Activity Patterns in Process-aware Information Systems: Basic Concepts and Empirical Evidence

Thom, Lucineia and Reichert, Manfred and Iochpe, Cirano (2009) Activity Patterns in Process-aware Information Systems: Basic Concepts and Empirical Evidence. International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management (IJBPIM), 4 (2). pp. 93-110. ISSN 1741-8763

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Abstract

Recently, a variety of workflow patterns was suggested for capturing different aspects in process-aware information systems (PAISs) including control and data flow, resources, process change, and exception handling. All these patterns are highly relevant for implementing PAISs and for designing process modeling languages. However, current patterns provide only a partial answer to the question which business functions a designer might want to reuse when modeling processes. This paper presents a revised version of a collection of activity patterns to deal with this challenge. Each of them is related to a recurrent business function as it can be frequently found in process models (e.g., task execution request, notification, approval). We describe the identified activity patterns and their variants in detail. The main purpose of our paper is to discuss results from empirical studies, in which we analyzed more than 200 process models in order to evidence the practical relevance of the patterns. This includes a detailed analysis of the context in which activity patterns occur as well the frequency of this occurrence. These empirical findings can be used for the design of more intelligent, pattern-based process modeling tools.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Workflow activity patterns; business functions; business process management; business process modeling.
Subjects: DBIS Research > Publications
Divisions: Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science > Institute of Databases and Informations Systems > DBIS Research and Teaching > DBIS Research > Publications
Depositing User: Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert
Date Deposited: 25 Oct 2008 19:54
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2011 10:26
URI: http://dbis.eprints.uni-ulm.de/id/eprint/473

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