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On the Notion of Goal in Business Process Models

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AI*IA 2018 – Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11298))

Abstract

Business process modelling languages allow to capture business processes by embracing different paradigms, emphasising different business process elements or characteristics and exploiting different graphical notations. In the literature, several definitions of business process have been proposed which define business processes in terms of (some of) their components and participants. While some of these components, for instance activities or data objects, have been analysed from different perspectives and play a relevant part in the graphical design of a business process model, other relevant components remain in a shadowy area as they do not typically appear in the graphical design of a business process model nor in the annexed documentation. Typical examples of these shadowy elements are business process goals. As a result, while it is extremely clear and well agreed that business processes realise a business goal, it is somehow more difficult to state exactly what this business goal is, or if this business goal is unique. In this paper, we carry on an analysis of business process goals tailored to propose a classification of different types of goals that pertain to a business process.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We will interchangeably use the notions of “process model” and “process diagram”.

  2. 2.

    Exceptions can be found in some versions of EPC, the ARIS modelling language [25], and in the Guard-Stage Milestone (GSM) notation [14].

  3. 3.

    We omit here several variants such as the registration directly at the hospital.

  4. 4.

    Functional and non-functional goals are linked with the notions of functional and non-functional requirements (NFR) [6]. Despite the overlaps/similarities between the terms goal and requirement, they should be treated separately: indeed goals are used to capture why (the motivation for which) the system needs to behave in a certain way, while requirements underly how the goal must be achieved [3].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. FBK-IRST, Via Sommarive 18, 38050, Trento, Italy

    Greta Adamo, Chiara Di Francescomarino & Chiara Ghidini

  2. ISTC-CNR Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento, Italy

    Stefano Borgo & Nicola Guarino

  3. DIBRIS, University of Genova, via Dodecaneso 35, 16146, Genova, Italy

    Greta Adamo

Authors
  1. Greta Adamo
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  2. Stefano Borgo
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  3. Chiara Di Francescomarino
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  4. Chiara Ghidini
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  5. Nicola Guarino
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Correspondence to Greta Adamo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Povo (TN), Italy

    Chiara Ghidini

  2. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Povo (TN), Italy

    Bernardo Magnini

  3. University of Trento, Povo (TN), Italy

    Andrea Passerini

  4. Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Povo (TN), Italy

    Paolo Traverso

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Adamo, G., Borgo, S., Di Francescomarino, C., Ghidini, C., Guarino, N. (2018). On the Notion of Goal in Business Process Models. In: Ghidini, C., Magnini, B., Passerini, A., Traverso, P. (eds) AI*IA 2018 – Advances in Artificial Intelligence. AI*IA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11298. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03840-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03840-3_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03840-3

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