Configurable Process Models — A Foundational Approach

Abstract

Off-the-shelf packages such as SAP need to be configured to suit the requirements of an organization. Reference models support the configuration of these systems. Existing reference models use rather traditional languages. For example, the SAP reference model uses Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs). Unfortunately, the choice construct within traditional process modeling languages like EPCs do not capture different scopes or impacts of decisions. That means they offer no opportunities to distinguish between decisions made for a single case (i. e. process instance) when executing the process and decisions made in advance for numerous cases impacting bigger parts of the company. This paper discusses the need for configurable process models. An analysis of configuration from a theoretical perspective provides a solid fundament for such models. Within the analysis a link is made to inheritance of dynamic behavior and previously defined inheritance concepts. By applying these concepts to process models the essence of configuration is determined, which enables the development of more mature configurable process modeling languages. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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