PATTERNS-BASED BUSINESS PROCESS MODELLING: DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION

摘要

Patterns have been a research area that has attracted significant interest of both researchers and vendors. One major problem is that pattern-based business process modelling is not commonplace and the process of discovering patterns is not clear. As a consequence, this paper is devoted to provide a clear definition of business process patterns and to present a list of formal and explicit business process patterns (BPP) that have been discovered using the Semantic Discovery and Reuse (SDR) methodological framework that synthesises best practices found in real projects from the financial and educational domains. The reason for undertaking this research is that modelling business processes more often involves applying and adapting patterns than inventing new ones. Thus, this research concluded that patterns simplify the process design by providing the immediate benefit of reduced modelling and reuse efforts and the longer-term benefit of greater consistency and standardisation. When discovered business process patterns are organised for reuse, they are more easily adopted, and yield even greater benefits to those who follow them.