MODELING LANGUAGES FOR BUSINESS PROCESSES AND BUSINESS

Modeling Languages for Business Processes and Business

Modeling Languages for Business Processes and Business

Introduction

Improving business processes has always been identified as the priority for CIOs in recent years. Organizations are increasingly interested in understanding, managing and improving its portfolio of process and in identification and quantification of potential outsourcing processes. Collection of tools and methods for achieving these objectives is known as Business Process Management (BPM). Innovative design process is constrained by rules and regulations an organization must meet. Business Rules Management (BRM) describes identification, definition and management of these standards using technology as systems of corporate governance rules. (Wyssusek 2006 206)

Both process modeling languages and rule modeling languages provide constructs for representing business operations and limitations, but do so in different ways. Although process modeling languages typically describe the sequence of procedures of activities, including decisions and competition, rule modeling languages are often based on the declarative description of facts, conditions and restrictions. This situation presents the dilemma for selection of organizations, and there is little guidance as to which modeling method is preferable in the particular situation. Despite the significant focus on assessing ability of representation of process modeling languages, benchmarking of state modeling languages has received much less attention. This situation is the concern because the growing numbers of organizations to implement BPM and BRM both solutions. In addition, the number of - partly overlap - are making efforts to specify standard representations of business rules. Compare and contrast these approaches will help organizations choose most appropriate representation for their purposes. (Wyssusek 2004 208)

Recent empirical investigations have identified weaknesses in representation of process modeling languages. This research has led to speculation that business rule modeling languages may be appropriate to cover these weaknesses. It is an open question whether two types of language should be used in combination, i.e. whether integrated use of business rules and languages of modeling business processes allows organizations to better understand, represent and enhance their operations. Consequently, there is the need for the rigorous analysis of two types of languages in order to identify potential synergies and conflicts. (Kwan 1998 75)

Business Rules

THE business rule is the statement that is intended to influence or guide behavior and information in an organization. According to its structure, different types of business rules can be distinguished:

• Restrictions express integrity rules. These rules often define acceptable relationship between data elements. For example, each project must have the single project manager.

• Derivation rules express conditions that give rise to conclusions. These rules define validity of facts and can be used to infer new facts based on known facts. For example, Platinum customers receive the discount of 5%. Juan Perez is the platinum customer. In conclusion, John Doe received the discount of 5%.

• Reaction rules (also known as Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules, alternative rules of action or conditions post-) specify the trigger that enables evaluation of norm, the condition that is evaluated, and the subsequent activity be carried out if specified condition is met, for ...