Challenges in refactoring processes to include decision modelling

Abstract

Until lately decisions were regularly modelled as a part of the process model, negatively affecting the maintainability, comprehensibility and flexibility of processes as well as decisions. The recent establishment of the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard provides an opportunity for shifting in favour of a separation of concerns between the decision and process model. However, this challenge of separation of concerns and subsequently consistent integration has received limited attention. This work discusses difficulties and challenges in separating the concerns and then integrating the two models. The most challenging scenario is when integrating decision models which entail the process holistically, rather than merely focusing the decisions on local decision points. In this work, we shed a light on the importance of the separation of concerns and identify inconsistencies that might arise when separating and integrating processes and decisions.