Abstraction, visualization, and evolution of process models

Abstract

The increasing adoption of process orientation in companies has resulted in large process model collections. Each process model of such a collection may comprise dozens of elements and captures various perspectives of a business process. Domain experts having only limited modeling knowledge hardly comprehend such complex process models. Therefore, they demand for a customized view on business processes enabling them to optimize and evolve process models effectively.

This thesis contributes the proView framework to systematically create and update process views on process models. More precisely, process views abstract large process models by hiding or combining process information. As a result, they provide an abstracted, but personalized representation of process information to domain experts. In particular, updates of a process view are supported, which are then propagated to the related process model as well as associated process views. Thereby, up-to-dateness and consistency of all process views defined on any process model can be always ensured. Finally, proView preserves the behaviour and correctness of a process model.

Process abstractions realized by views are still not sufficient to assist domain experts in comprehending and evolving process models. Thus, additional process visualizations are introduced that provide text-based, form-based, and hierarchical representations. These process visualizations allow for view-based process abstractions and updates as well. Finally, process interaction concepts are introduced enabling domain experts to create and evolve process models on touch-enabled devices. This facilitates the documentation of process models in workshops or while interviewing process participants at their workplace.

Altogether, proView enables domain experts to interact with complex process models as well as to evolve them over time, based on process model abstractions, additional process visualizations, and interaction concepts.