Broadening the Use of Process Patterns for Modeling Processes

Generally, process patterns are considered as patterns capturing reusable development activities, and serve as building blocks for constructing new processes. However, such a definition is not adequate to represent the original idea of process patterns that aims to capture and reuse diverse process knowledge. In this work, we broaden the definition and application of process patterns to take more advantage of them for different process modeling needs. First, we formalized the process pattern concept so that it can capture various kinds of process knowledge. Then, we proposed different ways for reusing process patterns to generate or improve process models. These propositions were rigorously defined in a UML-based meta-model to permit describing processes based on process patterns with standard notations, and to facilitate the development of supporting tools.