MODEL-BASED QUALITY ASSURANCE OF ONLINE BUSINESS PROCESSES

摘要

Many organizations are using business process management to move their existing paper-based business processes online in order to improve the quality of provided services. Unfortunately, implementation of an online business process often neglects validating improvements the new process was supposed to realize in terms of defined business goals. It is desirable to detect any deficiencies in meeting business goals early in deployment when corrective actions can be more easily made. Typical approaches to testing an online business process treat it as a generic web application where rudimentary verification of single user behavior is tested rather than the orchestration of multiple tasks across many types of users and web services. A simple web application testing approach does not leverage the business process model to ensure consistency, completeness, and enable validation of business goals. We propose a framework for model-based quality assurance of online business processes. The framework validates business performance, describes the behavior of the business process and provides a systematic approach to quality assurance using a testing workbench with a suite of testing tools. A prototype implementation of the framework is evaluated using a hospital case study.