The increased adoption of business process management approaches, tools, and practices has led organizations to accumulate large collections of business process models. These collections can easily include from a hundred to a thousand models, especially in the context of multinational corporations or as a result of organizational mergers and acquisitions. A concrete problem is thus how to maintain these large repositories in such a way that their complexity does not hamper their practical usefulness as a means to describe and communicate business operations. This paper proposes a technique to automatically infer suitable names for business process models and fragments thereof. This technique is useful for model abstraction scenarios, as for instance when user-specific views of a repository are required, or as part of a refactoring initiative aimed to simplify the repository's complexity. The technique is grounded in an adaptation of the theory of meaning to the realm of business process models. We implemented the technique in a prototype tool and conducted an extensive evaluation using three process model collections from practice and a case study involving process modelers with different experience.

One of the tools used during re-engineering of an environment is the process model as modelling tool. The identification of process models within an institution is a difficult and tedious task. A problem is that often process model structures is identified for one specific project and not stored for future reuse. The ideal for institutions is to reuse process model structures within the institution. This study focused on the generic structures within the higher education application domain where the hypothesis for this study was that a generic educational process model structure for higher education institutions can be established; a process management flow procedure can be used to manage the flow within an educational process model; and that aneducational process model can be stored and reused in re-engineering efforts. The study was divided into three research questions, where the first focused on the identification of generic process model structures, the second on the usability of the process model structures within a re-engineering effort, and the last on the preservation of a process model structure. For the first research question, the identification of process model structures, three institutions were used for data collection. It was necessary to develop a requirements elicitation procedure for data collection. The structure derived was confirmed at a fourth institution. For the second research question, which focuses on the usability of process model structures, an ordinal measurement was defined to measure the usefulness of the process model structures in a reengineering effort. A re-engineering procedure was developed for re-engineering the application domain, called the process management flow procedure, and used for a re-engineering effort at one institution. Lastly, for the third research question the preservation of the process model structures, the abstraction of the process model structure was investigated as well as the feasibility of implementing the process model structures physically using existing repository software. The conclusion after the investigation of the three research questions was that the hypothesis was confirmed that there is indeed a set of process model structures within the higher education institution that are generic, preservable and reusable in a re-engineering effort. / Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)

One of the tools used during re-engineering of an environment is the process model as modelling tool. The identification of process models within an institution is a difficult and tedious task. A problem is that often process model structures is identified for one specific project and not stored for future reuse. The ideal for institutions is to reuse process model structures within the institution. This study focused on the generic structures within the higher education application domain where the hypothesis for this study was that a generic educational process model structure for higher education institutions can be established; a process management flow procedure can be used to manage the flow within an educational process model; and that aneducational process model can be stored and reused in re-engineering efforts. The study was divided into three research questions, where the first focused on the identification of generic process model structures, the second on the usability of the process model structures within a re-engineering effort, and the last on the preservation of a process model structure. For the first research question, the identification of process model structures, three institutions were used for data collection. It was necessary to develop a requirements elicitation procedure for data collection. The structure derived was confirmed at a fourth institution. For the second research question, which focuses on the usability of process model structures, an ordinal measurement was defined to measure the usefulness of the process model structures in a reengineering effort. A re-engineering procedure was developed for re-engineering the application domain, called the process management flow procedure, and used for a re-engineering effort at one institution. Lastly, for the third research question the preservation of the process model structures, the abstraction of the process model structure was investigated as well as the feasibility of implementing the process model structures physically using existing repository software. The conclusion after the investigation of the three research questions was that the hypothesis was confirmed that there is indeed a set of process model structures within the higher education institution that are generic, preservable and reusable in a re-engineering effort. / Computing / Ph. D. (Computer Science)