BPMN4VC-modeller: easy-handling of versions of collaborative processes using adaptation patterns

Abstract

BPMN4VC is an extension of BPMN for modelling versions of collaborative processes, represented as collaborations in BPMN. BPMN4VC has been recommended to address collaborative process flexibility issue, which is an important problem that business process management (BPM) systems must face before their definitive acceptance and use in companies. BPMN4VC meta-model supports static and dynamic aspects of collaboration versioning. Dynamic aspects of collaboration versioning include low-level operations supporting versioning management, a life cycle indicating when these operations can be performed and adaptation patterns making the update of collaboration schema easier to perform. This paper revisits the dynamic aspects of BPMNVC and in particular the adaptation patterns, detailing their implementation and use with BPMN4VC-modeller which is an implementation of BPMN4VC on top of the well-known BPMN modeller Eclipse plug-in. Finally, the paper reports on an evaluation of the adaptation patterns and of BPMN4VC-modeller to prove the feasibility of the contribution.