Language-Independent Change Management of Process Models

In model-driven development approaches, process models are used at different levels of abstraction and are described by different languages. Similar to other software artifacts, process models are developed in team environments and underlie constant change. This requires reusable techniques for the detection of changes between different process models and the computation of dependencies and conflicts between changes. In this paper, we propose a framework for the construction of process model change management solutions that provides generic techniques for the detection of differences and the computation of dependencies and conflicts between changes. The framework contains an abstract representation for process models that serves as a common denominator for different process models. In addition, we show how the framework is instantiated exemplarily for BPMN.