Assured automatic dynamic reconfiguration of business processes
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Accepted version
Author(s)
Nahabedian, L
Braberman, V
D’Ippolito, N
Kramer, J
Uchitel, S
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In order to manage evolving organisational practice and maintain compliance with changes in policies and regulations, businesses must be capable of dynamically reconfiguring their business processes. However, such dynamic reconfiguration is a complex, human-intensive and error prone task. Not only must new business process rules be devised but also, crucially, the transition between the old and new rules must be managed.
In this paper we present a fully automated technique based on formal specifications and discrete event controller synthesis to produce correct-by-construction reconfiguration strategies. These strategies satisfy user-specified transition requirements, be they domain independent - such as delayed and immediate change - or domain specific. To achieve this, we provide a discrete-event control theoretic approach to operationalise declarative business process specifications, and show how this can be extended to resolve reconfiguration problems. In this way, given the old and the new business process rules described as Dynamic Condition Response Graphs, and given the transition requirements described with linear temporal logic, the technique produces a control strategy that guides the organisation through a business process reconfiguration ensuring that all transition requirements and process rules are satisfied. The technique outputs a reconfiguration DCR whose traces reproduce the controller’s reconfiguration strategy. We illustrate and validate the approach using realistic cases and examples from the BPM Academic Initiative.
In this paper we present a fully automated technique based on formal specifications and discrete event controller synthesis to produce correct-by-construction reconfiguration strategies. These strategies satisfy user-specified transition requirements, be they domain independent - such as delayed and immediate change - or domain specific. To achieve this, we provide a discrete-event control theoretic approach to operationalise declarative business process specifications, and show how this can be extended to resolve reconfiguration problems. In this way, given the old and the new business process rules described as Dynamic Condition Response Graphs, and given the transition requirements described with linear temporal logic, the technique produces a control strategy that guides the organisation through a business process reconfiguration ensuring that all transition requirements and process rules are satisfied. The technique outputs a reconfiguration DCR whose traces reproduce the controller’s reconfiguration strategy. We illustrate and validate the approach using realistic cases and examples from the BPM Academic Initiative.
Date Issued
2022-02
Date Acceptance
2021-06-13
Citation
Information Systems, 2022, 104, pp.1-19
ISSN
0306-4379
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Start Page
1
End Page
19
Journal / Book Title
Information Systems
Volume
104
Copyright Statement
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030643792100082X?via%3Dihub
Subjects
0806 Information Systems
Information Systems
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
101850
Date Publish Online
2021-07-07