Modelling patterns for business processes

Abstract

Analysis patterns are the groups of elements that represent a common construction in business modelling. Patterns are established with the aim to define and visualize the fundamental requirements that arise during business process modelling. There are a lot of patterns that describe the behaviour of business processes. Patterns enable stakeholders to communicate more effectively, with greater conciseness and less ambiguity. The problem with the existing business process patterns is that these patterns leave aside the static aspects of business processes. It is not enough to provide patterns just for processes or actions, it is necessary to show how data is integrated into business processes. This integration is important for flexible business processes, where stakeholders have more freedom to handle the sequence of actions in order to accomplish a given goal. The lack of an integrated modelling approach creates problems in rethinking and changing business processes. It is necessary to have a modelling approach which enables to manage necessary changes in business processes and data. The patterns for business processes should support the integration of static (data) and dynamic aspects (interaction and state changes of data) of the system as well to provide possibilities to model alternative actions in business processes. The paper presents Semantically Integrated Conceptual Modelling method (SICM) and how the method is applied for two modelling patterns that enables integration of both static and dynamic aspects of the system.