October 22, 2008

Model Transformations for Business Process Analysis and Execution

Abstract.

A business process model is a representation of the way an organization operates to achieve a goal, such as delivering a product or a service. For example, an order-to-cash business process describes the activities that take place within a company from the moment a purchase order is received until its fulfillment and the settlement of the associated invoice. Business process models have at least two classes of users. On the one hand, business and system analysts use process models to identify and to evaluate business improvement options or to define system requirements. On the other hand, software developers are concerned with the automated execution of business processes based on detailed models. Depending on the purpose, a business process may be modeled at different abstraction levels and using different languages. This tutorial will review various model transformation techniques aimed at bridging between different business process modeling languages. The tutorial will discuss transformations from popular business process modeling notations to Petri nets and state machines for the purpose of supporting automated analysis. We will also discuss transformations from business-oriented to IT-oriented process modeling languages to support system implementation. Finally, we will discuss open issues related to the definition of reversible transformations and round-tripping between high-level and executable process modeling languages.