Guidance in business process modelling

Abstract

This chapter shows how process modellers can be supported by guidance. If a telecommunication provider introduces a value-added service, this might involve the establishment of new business processes, whose specification is not trivial. A guidance engine can help a process engineer develop a new business process by stepwise refining, i.e. creating a more concrete version of the process from an abstract version. The guidance engine identifies inconsistencies and proposes possible refinement steps. The topics covered in this chapter range from theoretical foundations of business process refinement over the formalisation of refinement problems in ontologies to implementation issues. The presented solutions were developed in the MOST project. © 2011 Springer-Verlag/Wien.