A Notation for the Task-Oriented Modeling of Business Processes

Current notations for business processes are mainly technological tools and lack strong links with the ontological items, i.e., the tasks and the business entities that information systems consist of. In particular, the information flow is missing from process models and human decisions are not adequately represented. In order to overcome those drawbacks, this paper proposes a notation, called TOMP (Task-Oriented Modeling of business Processes), which considers tasks and decisions as first-class constructs in process models and provides the explicit representation of the information flow in connection with an information model. It also illustrates the structure of to-do lists, which are the major interface between the participants and their tasks. DOI: 10.4018/jhcitp.2012070104 International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals, 3(3), 42-53, July-September 2012 43 Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. of business entities, the one feeding the process actions is based on process variables, and what is more, there is no automatic mapping between business entities and process variables. The second drawback is that human decisions are not adequately expressed in BP models and this is due to their orchestration-oriented nature. The process engine assigns work to participants through to-do lists. Participants, by clicking on the entries of their to-do lists, can perform the corresponding tasks, and, when a task has been completed, a notification is sent back to the process engine, which goes on with the next action in the BP model. BP models contain sufficient information for the engine to be able to decide which task to activate next. Although participants may exert influence on such decisions, they do so within the tasks assigned to them. A human decision is needed when a participant may react to a given request in several ways, each of them implying a different course of action. For example, upon receiving a request for quote from a customer, an account manager could react in three ways: ignoring the request, providing a quote, or starting a reselling initiative whose first step is entering requests for quote for a number of suppliers. Since human decisions are not represented in BP models, the above situation may be handled as follows. The three options are included in one task, which can be assigned through a to-do list; this task is represented in the BP model by means of an orchestrated action followed by a data-driven decision resulting in three branches, one for each course of action. When the task is completed, its output information enables the process engine to select the proper branch. However, this solution is not satisfactory as the participants are not clearly shown the choices they are responsible for. A process description should be a road map that can be observed from different viewpoints; it must be suitable for being interpreted by a process engine, nevertheless it must be meaningful to the participants involved. Therefore, this paper emphasizes the need of placing tasks, human decisions and the data flow in the foreground and presents a notation called Task-Oriented Modeling of business Processes (TOMP) aimed at fulfilling this purpose. This paper is organized as follows. First it presents background information on the various issues involved and illustrates the basic features of TOMP; then it analyzes the modeling of human decisions and the handling of assignments in to-do lists, and finally presents the conclusion.