Making process model versions comparable by quantifying changes

Abstract

A central task in the business process management life cycle is the evaluation of business processes to get a solid base for process improvements. Business processes are described as process models to explicitly state the operations needed to be carried out to reach the companies' business goals. These process models evolve over time because of changing market conditions, process improvements, or legal changes, etc. and result in multiple process versions. In such circumstances, process analysis requires the comparison of several process versions, the so-called multi-version evaluation. This paper tackles this challenge and introduces a technique to identify and quantify individual influences caused by differing process versions. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.