Vasco: Variability specification in business process models

Abstract

Due to environmental factors influencing their business, information technology plays now a key role in competitiveness of enterprises. Software editors concerned by developing enterprise information systems are irreversibly affected with industrialization of reuse, in order to produce faster, better and cheaper. Software product line approach offers techniques to increase and automate reuse, by explicitly specifying and managing the common and variable features. Business processes constitute a key lever to accelerate strategic alignment and urbanization of enterprise information systems. Thus, variability should be expressed in business process models, with the aim of helping enterprises to overcome environmental fluctuations and editors to industrialize their production. Several models have been proposed to represent variable business processes, but they are far from being directly usable (operational) for production into software factories. We present these shortcomings herein and propose solutions to overcome them. The result is VASCO approach, an operational model of variable business process.