge

perspective. The generic meta-model we have

developed is semantically rich and well founded on

COOP, a core ontology of organization’s processes

proposed by Turki et al. (2014b) which is useful to

characterize the concepts useful for the analysis and

identification of SBPs. Furthermore, BPM4KI serves

as a comprehensive evaluation framework of the

expressiveness and adequacy of current widely-used

BPM formalisms, to check their suitability to cover

all the relevant elements of a SBP. Precisely, the

(objective) evaluation facilitates selecting and

justifying the most appropriate BPM formalism for

the representation of SBP taking its semantic

dimensions into account.

The overall goal of the present work is to carry

out an evaluation of which BPM4KI elements are

potentially supported by the above-mentioned

language meta-models.

Besides, it presents a practical

example using the best evaluated formalism.

Furthermore, it points alternatives for representing

elements that not adequately addressed yet.

The remainder of the paper is structured as

follows. Section 2 presents the core concepts that

describe Sensitive Business Process and related

work about modeling SBP. Section 3 presents the

main characteristics of current formalisms for BPM,

evaluates their suitability to support the

representation of all relevant SBP elements. Section

4 presents a practical example. Section 5 concludes

the paper and underlines some future research

topics.

2 SENSITIVE BUSINESS

PROCESSES

2.1 SBP Fundamentals

According to Ben Hassen et al. (2015b), a SBP

represents the core process of organization which

constitutes the heart of the organization’s activities.

It is commonly mobilizes very specific knowledge

«crucial knowledge» (i.e. the most

valuable/important knowledge on which it is

necessary to capitalize). It includes a high number of

critical activities which mobilizes and produces

different types of knowledge: (i) imperfect

individual and collective knowledge (tacit and/or

explicit) (i.e. missing, poorly mastered, incomplete,

uncertain, etc.) which are necessary for solving

critical determining problems; (ii) a great amount of

heterogeneous knowledge recorded on diverse

knowledge sources (dispersed and sometimes

lacking accessibility); (iii) expertise and/or rare

knowledge held by a very small number of experts;

flexible knowledge owned by experts; (iv) very

important tacit organizational knowledge (like

competences, abilities and practical experiences).

Moreover, it contains activities that valorize the

acquisition, storage, dissemination, sharing, and

creation and (re) use of individual and organizational

(tacit and explicit) knowledge, in the sense that it

mobilizes a large diversity of knowledge sources

consigning a great amount of very important

heterogeneous knowledge. Its execution involves a

large number of business domains/competencies (in

terms of internal and external organization

unit/agents operating in the BP), having distinct

experience and expertise levels. Furthermore, it

include a high number of organizational

collaborative activities that mobilize, exchange,

share and generate new individual and collective

knowledge that is created by dynamic conversion of

existing ones in the process in order to achieve

organizational objectives. So, it depends on

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

knowledge flows and transfer of data, information

and knowledge objects between communicating

process participants. Other typical characteristics of

SBPs presented in Ben Hassen et al. (2015b)

includes: (i) A SBP is unstructured or semi-

structured. Yet, a flexible process typically contains

a very dynamic and unpredictable control-flow,

comprising complex activities (individual and /or

collective) that may frequently change over time or

at design-and run-time. The process agents (e.g.

experts) is often not able to predetermine the overall

process structure in terms of the activities to be

executed and their ordering, the data and knowledge

sources to be exploited and the roles and resources

required for process progression and completion. (ii)

It is driven by constraints and rules. Indeed, process

participants may be influenced by or may have to

comply with constraints and rules that drive

organizational actions performance and decision

making. (iii) It possesses a high degree of dynamism

in the objectives’ change associated to it, essentially,

in decision making context.

The change of

organizational objective leads to a new organizational

distal intention (which is necessary to control the SBP)

and influences experts’ decision making.

(iv) Its

contribution to reach strategic objectives of the

organization is very important. Also, their

realization duration and cost are important.

According to above mentioned, representing and

organizing the knowledge involved in SBPs is very

complex, especially when applying traditional

approaches.

However, it is difficult to find out an

approach/formalism that addresses all or at least

most of these characteristics in the representation of

a SBP model. Nevertheless, the Object Management

Group (OMG, 2011a) states that, in addition to

underlining the concepts inherent to a domain, a

notation enhances the clarity of the models and

allows the ability of communicating the concepts

uniformly. The selection and adoption of a suitable

BPM formalism for representing SBP models is still

an open issue, allowing the knowledge mobilized

and generated by the BP instances to be located,

identified, modeled, stored and reused. In this

context, several BPM approaches and notations are

found in literature as likely to represent SBP.

2.2 Related Work: SBP Modeling

Approaches

Although there is abundance of BPM formalisms

and despite their diversity, only a few were

applicable for SBP modeling. Some traditional

workflows/BPM formalisms that are widely-

followed in current research and practice scenarios

(such as BPMN, EPC, UML AD), have been

adapted to allow the representation of the intrinsic

elements of knowledge within BPs. However, they

were not meant for SBPs, since they focus on the

representation of "deterministic" process, composed

by a well- structured control flow among its

activities, low uncertainty and complexity (that is,

the existence of few and pre-defined exceptions).

Besides, these notations can be used to implicitly

identify certain issues related to knowledge flows,

such as the information sources that are required,

generated, or modified by an activity.

Moreover, some authors have attempted to

develop approaches for the representation of

processes with high knowledge intensity (KIP)

(Gronau et al., 2005) (called also Process-oriented

knowledge modeling approaches) where basic

phenomenon is knowledge. In these processes, the

principal success factor is adequate modeling of

knowledge conversions. It is noteworthy that SBP

shares many common characteristics with KIP

approaches. In fact, KIPs are processes whose

conduct and execution are heavily dependent on

knowledge workers performing various

interconnected knowledge intensive decision making

tasks. KIPs are genuinely knowledge, information

and data centric and require substantial flexibility at

design- and run-time. These approaches that focus

on KM within the BP level have not been widely

adopted by organizations and are still very incipient.

Also, they have limited capabilities, in the sense that

they do not conveniently include process

perspective, as well as they do not provide an

opportunity to clearly distinguish between data,

information and knowledge.

The CommonKADS (Schreiber et al., 2002)

approach focuses on knowledge representation.

Various stages of modeling attempt to establish a

structured approach so that knowledge can be

managed with the support of technical and

engineering tools. Three basic points characterize

these demands: the details of the skills involved in

process execution, the representation of the

processes through artifacts and semantic analysis,

and the opportunities for improvement regarding the

process and use of knowledge. The BPKM-

Business Process Knowledge Method (Papavassiliou

and Mentzas, 2003) provides a methodological

guidance for the implementation of BP-oriented

KM. It presents a meta-model for integrating BPM

aspects with KM. This meta-model transcribes the

four perspectives of a workflow: task,

organizational, logical and data. It was extended to

Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design

include KM tasks that support BPs represented by

the elements: knowledge management task,

knowledge object and knowledge archive. Two other

approaches of knowledge representation are the

Knowledge Transfer Agent (KTA) Modeling

Method (Strohmaier et al., 2007) and the DECOR

approach (Abecker, 2001). The first describes how

to create knowledge transferring models. The

method consists of modeling and analyzing in three

distinct levels of detail. The DECOR Project

delivers context-sensitive organizational knowledge

and has its focus in representing processes

knowledge across diagrams embedded in

organizational memory. It aims to structure the BP,

the dynamic context, contextual information and the

representations of memories embedded in the

production process. In the method proposed by

Donadel (2007) aims to support the management of

knowledge resources related to BPs. The

organizational value chain is mapped and the

knowledge aspects that may influence the

organizational processes are represented. The

aforesaid knowledge oriented approaches do not

explicitly differentiate between tacit and explicit

which is relevant in SBPs due to, for instance, the

high degree of tacit knowledge developed and

exchanged among agents through inter-

organizational collaboration. And most of them do

not provide special attention to the graphical

notation for BP representation.

Furthermore, knowledge is modeled using

another specific knowledge modeling notations (e.g.,

KMDL, GPO-WM, Oliveira) and only few of them

include process perspective (e.g., PROMOTE,

RAD)). The Knowledge Modeling Description

Language (KMDL) (Gronau et al., 2005)

(Arbeitsbericht, 2009) formalizes KIPs with a focus

on certain knowledge-specific characteristics in

order to identify process improvements in these

processes. It represents both tacit and explicit

knowledge of the process. Thus, the different

possibilities of knowledge conversion can be

modeled and the flow of knowledge between actors

is depicted. However, this notation does not

distinguish between data and information, and does

not address the representation of artefacts and

dynamic aspects of BP and modeling agents.

Besides, it is hard to understand and to apply for the

purpose of facilitating the involvement of modeling

participants. Method for integration of KM into BPs

(GPO-WM) (Heisig, 2006) describes and evaluates

the current state of handling core knowledge

domains, to gather improvement ideas for systematic

knowledge handling and to integrate selected KM

methods and tools into existing BPs. The notation

does not allow the modeling of knowledge

conversions. The abovementioned proposals focus

on storing and sharing knowledge. Thus, they lack

the ability to model in an adequate manner the

decisions, actions and measures, which are causing a

sequence of processes. Most of these methods are

convenient only for knowledge management experts

and require additional training for non-experts. The

method for integrated modeling of BPs and

knowledge flow based on a Role Activity diagram

(RAD) (Weidong and Weihui, 2008) provides

integration of BPs and knowledge flow and helps

KM build on existing process management efforts.

This method does not differentiate between tacit and

explicit knowledge and does not present different

types of knowledge conversion that are relevant in

SBP. Also, it does not present and separate data and

information from knowledge. Supulniece et al.

(2010) argued an extension of BP models with the

knowledge dimension in order to take advantage of

some opportunities such as identifying, planning and

managing required knowledge for the role that

participates in a particular activity; evaluate the

amount of lost knowledge if a person would leave

the organization; improve understanding about the

knowledge usefulness, validity and relevance for

particular activities; enable competence

requirements management and proactive training.

They extended BPMN incorporating concepts

defined by KMDL (Gronau et al., 2005), where three

different objects: knowledge objects, information

objects and data objects were used. However, the

proposed approach does not present knowledge flow

between process participants; it lacks information

about the knowledge structure; it does not integrate

and separate the different knowledge types (like

experience, basic knowledge, general knowledge)

and it does not explicitly represent the tacit

knowledge that is owned by a particular person.

Recently, Netto et al. (2013) proposed KIPN, a

notation for building KIPs graphical model that

promotes the cognitively-effective understanding of

this process. KIPN covers all characteristics defined

by the knowledge-intensive processes ontology

(KIPO) (França et al., 2012). It comprises a set of

diagrams to represent the main dimensions within a

KIP: the KIP, socialization, decision and good

diagrams. In KIPN, activities are detailed through

socializations. The agents interact and collaborate,

contributing to the creation and acquisition of

knowledge. Agents’ contribution is represented by

innovation, intention, belief, desire, feeling,

experience and mental image elements, that are

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

difficult to be predicted and then modeled. The

notation is able represent tacit knowledge through

informal exchange and mental image elements, but it

still does not capture explicitly the knowledge

conversion. Moreover, NKIP is very incipient, hard

to understand, not yet used and applicable for KIP

modeling in current research and practice scenarios

and not adopted by any available modeling tools.

Despite it mobilizes crucial knowledge within an

organization and their key role for organizational

KM, existing BPM approaches/notations have

shortcomings concerning their ability to explicitly

incorporate the knowledge dimension within BPs

models as well as relevant issues at the intersection

of KM and BPM. None of those proposals

conveniently includes or addresses all or at least

most of the SBPs important characteristics presented

previously (critical activities (individual and/or

collective), intensive acquisition, sharing, storage

and (re)use of knowledge in challenging activities,

large number of agents (external and internal) who

have various business domains and different

knowledge levels, high degree of tacit knowledge

mobilized and exchanged among many experts,

diversity of information and knowledge sources

involved, high degree of collaboration (intra/inter-

organizational) among agents/experts, dynamic

conversion of knowledge, flexibility and dynamic

aspects, deliberate actions, the influence of (distal)

intentions in achieving objective and decision

making, etc.). This leads to ambiguity and

misunderstanding of the developed SBPs models.

2.3 SBPs Specification

In our previous research (Ben Hassen et al., 2015a),

we have proposed a semantically rich

conceptualization for describing a SBP organized in

a meta-model, the Business Process Meta-model for

Knowledge Identification (BPM4KI), which

integrates all aforementioned perspectives. This

meta-model intends to develop a rich and expressive

graphical representation of SBPs in order to improve

the localization and identification of crucial

knowledge. BPM4KI is a well-founded meta-model

whose concepts and relationships are semantically

enriched by the core ontology organization’s

processes (COOP) (Turki et al., 2014b). BPM4KI

covers all relevant aspects of BPM and KM within a

SBP, and is composed by six perspectives:

(i) Functional Perspective, represents the BP

elements which are being performed. The main

concept that reflects this dimension is Action. It

includes: Individual Action, Collective Action,

Action of Organization, Inter Organizational

Action, Organizational Action /Activity,

Organizational Individual Action, Task,

Organizational Unit Action, Organizational

Sub Process, Organizational Critical Activity,

Organizational Intensive Activity and

Organizational Collaborative Activity.

(ii) Organizational Perspective, represents the

different participants (the organizational

resources) invoked in the execution of process

elements as well as their affiliation. It display

the process flows between different

organizations and participants involved. The

basic element of this perspective is Agentive

Entity and includes: Collective, Organization,

Organization Unit, Human, Expert, Internal

Agent, and External Agent.

(iii) Behavioral perspective, basically presents the

logical sequence of elements to be executed in

a BP. It includes synchronization, sequence,

feedback-loop, complex decision requirements,

in-and ouput criteria, etc. The basic element of

this perspective is Control Object (such as

control flow elements, pre-conditions, post-

conditions, triggers, performance indicators,

constraints, business rules, etc.).

(iv) Informational perspective, describes the

informational entities (such as data, artefacts,

products and objects) which are generated,

consumed, or exchanged within a process or an

activity. It also includes both their structure and

the relationships among them. The following

concepts are related to this dimension:

Resource, Material Resource (like

informational and software resources),

Physical Knowledge Support, Event,

Contingency, Input Object (like data and

information), Output Object (as data,

information, services and results) and

Collaboration Protocol.

(v) Intentional perspective, provides an overview

perspective of the process and captures

important BP context information. It describes

major BP characteristics and addresses the

intentional information (such as objective,

strategies, quality characteristics, metrics,

measurement units, the deliverables, the

process type and the customer), in order to

ensure the BP flexibility. It comprises:

Intention, Objective, Distal Intention,

Collective Intention, Collective Distal

Intention, Organizational Distal Intention,

Objective, Individual Objective, Collective

Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design

Objective, Organizational Objective, Strategic

Objective, Operational Objective, Deliberate

Action, Culminated Process, Output Object

(deliverables), Control Object (e.g.,

performance measures, constraints, business

rules, etc.), Client, Sensitive Business Process,

Knowledge Intensive Process, Inter

Organizational Process, Internal Process,

External Process, Partial External Process,

Inter Fonctional Process, Core Process,

Management Process, Strategic Process,

Operational Process, etc. (which are some

process types).

(vi) Knowledge perspective, provides an overview

perspective of the organizational and individual

knowledge mobilized and created by an

BP/organization as well as the knowledge flow

proceeding within and between

BPs/organizations. It addresses all relevant

aspects related to KM (collection, organization,

storage, transfer, sharing, creation and reuse

among process participants). This vantage

presents: Knowledge (as an Immaterial

Resource), Tacit Knowledge, Individual Tacit

Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge,

Explicit Knowledge, Individual Explicit

Knowledge, Collective Explicit Knowledge,

Expert and Physical Knowledge Support. It

should be noted that some concepts are shared

by different perspectives. For instance,

Collaborative Organizational Activity and

Critical Organizational Activity belong to all

perspectives.

Nevertheless, BPM4KI does not provide a specific

graphical notation for representing SBP. Although

BPM4KI does not address the problem of

representing SBP graphically, it opens a way to

explore the potential of traditional BPM formalisms

for it, as well as the usage of the specific process-

oriented knowledge modeling/ KIP approaches. In

the following section, we discuss the usage of

BPM4KI concepts (which represent our evaluation

framework) as a basis to model SBPs graphically.

3 A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE

FRAMEWORK FOR

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF

SBPS REPRESENTATION

FORMALISMS

Based on the potential of BPM4KI to portray the

essential features of SBP, this section presents a

comparative analysis of different BPM formalisms

to represent SBPs. Precisely, in this research work,

BPM4KI acts as a multidimensional evaluation

framework for assessing the suitability of six

selected BPM formalisms to cover all or at least

most relevant elements of a SBP. We consider

guiding and justifying the choice of the most

suitable

formalism for SBPs representation to

characterize and improve the knowledge localization.

Before we present our evaluation framework for

SBP representation, we will briefly refer to some

related work about BPM languages (i.e. comparison

and analysis) available in the field of meta-modeling

and ontology. Many frameworks ((Söderström et

al., 2002); (Lin el al., 2002); (Mendling et al., 2004);

(List and Korherr, 2006)) have been proposed for

evaluating the suitability of some BPM languages

for specific purpose, according to generic meta-

models. Most of them only focus on some aspects of

BPM languages. Besides, the BWW (Bunge-Wand-

Weber) ontological framework (Wand and Weber.,

1990) has been widely used for assessing the

ontological completeness and clarity of BPM

languages, include (Rosemann et al.,2006); (Recker

et al., 2009); (Penicina, 2013) and (Prezel et al.,

2010). Furthemore, several works addressing the

integration of KM into BPs, incorporating the

knowledge into BP models. França et al. (2012)

proposed KIPO, a formal meta-model/ontology that

highlights the key concepts and relationships

characterizing KIPs and used it as a reference for

evaluating the adequacy of some existing BPM

languages to represent each concept. However, this

meta-model is not well adapted to represent SBPs.

Sultanow et al., (2012) created a systematic

comparison of thirteen selected methods based on a

multidimensional framework to summarize the

differences, also the most suitable situation for using

each method. However, this framework do not

consistently support SBP model requirements and

concepts.

Therefore, considering existing research in

the KM-BPM domain, the knowledge dimension

(i.e.

the knowledge required to perform activities, the

knowledge created as a result of BP activities, the

sources of knowledge and their localization, the

explicit knowledge, the tacit knowledge, individual

and collective dimension of knowledge/activities,

the knowledge flows between sources and activities,

the different opportunities of knowledge conversion,

etc.) needed for BPM is not explicitly represented,

integrated and implemented in BP meta-models.

Hence, a comprehensive evaluation framework

of the representational capabilities of current BPM

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

formalisms for SBPs is missing.

For discussion purposes, in this paper we take

the constructs from BPM4KI as a relevant set of

elements that are required to precisely represent a

SBP, and evaluated some existing formalisms,

which are based on different fields, to verify their

suitability to cover and represent each concept. The

multi-dimensional evaluation provides not only a

useful framework to summarize the advantages and

limitations of each formalism, but also select the

most suitable positioned nowadays for SBP

modeling, in order to localize the knowledge

mobilized and created by these processes, which

may be crucial. The evaluated representation

languages were UML AD, BPMN 2.0, eEPC (which

are adopted by many available modeling tools in

current organizations), PROMOTE, KMDL 2.2 and

Oliveira’s methodology.

3.1 The BPM Formalisms -

An Overview

In this section, we describe the BPM formalisms

which have been chosen for evaluation. Some are

process oriented and some are knowledge oriented.

They represent the most frequently studied BPM

formalisms in scientific/professional literature and

practice scenarios.

UML 2.0 Activity Diagram (UML AD): UML AD

(OMG, 2011b) in the behavior category are typically

used for BPM. It is mainly and originally for

modeling IT systems. UML AD is a semi-formal

language with the following basic graphical

notations: initial node and activity final node,

activity, flow/edge, fork and join, decision and

merge, partition/swimlane. This diagram is more

expressive for modeling data flows inside

information system and is less suitable for BPM.

Extended Event Driven Process Chain (eEPC):

EPC (Scheer, 2000) is a semi-formal graphical

modeling language for modeling, analyzing, and

redesigning BPs, easily understood and used by

business people. The basic notations include events,

functions and connectors. It emphases more on the

operational/functional and control perspectives than

data transaction perspective. The basic version of

EPC was supplemented by other constructs

(organizational unit, position, information object,

service object and application, resulting in the

extended EPC (eEPC), intended to supplement

process models with organizational structure and

data flow. In eEPC, knowledge is represented by

two object types, knowledge category and

documented knowledge, and can be model by two

model types, knowledge structure diagram and

knowledge map. In the first diagram, knowledge

categories can be organized into subgroups based on

their content. While the second depicts the

distribution of various knowledge categories within

an organization.

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN):

BPMN 2.0 (OMG, 2011a) represents the most

popular and widely acceptable graphical notation to

represent BPs, understandable by all business

stakeholders, one that has now been ratified by the

OMG as a BPM standard. It divides process

knowledge into broadly five categories: flow-

objects, connectors, artifacts, swimlanes and data.

BPMN is initiated as a standard BPM language for

conventional business, B2B and services process

modeling. Hence BPMN has the capabilities of

handling B2B business process concepts, such as

public and private processes and choreograhies, as

well as advanced modeling concepts, such as

exception handling and transaction compensation in

addition to the traditional BP. The Collaboration and

Choreography Diagrams allow modeling interaction

among process’ actors (between business partners,

or different departments in a same company,

members of a teams or even single workers and

software systems), who exchange messages, while

performing their tasks to reach a common objective.

PROMOTE: The PROMOTE (Woitsch and

Karagiannis, 2005) integrates strategic planning with

the evaluation of KM and BP management and

defines KM requirements on the basis of business

needs. It captures, models and evaluates the

knowledge in enterprises and KIPs. It provides three

diagram types: a knowledge diagram, a knowledge

application diagram and an evaluation diagram. This

notation can specify the knowledge conversion

types. But, it does not explicitly separate tacit and

explicit knowledge.

Knowledge Modeling and Description Language

(KMDL): is a semi-formal modeling method for the

detection, visualization, analysis and evaluation of

BPs and knowledge flows (Gronau et al., 2005). It

increases the transparency of the existing knowledge

in enterprises and optimizes the process of KIPs.

This notation represents both tacit and explicit

knowledge of the process, also the different types of

knowledge conversion. It provides an object library

containing the basic objects: information object,

task, role, task requirements, person, knowledge

object, type of knowledge conversion and

knowledge descriptor. The current KMDL 2.2,

provides three views: (1) process-based view, (2)

activity-based-view (considers the knowledge con-

Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design

Table 1: Verification of BPM4KI concepts representation by BPM formalisms.

UML AD eEPC BPMN 2.0 PROMOTE Oliveira KMDL 2.2

Collective Action -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+

Organizational Unit Action + -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+

Critical Organizational

Activity

-/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+

Collaborative Organizational

Activity

-/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+

Agentive Entity + -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+

Collective -/+ -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+

Organizational Unit -/+ + + + -/+ -/+

Expert - - - - -/+ -

Control Object

-/+ -/+ + -/+ - -/+

Material Resource -/+ -/+ + -/+ -/+ +

Input Object -/+ -/+ + - -/+ -/+

Output Object -/+ + + -/+ -/+ +

Contingency - - -/+ - - -

Collaboration Protocol -/+ -/+ + - - -/+

Intention/Distal Intention - -/+ - - - -

Objective - - - -/+ - -/+

Sensitive Busines Process - -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+

External Process -/+ - -/+ - - -

Culminated Process -/+ -/+ -/+ - -/+ -/+

Tacit Knowledge - -/+ - -/+ - +

Individual Tacit Knowledge - - - - - -

Collective Tacit Knowledge - - - - - -

Explicit Knowledge - -/+ - -/+ -/+ -/+

Individual Explicit

Knowledge

- - - - -/+ -/+

Collective Explicit

Knowledge

- -/+ - - -/+ -/+

Physical Knowledge Support - -/+ -/+ -/+ + +

versions during the fulfilling of a special tasks), and

(3) communication-based view.

Oliveira’s Methodology: The Oliveira’s

methodology (Oliveira, 2009) is an extension of

Ericsson et al., (2000) for BPM that is composed of

diagrams representing a hierarchy of models. It uses

constructs adapted from KMDL to model BPs,

considering KM aspects.

The evaluation of the BPM formalisms was

performed by three experts, who were responsible

for observing how well the BPM4KI concepts could

be represented in each language. The experts

individually evaluated the correlation between

formalism elements and meta-model concepts,

considering its definitions and relationships.

3.2 The Evaluation

An overview of the evaluation results can be found

in Table 1. Our evaluation scale ranges from

comprehensively fulfilled (depicted by +), partially

fulfilled (+/-) to not fulfilled (-). The evaluation is

carried out from each of the six perspectives making

up the BPM4KI meta-model. Results show that none

Functional

Pers

ective

Organizational

Perspective

Knowledge Perspective

Informational

Perspective

Behavioral

Perspective

Intentional

Perspective

BPM

BPM4KI Concepts

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

of the studied formalisms, individually, satisfies

SBP modeling requirements.

Generally, the functional and the behavioral

perspectives are very well represented in all BPM

formalisms, while the organizational and

informational perspectives are only partly supported.

But a lack of the models is that the knowledge and

intentional perspectives are not explicitly supported.

In fact, Expert, Individual Tacit Knowledge,

CollectiveTacit Knowledge, are not addressed at all,

in any of the formalisms.

From the process perspective, we can conclude

that the traditional BPM formalisms BPMN 2.0 and

ARIS eEPC are more expressive for modeling this

perspective as a whole. While BPMN offers

extended notation for control flow organization,

encompasses a high level of detail, numerous

constructs (for modeling process logic, decision

points, control flows, processes and event types,

etc.) offering a very complex expressive model of

BPs. In constrat, eEPC has less expressiveness than

BPMN, and its constructs are considerable fewer

and not so well specified as in BPMN. Furthermore,

EPC process models are not intended for being

detailed in order to be executed. It is a notation to

model the domain aspects of BPs. The focus of the

notation is mainly on domain concepts and processes

representation rather than the formal specification or

technical realization. Besides, the defined concepts-

actions specification (Process, Activity, Sub-process,

Task, function, action) defined by the selected list of

formalisms do not explicitly take into account the

individual/collective dimension of the actions.

However,

taking into consideration such a dimension

is very important in our research context, given that we

are interested in the localization of knowledge

mobilized to realize the BP

. This knowledge taken in

the action may be either individual or

collective/organizational (tacit or explicit).

From the knowledge perspective, knowledge

modeling is possible with KMDL 2.2, Oliveira and

PROMOTE (including ARIS eEPC, but it

incompletely supports this dimension). However, the

BP oriented knowledge modeling notation have not

been widely adopted by organizations and are very

incipient. At the same time they have limited

capabilities: (i) They have poor capabilities of

process control flow modeling (decisions, actions,

control flows, etc.), also they lack the ability to

model in an adequate manner the process

perspectives as a whole (the structural, behavioral,

organizational and informational dimensions); (ii)

Information and data concepts are not distinguished;

(iii) Most of them do not explicitly differentiate

between tacit and explicit knowledge, which is

relevant in SBPs due to, for instance, the high degree

of tacit knowledge developed and exchanged among

agents through inter-organizational collaboration;

(iv) These notations allow modeling knowledge flow

perfectly, but BP modeling with KMDL or Oliveira

is challenging - understanding a model requires

special thinking, learning and significant effort for

analysis, design and implementation. They are

convenient only for KM experts and require

additional training for non-experts.

From the informational perspective, the other

notations (BPMN, UML AD and ARIS eEPC)

enable data and information modeling, but do not

offer a strict border between these terms and are

often represented by the same modeling constructs

and symbols. It is noteworthy that this distinction is

useful and essential for our modeling context. Data

and information form the basis for knowledge

generation, distribution and utilization in the context

of collaboration between BP agents.

To sum up, our evaluation results showed an

important loss of information in SBP

representations, either because relevant concepts

were not addressed by existing formalisms or

because these concepts were represented in a very

high abstraction level. This may lead to ambiguous

and unclear SBP models. The BPMN 2.0 standard

was the BPM formalism that presented the broadest

coverage of the set of BPM4KI concepts,

incorporating requirements for SBP modeling better

than other formalisms. Therefore, we select BPMN

2.0 as a basis for representing SBPs to address our

research problem, which consists in improving the

localization and identification of the crucial

knowledge that is mobilized by these processes.

In brief, the best characteristics of BPMN are: (i)

BPMN is currently the BP notation most used

among strong process modeling practitioners, very

simple, easy to use and readily understandable; (ii)

BPMN is a BPM standard backed up by OMG, so

the language definition is based upon a meta-model

built with UML, the notation which is the de facto

standard for modeling software engineering

artefacts; (iii) BPMN is one of the most recent BPM

languages, so it is grounded on the experience of

earlier BPM languages, which ontologically makes it

one of the most complete BPMLs (Recker et al.,

2009); (iv) BPMN is supported by almost all popular

BPM tools; (v) BPMN is extensible (with standard

extension mechanisms); (vi) BPMN offers a

standardized bridge for the gap between the BP

design and process implementation, etc.

Nevertheless, despite its strength representation,

Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design

some of its concepts should be adapted and extended

to be convenient for a rich and expressive

representation of SBPs. In fact, this notation does

not explicitly support the key concepts of BPM4KI

(as Critical Organizational Activity, Individual Tacit

Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge, Expert,

Knowledge Explicit Knowledge, Distal Intention,

Collective Objective, etc.). So, to overcoming the

shortcomings of BPMN 2.0, this extension must take

into consideration, on the one hand, the knowledge

dimension, and on the other hand, integrate the new

concepts of BPM4KI to represents issues relevant at

the intersection of KM and BPM clearly and with a

sufficient level of details.

4 CASE STUDY: A SBP MODEL

REPRESENTATION

4.1 Case Study Description

In this section, we describe a case study carried out

to demonstrate the feasibility, suitability, and

practical utility of the evaluated approach to

represent and analyze SBP. Precisely, this section

illustrates a SBP model using BPMN 2.0, on top of

the ARIS express tool (IDS Scheer, 2013) to

evaluate its potential in providing an adequate and

expressive representation of a SBP, to improve the

knowledge localization and identification. The

chosen process for this example reflects a medical

care process in the Association of Protection of the

Motor-disabled of Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS). This

organization is characterized by highly dynamic,

unpredictable, complex and highly intensive

knowledge actions. Particularly, we are interested in

the early care of the disabled children with cerebral

palsy (CP) (Ben Hassen et al., 2015b). In fact, the

amount of medical knowledge mobilized and

produced during this medical care process is very

important, heterogeneous and recorded on various

scattered sources. One part of this knowledge is

embodied in the mind of health professionals.

Another part, is preserved in the organizational

memory as reports, medical records, data bases,

therapeutic protocols and clinical practice

guidelines). The created knowledge stems from the

interaction of a large number of multidisciplinary

healthcare professionals with heterogeneous skills,

expertise and specialties (such as neonatology,

neuro-pediatrics, physical therapy, orthopedics,

psychiatry, physiotherapy, speech therapy, and

occupational therapy) and located on geographically

remote sites (University hospital of Sfax Hedi

Chaker, University hospital of Sfax, Habib

Bourguiba, faculty of medicine of Sfax, research

laboratories, etc.). Therefore, the raised problem

concerns on the one hand, the insufficiency and the

difficulty to localize and understand the medical

knowledge that is necessary for decision-making,

and on the other hand, the loss of knowledge held by

these experts during their scattering or their

departure at the end of the treatment. The ASHMS

risks losing the acquired know-how for good and

transferring this knowledge to new novices if ever

no capitalization action is considered. Thus, it

should identify the so called «crucial knowledge» to

reduce the costs of capitalization operation. Our

main objective consists in improving the

localization, identification and sharing of different

types and modalities of crucial medical knowledge

necessary for performing the medical care process of

children with CP.

Indeed, this SBP is composed of several sub-

processes which consists of a succession of many

actions in the form of medical and paramedical

examinations and evaluations in different specialties

(like neonatology, neuro-pediatrics, physical

medicine, orthopedics, psychiatry, physiotherapy

and occupational therapy). The different BPs (such

as process related to neonatology care, process

related to neuro-pediatric care, process related to

physiotherapy, etc.) require certain medical

information as well as certain medical knowledge

(results of para-clinical exams, hospitalization

reports, patient-specific knowledge recorded in the

medical case file, practice guidelines, etc.).

4.2 The SBP Modeling

In this study, we take into consideration the results

of experimentation of the Sensitive Organization's

Process Identification Methodology (SOPIM)

proposed by Turki et al., (2014a) for the early care

of children with CP. As a reminder, the proposed

multi-criteria decision making methodology was

conducted and validated in the ASHMS organization

and aims at evaluating and identifying SBPs for

knowledge localization. We have opted for the SBP

«Process of neonatology consultation of a child with

CP» to illustrate and evaluate the potential of BPMN

2.0 with regard to its applicability and capability of

making relevant knowledge embedded in a SBP

explicit. Indeed, this SBP is highly dynamic, very

complex, in the sense that it involves a large number

of organizational units, agents and experts (internal

and external who are not affiliated to the

organization) from various business/ skills often

residing in different physical locations), neonatology

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

Figure 1: Fragment of SBP model in BPMN related to the neonatology consultation of a child with CP.

disciplines and critical organizational activities

(individual and collective). It is very dependent on

explicit knowledge sources and on tacit knowledge.

In addition, it involves an intense collaboration and

interaction between participants to achieve

organizational objectives, make decision to deal with

an unexpected situation and create value. Some of its

activities are highly dependent on the experts

experience, expertise and creativity.

Figure 1 outlines a SBP model extract of the

neonatology consultation process using BPMN 2.0,

enriched with the knowledge dimension (modeled

according to BPM4KI). As stated above, this

notation does not, however, provide primitives to

explicitly represent all relevant aspects related to

knowledge dimension in BP models. To remedy for

the shortcomings, we tried to extend this notation

and started by integrating some specific graphical

icons in the form of some BPMN modeling elements

relating to several new BPM4KI concepts (Figure

1). The BPMN SBP model is evaluated and

validated through some interviews made with 2

stakeholders: the neonatologist and the neuro-

pediatrician. During our experimentation, we have

identified different types of medical knowledge

mobilized and created by each critical activity

related to the SBP of neonatology care. We have

distinguished missing or poorly mastered knowledge

(individual or collective) necessary to resolve

critical problems, expertise, unexplainable tacit

knowledge and mastered knowledge necessary and

relevant to the proper functioning and development

of the activity or produced by the activity. We have

also identified the different sources of knowledge,

their localization, actors who hold the knowledge,

the places where they are usable or used, their nature

(like experience, basic knowledge, general

knowledge), their degree of formalization

(tacit/explicit dimension), their organizational

coverage (individual/collective dimension), as well

as their quality (perfect or imperfect).

For instance, the knowledge A

related to «

Knowledge about result of the evaluation of the

clinical neurological examination, neurological

abnormalities, cerebral palsy category, and clinical

signs and symptoms associated of young children

with cerebral palsy » is produced by the critical

activity A

« Clinical neurological examination».

Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design

Note that this materialized/externalized knowledge

is created as a result of the activity execution by the

Neonatologist, during which he interacts with

information (i.e. source of knowledge information)

related to the child with CP (based on his previous

experiences and tacit knowledge) to generate and

communicate his own knowledge. A

is stored in

the following physical media: the neurological

assessment sheet, neuropsychological assessment,

the sensitive assessment sheet and the neuro-motor

assessment. These physical media of knowledge are

located internally within the Neonatology service in

the University Hospital Hedi Chaker, precisely in

the various archives drawers or patients’ directories.

is of a scientific, technical and measure nature

which is related to patients. It represents a collective

explicit knowledge, part of which can be represented

in the form of an individual explicit knowledge

recorded on the care data collection sheet of the

Neonatologist. This knowledge is imperfect

(general, incomplete and uncertain). A

mobilized by the activity A

« Evaluation of

intellectual functioning of young child with CP ».

It is important to mention that not all BPM4KI

concepts are applicable and must be instantiated in

every SBP scenario. Precisely, relevant tacit aspects

could not be represented explicitly, such as: the tacit

knowledge embedded in the neonatologist's mind,

the knowledge conversion and the knowledge flows

exchanged between communicating process

participants and among activities, and the distal

intentions which are responsible for making

neonatologist to perform any action and achieve an

organizational objective.

Therefore, the relevance of extending BP models

with the knowledge dimension (according to

BPM4KI meta-model) is manifold:

1. Enhance the localization and identification of the

crucial knowledge mobilized and produced by

the critical activities: (i) Illustrating the

knowledge and its sources that are necessary for

the execution of BP activities and are generated,

created and/or modified as a results of activities.

(ii) Illustrating the knowledge localization

(where knowledge can be obtained and clearly

stated) as well as experts who hold the (tacit)

knowledge. (iii) Illustrating the way in which

specific knowledge flows among the activities,

or how a specific source is used and modified

through the activities. (iv) Illustrating transfers of

knowledge between sources, and among

activities as well as the different opportunities of

knowledge conversion. (v) Defining the

knowledge that is being captured or obtained

from specific sources. (vi) Giving an opportunity

to improve understanding about the knowledge

usefulness, validity, and relevance for particular

activities in a SBP. (vi) Possibility to evaluate

the amount of lost knowledge if a person-owner

of knowledge- leaves the organization (i.e., to

identify which tacit knowledge in which cases

should be transformed into explicit knowledge).

2. A deeply characterizing of the identified

knowledge to determine which ones are more

crucial to be exploited: (i) Illustrating the nature

and degree of formalization of knowledge. (ii)

Illustrating the organizational coverage of

knowledge, their quality.

5 CONCLUSION AND

PERSPECTIVES

This paper presented an evaluation framework of

BPM formalisms to represent the SBP, taking the

conceptualization defined by BPM4KI (Ben Hassen

et al., 2015a) as a baseline. Several BPM notations

are reviewed, some are process oriented and some

are knowledge oriented. This evaluation concluded

that current BPM formalisms are not adequate for

the representation of SBPs, since important SBP

characteristics details could not be observed. All

formalisms were very similar in the number of

concepts represented, whereas ARIS eEPC and

BPMN 2.0 address the highest representation

coverage. In order to observe the practical

applicability of the selected formalism, a SBP model

of a real neonatology care process of a child with CP

was illustrated using BPMN 2.0.

There are several open issues in this paper that

we plan to address in the future to deepen the so-

called problematic of knowledge identification

mobilized by SBPs. Further work is underway to

present an extended version of BPM4KI, improving

the definition of some BPM4KI concepts so as to

ease their understanding, as well as adding new

elements to take into consideration issues relevant at

the intersection of KM and BPM in greater detail.

So, we consider relying on core ontologies (such as

core ontology of know-how and knowing-that

(COOK) (Ghrab et al., 2015) and Knowledge-

Intensive Process Core Ontology (KIPCO) (França

et al., 2012). Work for the medium term is to extend

the proposed evaluation framework and perform

further comprehensive evaluation considering

several relevant criteria. Besides the six BP aspects,

there are further non-functional requirements a BP

meta-model should fulfill: ease of use and

A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism

understandability, ontological completeness

/expressibility, extendibility/ flexibility, notations,

modularity, level of details/granularity, exception

handling, pattern support, tools availability, security

and privacy, etc. Moreover, the evaluation of six

BPM formalisms provides a good starting point that

can be easily extended with both further BPM

languages and supporting tools. Also, the evaluation

will be carried out from each of the six perspectives

making up the BPM4KI meta-model. Further down

the track, we plan to propose a rigorous scientific

approach for extending BPMN 2.0 for KM.

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