A Formal Approach to Adaptive Processes using Scenario-based Concepts

The problem and need for adapting business processes and service behavior to cope with changing circumstances is identified well. Standard models for business processes still rely on a fixed process logic, the change of which is rather hard to achieve. Ad-hoc changes to a standard model are usually considered too ‘dangerous’ as they are performed in not well-defined manner. Other models for adaptive processes deviate to some extent from established business process models. This deviation comes at the price of limited understandability and loss in analysis capabilities. We propose a model for adaptive processes based on Petri nets which have successfully been applied in modeling and analyzing business process and web services. Our operator to adapt the behavior of such models is formalized by the help of scenario-based concepts known from livesequence charts in purely mathematical terms. This combination of concepts allows to write down the result of the adaptation rather than how adaptation shall be performed.