Improving the Understandability of Artifact-centric Workflows using BPMN with extensions

91 Pages·2015·1.97 MB·English

by  Narendra Godha

Improving the Understandability of
Artifact-centric Workflows using BPMN
with extensions

Narendra Godha

A research thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the
degree of Master of Computing

2015

I
Declaration

Name of candidate: Narendra Godha

This thesis entitled “Improving the Understandability of Artifact-centric Workflows using
BPMN with extensions” is submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirement for the Unitec
degree of Master of Computing.

CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION

I confirm that:
 This thesis represents my own work;
 Research for this work has been conducted in accordance with the Unitec Research
Ethics Committee Policy and Procedures, and has fulfilled any requirements set for this
project by the Unitec Research Ethics Committee.
Research Ethics Committee Approval number:

Candidate Signature Date

Student number: 1391193

II
Acknowledgements

Gracefully, I insist to express my sincere gratitude to my Principal Supervisor Dr Sira
Yongchareon and associate supervisor Mr Hira Sathu for their continuous support and
guidance aided with their experienced knowledge in completing of my thesis.
I could not have imagined the completion of my thesis without infinite support from Dr. Sira.
He is one of the best teachers I have had in my life. I thank him from the depth of my heart for
his motivation and perseverance in addressing my queries. I could never forget his timely
responses both in person as well as via emails/phones during the weekdays even during
weekends.
I wish to express my thanks to Dr Xiaohui Zhao, Dr. Aaron Chen, Dr. Guan Yue Hong, and
Cynthia Almeida for their moral support and encouragement.
I am grateful to Dr. Hossein Sarrafzadeh, Head of the Department of Computing and program
leader Dr. Chandimal Jayawardena for providing me with endless encouragement and
necessary resources to attain my Masters.
Thanks are indisputably not an ample word to express my deep gratitude to my cherished wife
Sohini, for her boundless assurance in everything I do. I am indebted to her for making my
dream of Master of Computing come true. I am blessed to have been born to such wonderful
parents who are my abundant source of energies, love and sparkle. I thank my kids for their
constant support. Last but not the least; I would like to thank my relatives and friends for always
cheering me up and supporting me.

III
Abstract
Since 2003 the enterprises have accelerated research in this approach through development of
methods, tools and other technologies in support of the artifact-centric approach. The artifact-
centric approach is expected to become a promising trend for business communities and
practitioners, as well as for people working in information technology, to use in business
process modelling. Our research provides an approach or method that can help business
stakeholders to understand the artifact-centric approach.
The artifact-centric modelling is based on business rules and focuses on how business data is
changed or updated by certain actions or services throughout the business process. Business
rules can create an inter dependency between each artifact in the artifact centric model which
makes it necessary to synchronize artifacts in order to maintain a harmony in the business
processes. The issue is that the synchronised artifacts become complex and difficult to
understand by business users. Therefore, in order to improve the understandability of the
artifact-centric model, we propose a model transformation from synchronised artifact-centric
process model to an activity-centric process model. In this thesis, we use business process
modelling notation (BPMN) with an extension as our activity-centric model. This is because
BPMN is the most widely-accepted process modeling standard.
To evaluate the proposed approach, we use a case study which demonstrates how a business
process can be defined using artifact-centric approach and how to transform it into a BPMN
with extensions. The outcome of this research can be used for business communities as they
can easily comprehend an artifact-centric model and business requirements/functions during
the business process modelling. Better understanding of the artifact-centric approach will help
the business communities to respond and communicate more efficiently with the system
analysts or information technology experts at the time of modelling business process.

Key words: Process Modelling, Activity-centric model, Artifact-centric model, Artifact Life
Cycle, Model Transformation, Business Process Modelling Notation.

IV
Preface

This 120-credit thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Master of
Computing degree at Unitec Institute of Technology.

The following thesis is divided into five chapters
 Chapter 1: Introduction
 Chapter 2: Literature review
 Chapter 3: Methodology
 Chapter 4: Case study
 Chapter 5: Conclusion

V
Contents
Chapter 1 – Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Enterprise business architecture .............................................................................................. 1
1.2 Business process modelling .................................................................................................... 2
1.2.1 Activity-centric modelling ............................................................................................... 3
1.2.2 Artifact-centric modelling ............................................................................................... 4
1.3 The approach of activity-centric and artifact-centric in modelling business process ............. 5
1.4 Key issues to support the modelling of artifact-centric business process ............................... 6
1.5 Research outcomes .................................................................................................................. 7
1.6 Rationale of this research ........................................................................................................ 8
1.6.1 Purpose of this research ................................................................................................. 8
1.6.2 Significance and relevance of this study ......................................................................... 9
1.7 Thesis organization ............................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 2 – Literature review ............................................................................................................... 13
2.1 Business process modelling .................................................................................................. 13
2.2 Activity-centric business process modelling (AC-BPM) ...................................................... 16
2.2.1 Activity-centric approach in business process modelling ............................................. 17
2.2.2 Business process modelling notation ............................................................................ 18
2.3 Artifact-centric business processes modelling (ArC-BPM) .................................................. 19
2.3.1 Artifact-centric approach in business process modelling ............................................. 19
2.3.2 Artifact-centric business process requirement, business rules and relations .............. 21
2.3.3 Artifact life cycle............................................................................................................ 23
2.3.4 Process change with support of artifacts ...................................................................... 26
2.3.5 Implementation and advantages of artifact-centric business process modelling with
respect to communities ................................................................................................................ 27
2.4 Transformation between business process models ............................................................... 30
2.4.1 Transformation from an activity-centric BPM to artifact-centric BPM ........................ 31
2.4.2 Artifact-centric BPM to activity-centric BPM ................................................................ 35
2.5 Key issues, research question and contributions ................................................................... 39
2.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 40
Chapter 3 - Methodology ...................................................................................................................... 42
3.1 Overview of Research Methodology and Framework ................................................................ 42
3.2 Phase 1: Analysing business requirements and transforming them to business rules ................. 44
Business Requirements ................................................................................................................. 44
VI
Business Rules and ECA ................................................................................................................. 45
3.3 Phase 2: Creating an artifact-centric model by synchronizing the business rules into artifacts . 48
Business Artifacts .......................................................................................................................... 48
Artifact lifecycle ............................................................................................................................ 50
Services ......................................................................................................................................... 51
Service Interactions/Co-ordination ............................................................................................... 52
3.4 Phase 3: Transforming an artifact-centric process model to BPMN with artifact extensions .... 55
Step 1: Composing Artifact life cycles to generate a set of actions for the process model ......... 55
Step 2: Determining the order in which these actions should appear in the process model ...... 55
Step 3: Combining actions into process fragments, where they are additionally connected to
decision and merge nodes ............................................................................................................ 55
Step 4: Connecting the process fragments to produce the resultant AC-BPM from ArC BPM .... 57
3.5 Phase 4: Evaluating the approach based on a case study ............................................................ 57
3.6 Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 58
Chapter 4 – Case study ......................................................................................................................... 59
4.1 Background of case study ..................................................................................................... 59
4.2 Applying Phase 1: Analysing business requirements and transforming them to business
rules 61
4.2.1 Business requirements ......................................................................................................... 61
4.2.2 Business rules based on business requirement ................................................................... 61
4.3 Applying Phase 2: Creating an artifact-centric model by synchronizing the business rules
into artifacts ...................................................................................................................................... 62
4.3.1 Creating artifact-centric life cycles....................................................................................... 62
4.3.2 Artifact-centric modelling based on Synchronization and Composition of Artifact Life
Cycles ............................................................................................................................................ 65
4.4 Applying Phase 3: Transforming an artifact-centric process model to BPMN with artifact
extensions ......................................................................................................................................... 67
4.4.1 Step 1: Artifact life cycle (composition) is used to generate a set of actions for the
process model ............................................................................................................................... 67
4.4.2 Step 2: The order in which these actions should appear in the process model is
determined. .................................................................................................................................. 68
4.4.3 Step 3: Actions are combined into process fragments, where they are additionally
connected to decision and merge nodes .................................................................................... 69
4.4.4 Step 4: The process fragments are connected to produce the resultant AC-BPM from ArC
BPM ............................................................................................................................................... 70
4.5 Applying Phase 4: Evaluating the approach based on a case study ..................................... 73
4.6 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 77
Chapter 5 – Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 78
5.1 Summary of contribution ............................................................................................................ 78
5.2 Research Limitations ............................................................................................................. 78
VII
5.3 Future work ........................................................................................................................... 79
References ............................................................................................................................................ 81

VIII
List of abbreviations

Artifact life cycles ALC
Activity-centric AC
Artifact-centric ArC
Activity-centric business process modelling AC-BPM
Artifact-centric business process modelling ArC-BPM
Activity-centric approach ACA
Artifact-centric approach ArCA
Business analysts Bas
Business Operational Model BOM
Business process execution language BPEL
Business process modelling BPM
Information technology IT
IBM Global Finance IGF
Purchase order PO
Object management group OMG
Service-oriented architecture SOA
Event conditions actions ECA
Business to Business B2B

IX
Chapter 1 – Introduction

This chapter includes seven sections. Section 1.1 is depicts the business enterprise architecture
overview. Section 1.2 describes the business processes modelling. Section 1.3 describes the
background overview of the Activity-Centric Approach (ACA) and Artifact-Centric Approach
(ArCA) to modelling business processes. Section 1.4 describes the background overview of
key issues to support ArCA. Section 1.5 provides outcomes of the research. Section 1.6
describes rational of the research. Finally, Section 1.7 outlines the thesis organisation.
1.1 Enterprise business architecture
The enterprise business architecture (EBA) consists of three layers, i.e., first layer is business;
second layer is information and application, and the third layer is technology. These layers are
further decompressed into models that depict the information held in each architecture layer as
demonstrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Layers of enterprise architecture (RAP, 2003)
1