Abstract
In order to execute, study, or improve operational processes, companies document them as business process models. Often, business process analysts capture every single exception handling or alternative task handling scenario within a model. Such a tendency results in large process specifications. The core process logic becomes hidden in numerous modeling constructs. To fulfill different tasks, companies develop several model variants of the same business process at different abstraction levels. Afterwards, maintenance of such model groups involves a lot of synchronization effort and is erroneous.
We propose an abstraction methodology that allows generalization of process models. Business process model abstraction assumes a detailed model of a process to be available and derives coarse-grained models from it. The task of abstraction is to tell significant model elements from insignificant ones and to reduce the latter. We propose to learn insignificant process elements from supplementary model information, e.g., task execution time or frequency of task occurrence. Finally, we discuss a mechanism for user control of the model abstraction level – an abstraction slider.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bobrik R, Reichert M, Bauer T (2007) View-based process visualization. In: BPM, volume 4714 of LNCS. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, pp 88–95
Cardoso J, Miller J, Sheth A, Arnold J (2002) Modeling quality of service for workflows and web service processes. Technical report, University of Georgia, Web Services. http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/lib/download/CMSA-TM02-002-v2-Dec02.pdf
Davenport T (1993) Process innovation: reengineering work through information technology. Harvard Business School Press, Boston
Eshuis R, Grefen P (2008) Constructing customized process views. Data Knowl Eng 64(2):419–438
Günther C, van der Aalst WMP (2007) Fuzzy mining – adaptive process simplification based on multi-perspective metrics. In: BPM 2007, volume 4714 of LNCS. Springer, Berlin//Heidelberg, pp 328–343
Hammer M, Champy J (1994) Reengineering the corporation: a manifesto for business revolution. HarperBusiness, New York
Keller G, Nüttgens M, Scheer A (1992) Semantische Prozessmodellierung auf der Grundlage “Ereignisgesteuerter Prozessketten (EPK)”. Technical Report Heft 89, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Wirtschaftsinformatik, University of Saarland
Liu D, Shen M (2003) Workflow modeling for virtual processes: an order-preserving process-view approach. Inf Syst 28(6):505–532
Mendling J, Verbeek H, van Dongen B, van der Aalst WMP, Neumann G (2008) Detection and prediction of errors in EPCs of the SAP reference model. Data Knowl Eng 64(1):312–329
Object Management Group (OMG) (2011) Business process model and notation (BPMN) 2.0
Polyvyanyy A (2012) Structuring process models. Ph.D. thesis, University of Potsdam, Potsdam
Polyvyanyy A, Smirnov S, Weske M (2008a) Process model abstraction: a slider approach. In: EDOC’08: proceedings of the 12th IEEE international enterprise distributed object computing conference, IEEE Computer Society, München, Sept 2008
Polyvyanyy A, Smirnov S, Weske M (2008b) Reducing complexity of large EPCs. In: EPK’08 GI-Workshop, Saarbrücken, Nov 2008
Polyvyanyy A, Smirnov S, Weske M (2009) The triconnected abstraction of process models. In: BPM’09: proceedings of the 7th international conference on business process management, Ulm, Sept 2009
Polyvyanyy A, Weidlich M, Weske M (2012) Isotactics as a foundation for alignment and abstraction of behavioral models. In: BPM’12: proceedings of the 10th international conference on business process management, Tallinn, Sept 2012
Sadiq W, Orlowska M (2000) Analyzing process models using graph reduction techniques. Inf Syst 25(2):117–134
Scheer A, Thomas O, Adam O (2005) Process aware information systems: bridging people and software through process technology, chapter process modeling using event-driven process chains. Wiley, Hoboken, pp 119–145
van der Aalst WMP, ter Hofstede AHM (2003) YAWL: yet another workflow language (Revised version). Technical report FIT-TR-2003-04, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane
van Dongen B, Jansen-Vullers M, Verbeek H, van der Aalst WMP (2007) Verification of the SAP reference models using EPC reduction, state-space analysis, and invariants. Comput Ind 58(6):578–601
Vanhatalo J, Völzer H, Leymann F (2007) Faster and more focused control-flow analysis for business process models through SESE decomposition. In: ICSOC 2007, volume 4749 of LNCS. Springer, Berlin//Heidelberg, pp 43–55
Weske M (2012) Business process management: concepts, languages, architectures, 2nd edn. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg
Yang Y, Dumas M, García-Bañuelos L, Polyvyanyy A, Zhang L (2012) Generalized aggregate quality of service computation for composite services. J Syst Softw 85(8):1818–1830
Zerguini L (2004) A novel hierarchical method for decomposition and design of workflow models, vol 8. IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp 65–74
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Polyvyanyy, A., Smirnov, S., Weske, M. (2015). Business Process Model Abstraction. In: vom Brocke, J., Rosemann, M. (eds) Handbook on Business Process Management 1. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45100-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45100-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-45099-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-45100-3
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsBusiness and Management (R0)