Impact Analysis for Supporting the Co-Evolution of Business Processes and Supporting Software Systems

The co-evolution of business processes and supporting software systems is needed for keeping them aligned and it requires managerial and technological effort for adequately planning it. In fact, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software systems may impact the process activities in terms of input/output and/or purpose of the software system and, therefore, cause misalignment. A coarse grained strategy is proposed for detecting misalignment between business processes and supporting software systems when changes are executed, and for identifying which objects should be considered by additional change for restoring the alignment. The strategy proposes the exploitation of quality parameters, for codifying the alignment concept, and impact analysis techniques, for propagating the change and identifying all the process objects impacted by the change and requiring new interventions.