=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1400/paper8
|storemode=property
|title=Metamodeling Architectures for Business Processess in Organizations
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1400/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-1400
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/staf/PieratonioRSTW15
}}
==Metamodeling Architectures for Business Processess in Organizations==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1400/paper8.pdf
Metamodeling Architectures for
Business Processess in Organizations
Alfonso Pierantonio1 , Gianni Rosa1 , Darius Silingas2 , Barbara Thönssen3 , and Robert
Woitsch4
1
Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienze dell’Informazione e Matematica
Università degli Studi dell’Aquila (Italy)
2
No Magic Europe
Savanoriu av. 363, LT-49425 Kaunas (Lithuania)
3
University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland
Riggenbachstrasse 16, CH-4600 Olten (Switzerland)
4
BOC Information Technologies Consulting AG
Operngasse 20b, 1040 Wien (Austria)
Abstract. This paper presents the working version of Learn PAd metamodel that
captures the concepts that are used to model process-centric business architecture
(process, motivation, organization structure, measurements, etc.) in sufficient de-
tail to be useful for on-the-job learning in public administrations. We provides
detailed concepts and relationships reusing selected parts of the modeling stan-
dards such as BMM, BPMN, and CMMN when possible. The interrelationships
between the concepts in different metamodels are captured in a separate weaving
model in order to enable encapsulation of separate views that could be specified
using isolated standard metamodels.
1 Introduction
In modern society public administrations (PAs) are undergoing a transformation of their
perceived role from controllers to proactive service providers. In most cases, the provi-
sioning of the services is a collaborative activity shared among different, possibly many,
organisations that are in general quite interrelated. Civil servants are challenged to un-
derstand and put in action latest procedures and rules in order to constantly improve
their service quality while coping with quickly changing contexts (changes in law and
regulations, societal globalization, fast technology evolution) and decreasing budgets.
In order to provide efficient services to citizens and companies, civil servants have
to manage and master extremely complex processes in PAs. The Learn PAd5 project [3]
aims at developing a social, collaborative and holistic e-learning platform able to foster
cooperation and knowledge-sharing for civil servants. It enables process-driven learn-
ing and improvement of the process on a user-friendly basis of wiki pages enriched
with additional documentation for a clearer understanding of the process together with
5
Model-Based Social Learning for Public Administrations is part of the program FP7-
ICT-2013.8.2 Technology-enhanced learning. The project started on Feb 1, 2014 and ter-
minate on Jul 31, 2016 with a cost of e 3,535,000. For further detail please refer to
http://www.learnpad.eu
2 Alfonso Pierantonio, Gianni Rosa, Darius Silingas Barbara Thönssen, Robert Woitsch
guidance based on formalized models. Moreover, the platform supports both an infor-
mative learning approach based on enriched Business Process [13] (BP) models and a
procedural learning approach based on simulation and monitoring learning-by-doing.
To this end, it is of crucial relevance that the procedural aspects of a business process
are described in accordance with other relevant views of the social and business context
including organizational details, motivational intents, and measure indicators to assess
the learning and the process enactment performance.
Model Driven Engineering (MDE) [15] is increasingly gaining acceptance as a
mean to leverage business logic and make it resilient to technological changes. Co-
ordinated collections of models and modelling languages are used to describe software
systems on different level of abstraction and from different perspectives. In this pa-
per, we describe some the outcomes and the objectives of the Learn PAd WP3: Ap-
proaches Enabling Model-based Learning [3]. The workpackage main objective is to
define a comprehensive modeling language, called Learn PAd Metamodel (LPMM), for
the specification of business processes in Public Administrations consisting of a num-
ber of component metamodels. Each LPMM metamodel focuses on a different aspect
of the business processes. A process is typically perceived as a sequence of activities
that the administration executes in order to produce a service for the end user. How-
ever, these activities are most of the time knowledge-intensive and require transparency
and information tracing. In addition, the responsibility of their enactment is assigned
to organizational units within the administrations which pursue given goals. Therefore,
in order to better support the learner the typical business process modeling has been
intertwined with additional modeling structures to make knowledge relevant in a given
process explicit.
Structure of the paper. The paper is organized as follows: in the next section, we de-
scribe the main concepts for knowledge-intensive processes in PAs. The model-driven
approach is discussed in Sect. 3, it has been used to formalize the Learn PAd metamod-
els provided in Sect. 4. Finally, in Sec. 5 we show a correspondence between metamod-
els by means weaving models and in Sect. 6 we draw some conclusions.
2 Processes in Public Administrations
A business process can be regarded as a sequence of activities that the administration
executes in order to produce a service for the end user: it starts with i) receiving of
some input (i.e. request, documentation), ii) performs activities that add value (i.e.,
checks) using resources (i.e., humans, information, structures), and finally iii) produce
an output. Business processes in PAs are mainly knowledge-intensive. Thus, civil ser-
vants are used to dealing with huge amounts of information: lessons learned in previous
engagements, insights from prior projects, notes for subsequent process steps are scat-
tered among manifold knowledge containers, from the personal memory, over paper,
to different electronic systems. In order to manage such information, it is important to
organize knowledge archives exploiting the usage of BPs in a context-giving structure.
In particular, the civil servant should be able to access the required knowledge in an
optimal manner. This can be achieved by coupling the process model with the descrip-
tive units about various aspects including the kind of data and document type being
considered by the process, the organizational structure, the indicators for measuring
both the performance of civil servants and how far the learning goals are achieved. The
Metamodeling of Enterprise Architecture in Public Administrations 3
outcome of such modeling procedure is a number of interrelated models as depicted in
Fig. 1. The specification of business processes (Fig. 1.a) is usually done by means of
standard notations like BPMN 2.0 [13], while for knowledge intensive (sub-)processes
(Fig. 1.b) the Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN 1.0) [11] has been con-
sidered with some necessary adaptations in order to deal with partiality of information
and some intrinsic uncertainty [7]. Another aspect, which is relevant for Learn PAd, is
the necessity to consider business goals, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and suc-
cess factors, which are usually represented in a Business Motivation Model (Fig. 1.c)
(BMM) [12]. The learning competencies required by roles are modelled as well: the
Competency Model (Fig. 1.d), based on the framework CEN [8] is built for describing
learners level of competencies, learning progress, etc. Organisational units, roles and
persons are modelled in an extra Organisation Model (Fig. 1.e), to allow for more ex-
pressiveness than ’BPMN native’ pools and lanes, as the BPMN 2.0 specification, for
instance, does not provide any semantics to lanes and pools (which are merely regarded
as an encapsulation mechanism for organizing activities). Finally a Document Model
(Fig. 1.f) is depicted, comprising application documents and data, learning reports etc.
Fig. 1. Overview of needed models
Since, modeling notations are usually given in terms of metamodels a brief introduction
to metamodeling and Model-Driven Engineering is given in the next section.
3 Background
In this section we describe the model-driven techniques, which has been used to formal-
ize the Learn PAd metamodels and the correspondences among the different component
metamodels.
4 Alfonso Pierantonio, Gianni Rosa, Darius Silingas Barbara Thönssen, Robert Woitsch
3.1 Metamodeling
In MDE metamodels consists of a coherent set of interrelated concepts, which are used
for formalizing an application domain. A more precise definition, as provided by Sei-
dewitz in [16], is
a specification model for a class of system-under-study where each system-
under-study in the class is itself a valid model expressed in a certain modeling
language.
Thus, domain instances can be expressed in terms of models, which are said to conform
to a metamodel. The expressiveness of the metamodel, i.e., the amount of detail which
has to be captured for each concept is a trade-off between abstraction and automation,
i.e., the kind of applications (e.g., model-to-model and model-to-code transformations)
the designer is aiming at. Being able to define the right generic-specific balance is key to
success: a too generic language does not usually offer enough semantic graduation for
distinguishing different concepts, on the contrary a too specific language, with too many
concepts is difficult to learn, understand, manage, and deploy. In practice, a metamodel
often evolves towards a final form only after it undergoes an iterative restructuring and
refinement process. Each iteration consists in extending and refining the set of available
features and adapting the corresponding model transformations and tools which are
tightly coupled with the metamodel.
3.2 Model Weaving
The separation of concerns in software system modeling avoids the construction of
large and monolithic models which could be difficult to handle, maintain and reuse. At
the same time, having different models (each one describing a certain concern) requires
their integration into a final model representing the entire domain [14]. Model weaving
can be used in this scenario. Although there is no accepted definition of model weaving,
in [4] it is considered as the operation for setting fine-grained relationships between
models or metamodels and executing operations on them based on the semantics of the
weaving associations specifically defined for the considered application domain.
The definition of model weaving that
will be considered in this paper is that
provided in [9]. The weaving metamodel
is not fixed since it might be extended by
means of a proposed composition oper-
ation to reach dedicated weaving meta-
models. In a weaving model WM repre-
senting the mapping between the meta- Fig. 2. The analysis process
models LeftMM and RightMM is given.
Like other models, this should conform to a specific weaving metamodel WMM (see
Fig. 2). In the context of Learn PAd we use the weaving models for specifying some
form of semantics of given modeling elements. For instance, in BPMN the semantics
of lane is not precisely given, therefore we give a weaving model which can associate a
lane to an organizational unit deferring the semantics of the former to that of the latter.
This technique is a simplification of the semantic anchoring [5] which adopts model
Metamodeling of Enterprise Architecture in Public Administrations 5
transformations for anchoring the meaning of a concept in a metamodel into a concept
in another metamodel (for which typically the semantics is already given)6 .
4 Learn PAd Platform-Independent Metamodel
The Learn PAd Metamodel (LPMM) is a comprehensive modeling language for the
specification of business processes in Public Administrations consisting of a number of
component metamodels as illustrated in Fig. 3. The following component metamodels
Fig. 3. The Learn PAd metamodel
have been defined by adapting current industrial standards:
– business motivation metamodel7 (BMM) [2],
– business process management and notation (BPMN) [13], and
– case management and notation (CMMN) [1].
Due to space limitations we omit the detailed description of the above metamodels and
the interested reader can refer to their standard specifications. The remaining metamod-
els have been defined from scratch and are described in the following subsections.
– competency metamodel (CM);
– document and knowledge metamodel (DKM);
– key performance indicator metamodel (KPI), and
– organization metamodel (OM).
The dotted lines in the figure denote the correspondences across the different views
describing the manifold nature of a process, i.e., concepts belonging to two or more
metamodels are cross-linked by means of weaving models [6] (see Sect. 5).
4.1 Competency Metamodel
The Learn PAd Competency Metamodel is thought for describing learners level of
competencies and learning progress. In Public Administrations competencies are of-
6
Weavings are often considered ”declarative transformations” since they define relations from
which (specialized) transformations can be automatically derived (see [10]).
7
In order to stress the distinction between model and metamodel we prefer to use the term
metamodel also for denoting standards like OMG’s BMM, which we call Business Motivation
Metamodel.
6 Alfonso Pierantonio, Gianni Rosa, Darius Silingas Barbara Thönssen, Robert Woitsch
Fig. 4. The Competency metamodel
ten described within job descriptions but not defined in specific models leaving to the
modeler the responsibility of consistently meeting them. The Learn PAd Competency
Model permits the explicit modeling of such aspect. It is partly based on the framework
the European Committee for standardisation, CEN WS-LT LTSO (Learning Technol-
ogy Standards Observatory)8 . In particular, it has been simplified in order to avoid any
modeling element which is not necessary in the context of Learn PAd. Clearly, the Learn
PAd Competency Metamodel plays its crucial role when connected with the business
process metamodel desribed above and with the organisation metamodel. Such con-
nections are specified by means of weaving models [6] which represents how model
elements in a metamodel correspond to model element in another metamodel by means
of typed many-to-many cross-links. An example of the Learn PAd weaving models is
given in Sect. 5.
Fig. 5. The Document and Knowledge metamodel
4.2 Document and Knowledge Metamodel
Knowledge models contain documents (templates), knowledge products and resources,
which are utilized in the processes (input, output to activities etc.).
Knowledge models can be built hierarchically using document sub models to e.g.
illustrate a detailed structure of documents.
8
EN WS-LT Learning Technology Standards Observatory. URL: http://www.cen-
ltso.net/Main.aspx. Main contact: Uni- versity of Vigo 36213 SPAIN.
Metamodeling of Enterprise Architecture in Public Administrations 7
4.3 The Key Performance Indicator metamodel
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are seen as a virtualisation instrument enabling to
conceptualise relevant parts of the concrete instances of the production processes. A
performance indicator is a measurement of the success of a given organization or activ-
ity in which it engages.
Fig. 6. The KPI metamodel
Thus, KPIs can be successfully employed in process models in order to assess per-
formance of activities and processes. Besides making the KPI modeling explicit by
means of the metamodel which is illustrated in this section, we aim at relating KPIs to
activities and to the process as a whole. Therefore, proper weaving models will be given
in Sect. 5 connecting the KPI metamodel and the business process metamodels and the
business motivation metamodel.
In the following the class diagram of the KPI metamodel is given and all the con-
cepts are introduced by specifying the characterizing features.
Fig. 7. The Organizational Model
4.4 Organization Model
Organization models describe the structure of an organization (organization chart). Or-
ganizational structure models can be built hierarchically using organizational sub mod-
els to e.g. illustrate a detailed structure of a working environment.
8 Alfonso Pierantonio, Gianni Rosa, Darius Silingas Barbara Thönssen, Robert Woitsch
5 Weaving definition
As already said, weaving models are typically used for defining correspondences be-
tween modeling elements belonging to different metamodels and usually depend on
each other. In the following, the weaving models, given by means of a weaving meta-
class, are used for interconnecting the component metamodels. In the following a frag-
ment of the weaving metamodel which interconnects a BPMN lane in the Perfomer of
the OrganizationalUnit metamodel is depicted.
Fig. 8. The Swimlane-Lane weavings
6 Conclusion
This paper described how business processes in PAs can be described according to the
Learn PAd modeling notation: a metamodel stack whose components are model kinds
intertwined by means of weaving models. Such specialized models relates the several
views a process one with another by means of formal correspondences that can be
navigated or used for consistency checks. For instance, it has been possible to specify
that the typical concept of a lane in BPMN must correspond to either an organizational
unit, a performer, or a role. This is one of the most important criteria we had to follow
because BPMN alone does not say anything about the meaning of lane. Future work
includes the activities related to the continuation of Task 3.2. This time will be devoted
for the design of the modeling tools and for the metamodel validation.
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