Process variability through automated late selection of fragments

Abstract

Process-aware information systems must encompass business process flexibility support due to business needs and factors coming from assorted sources, changing market conditions, customer needs, and regulations. However, flexibility may not be always achieved by pre-specified processes whereby, when context information is only available at runtime, decision making should be deferred to execution time. The late selection pattern defers the selection of placeholder activities' implementations, binding applicable process fragments at runtime. This paper presents the foundations of a novel approach for an end-to-end variability management of process models through late selection of fragments by means of: (i) managing process fragments separately from the base model, (ii) resolving variation points automatically considering constraints and context data at runtime, and (iii) enabling process fragment recommendations based on experience logs. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.