BPMN 2.0 based modeling and customization of variants in business process families

Abstract

Business processes may accept variants based on specific business requirements of an organization, leading to the definition of a process family. There are many proposals for the modeling of the common and variable parts of a process family, as well as to support the customization of each process variant (i.e., process configuration or tailoring). In this article, we present the results of a detailed study about the modeling and customization of process families based on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN 2.0) standard, and we introduce BPMNext, a novel approach devised for this purpose. The language is an adaptation of BPMN 2.0 based on the ideas provided by vSPEM, a language for the modeling of software processes families. We also present a supporting tool and its application to a real case study about the assignment of positions in exchange programs.