UML Profile for Business Process Modeling Notation

Abstract

In an enterprise, Information Systems (IS) are developed to support the Business Processes (BPs). A business process supporting information system is an important asset to define customer's needs and consist of set of activities to produce result of value to the customers. Business process modeling is often confused with software modeling. Business processes modeling carried out using Event-driven Process Chain (EPC), Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) or Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) etc. facilitates the understanding, analyzing and improving business processes but on the other hand, their models are too coarse to be used by software engineers. The advent of Unified Modeling Languages (UML) standardized by Object Management Group (OMG) has opened the door for business process modeling. In this paper, a UML profile is proposed to ease business process modeling i.e. BPMN so that software engineers can use business process models in familiar notations. As a result, UML model will be close to software engineer without being forced to master their peculiarities for understanding BPMN or to relate it with software requirements. A real-world insurance claim process case study is modeled using UMLPBPMN to show its applicability. Furthermore, obtained UML model can be verified using any formal language such as Petri-nets, timed automata etc. by applying model transformation.