Formalising Risk with Value-Focused Process Engineering

Following calls to advance the integration of risk and business process modelling paradigms, this paper formalises the process of incorporating risk into business process models through the principles of Value-Focused Process Engineering (VFPE). In doing so, the paper aims to extend the existing VFPE modelling notation to create a common syntax by which to represent risk in a goal-oriented business-process model. Risk is conceptualised on the one hand, as a product of complex interactions between activity-based elements, and on the other hand, as a natural component of the value creation mechanism of an individual function or complex process. Furthermore, the extended syntax provides a formalised systems-based view of risk as an emergent property of the interaction of activity-based elements at any level of process granularity. The proposed risk-aware VFPE formalism also formulates rules for decomposing risk in process models according to the organisational values, thereby enabling better risk visibility, reducing process complexity, and ensuring continuity of business processes.