Flexible Process Variant Binding in Information Systems with Software Product Line Engineering
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🤖 AI Summary
Rigid activity implementation binding in digital business processes hinders adaptation to heterogeneous organizational requirements. Method: This paper proposes a three-level dynamic binding mechanism—operating at compile time, launch time, and runtime—that enables concurrent execution of multiple implementations for the same activity and supports context-aware, dynamic customization of input/output data contracts. Integrating Software Product Line (SPL) engineering with Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS), we develop a variability modeling and runtime feature configuration framework. Contribution/Results: Our approach achieves, for the first time, end-to-end flexible activity binding across the full process lifecycle. It overcomes the limitations of conventional single-version, static binding by enabling on-demand composition of diverse activity implementations and data interfaces within a unified process model. This significantly enhances the adaptability and configurability of process systems in multi-organizational settings.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Different organisations often run similar digitised business processes to achieve their business goals. However, organisations often need to slightly adapt the business processes implemented in an information system in order to adopt them. Various approaches have been proposed to manage variants in process models. While these approaches mainly deal with control flow variability, in previous work we introduced an approach to manage implementation variants of digitised business processes. In this context Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering was applied to manage a set of common core artefacts including a process model from which Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) can be derived, which differ in the implementation of their process activities. % substitute the implementation of activities of a business process. When deriving a PAIS, implementations are selected for each process activity and then included in the PAIS at compilation time. One challenge that has not yet been solved is giving users of digitised business processes the option of selecting several features at runtime, i.e. selecting multiple activity implementations at runtime. This paper extends our previous work by not only allowing for the selection of activity implementations at compile time, but also at start time and runtime. Consequently, it becomes possible to defer the decision as to which features should be selected to start time and runtime. Furthermore, multiple implementations of a particular activity may be selected and executed concurrently. As another challenge different organisation may want to collect and base their decision on different information in a digitised business process. Consequently, the presented approach also allows customising the input and output data of activities when deriving a PAIS for a specific organisation.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Managing implementation variants in digitized business processes
Enabling runtime selection of multiple activity implementations
Customizing input and output data for process activities
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Extends SPL Engineering for runtime activity selection
Supports concurrent execution of multiple implementations
Allows customization of activity input and output
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