Business Process Modeling

Workflow PatternsAng Chen

July 8, 2005

Plan

IntrodutionBPM: State of The ArtReference ModelProperties of Business ProcessesWorkflow PatternsCOOPN ApproachFurther investigations

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State of The Art

Business Process EngineeringModeling, Analysis, Simulation, Re-EngineeringProcess Enactment: BPM systems

ModelsEvent-Driven Process Chains (EPCs), Petri Nets Based, UML, Service Oriented, Business Rules …

StandardsWorkflow Management Coalition: Reference Model, XPDLBusiness Process Execution Language(BPEL) etc.

ResearchMost formalisms are Petri Nets based, Wil van der Aalast …Various topics: management, process re-engineering, process mining …

WfMC: Reference Model

Properties of Business Processes

The requirements are wide-ranging, often unclear, and changingDifficult to find an universal modelPatterns provide flexible solutionsProcess is abstract and inter-organizationalExecution needs cross-systems support and cooperation between existing systemsWeb Service may help for interoperability

Workflow Patterns

Proposed by Wil van der Aalast

PerspectivesControl flow: process managementData flow: information flowOperational: interactions between systemsResources: humans, machines etc.

We continue with control flow

Control flow patterns

Basic constructsAND, OR, JOIN, SPLIT

Synchronization and MergeCycle and terminationMulti-InstancesCancellation

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COOPN approach

Patterns need precise semanticProcess Definition Languages need

Formal foundationNo ambiguity, process verification

Rich expressiveness powerRequirements are wide-rangedTo represent all possible situations

Our PropositionsUse COOPN for workflow model, patternsSeparate Control from other perspectivesProcess prototyping and integration

Example of an activity

Case -> ADT, defined as a pair: <ID, LocalState>ID is the process instance identificationLocalState is the local instance representation in activitiesActivity -> COOPN class or contextProcess -> COOPN context

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Basic Principe

Using simple ADT to represent process instancesDefine partial ordered algebra for particular business process, like “chemical reaction” or functional programming, e.g. “H+H+O=water”Process controllers use ADTs of the algebra as internal data: “abstract state machine” in realityProcess controller prototypes can be generated from COOPNPrototypes can be integrated into enactment systems to control processesThe enactment system delegates activities to other systems and inform the process controller

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Further Investigations

Process Prototyping & IntegrationTransformation between COOPN and other process definition languages, e.g. BPELAdding ADTs to represent Data and other flowsProcess verificationMethodologies for Business Process Modeling