On the Dynamic Configuration of Business Process Models

Business Process Models are a relevant input for the development of information systems. Since processes are performed in increasingly dynamic business environments, the processes are required to be flexible and dynamic as well, adapting to environmental changes. Thus, it is essential to properly represent variability in Business Process Models. Moreover, in order to allow for adaptive and autonomic systems, it is of paramount importance to reason on the variability of a process, being able to select a process configuration for a given context. In this paper, we present an approach for such context-aware reasoning, on which the business process configuration is driven by NonFunctional Requirements. Using independent models for expressing variability representation, configuration knowledge, contextual information, and the process itself, we present algorithms and mechanisms to perform business process configuration at runtime. Furthermore, we describe experiments we conducted in order to assess the suitability of our approach.