Abstract
The planning of system development efforts is crucial to the successful realization of projects. However, development planning typically lacks systematic, engineering discipline, and consequently risks project and business success. Model-based process design is a potential information systems approach to addressing the increasing complexity of such planning. We characterize the ontology of development process design, based on real-life observations and scientific publications. We then synthesize the required ontology with the desirable characteristics of models, and derive key requirements for model-based development process design. Next, these requirements are used to evaluate the adequacy of three prominent, standardized model-based process design approaches—BPMN, OPM and SPEM. The findings reveal that the surveyed models are a partial fit, and do not promote sound process design. Finally, by generalizing the categorical evaluation results, possible root causes for the identified inadequacies are proposed. A new model design, which should rely on the formulated requirements set, is called for, in pursuit of a wider adoption of model-based design paradigms and better information systems realization to support the development of complex systems.
Highlights
The planning of development efforts is crucial to the successful realization of projects [1,2]
We provide a brief overview of three process models—BPMN, OPM and SPEM—that are representative of the state-of-the-art process modeling approaches2
We focus on languages that are designed to address the design of processes
Summary
The planning of development efforts is crucial to the successful realization of projects [1,2]. Development planning primarily focuses on project delivery criteria, whereas it should reflect various aspects of the development effort [1,2]. These findings indicate a profound gap in addressing of multiple perspectives in development plans. The criteria for selecting these process models were as follows: The process model demonstrates an MBSE approach by its nature (i.e., includes visual representations of entities from a common data repository, designated for implementation as an IS), and thereby is representative of state-of-the-art approaches to addressing complexity; The process model is documented in a formal specification, which allows us to analyze the model definition objectively as well as attesting to its quality (such specifications are typically released after being thoroughly reviewed by experts, and embody significant domain expertise). While our selection does not include all existing approaches, we cover a diverse, representative range of DPDrelevant process models
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