Lightweight approach for seamless modeling of process flows in case management models

Abstract

Case management models are business process models that allow a great degree of flexibility at runtime by design. In contrast to flow-driven business processes (e.g., BPMN, EPC, UML activity diagrams), case management models primarily describe a business process by tasks, goals (i.e., milestones), stages, and dependencies between them. However, flow-driven processes are still often required and relevant in practice. In the recent case management standard CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation), support for process flows is offered by referencing BPMN processes. This results in a conceptual break between case elements and those in such subprocesses, so that dependencies from and to elements contained in flow-driven processes are unsupported. Moreover, case designers and other involved stakeholders are required to have substantial knowledge of not only case modeling but also of flow-driven business process modeling, which makes it overly complex. To counteract these current limitations, this paper proposes a lightweight and seamless integration of process flows in case management modeling as a first class citizen. Just a single new element, the Flow Dependency, in combination with existing case elements, enables support for fully integrated process flows in case models. Although the approach is that lightweight, an evaluation based on workflow patterns shows its high degree of expressiveness.