My own process: Providing dedicated views on EPCs Florian Gottschalk Michael Rosemann Wil M.P. van der Aalst f.gottschalk@tm.tue.nl m.rosemann@qut.edu.au w.m.p.v.d.aalst@tm.tue.nl Abstract: The idea of Business Process Management demands that companies change their focus from optimising tasks to focusing on whole business processes optimising the overall value chain. However process models depicting such complex processes are perceived as complicated and therefore as hard to use. The critical task is to present only relevant model parts to users and at the same time enable them to locate their contribution within the entire value chain. This paper discusses an approach for tailoring Event-driven Process Chains to those parts that are relevant to selected organisational units. The approach uses the allocation of organisational units to functions as a selection criteria for relevant model parts. A distinction between concurrent and alternative collaboration and the imple- mentation of a corresponding notation within the EPC notation enable the introduction of additional process interfaces, a standard feature of Event-driven Process Chains, into the tailored models. The process interfaces ensure the visibility of the connected business process. Therefore the approach helps to resolve the depicted conflict. 1 Introduction In order to handle and accurately describe business processes for all parties involved, to- day’s companies are using numerous modelling techniques, each aiming at different goals and audiences. This leads to a significant complexity of the modelling landscape. A high degree of complexity however results into a decrease of user acceptance [RSD05]. For that reason the quality of conceptual models is subject of academic research for a long time (e.g. [LSS94, Ros96]). When creating models, companies have to incorporate the same factors as for every other product, i.e. time, costs, and quality. The impact of these factors also depends on the purpose of modelling. E.g., a model created for simulation purposes will differ from the model created for knowledge management or organisational documentation. Also the HR manager’s demand on models of the company will for sure differ from the requirements of technicians. Proces modelling for various user groups or purposes is called multi-perspective modelling whereas each perspective is a subset of the total model [Ros03]. Powerful tools like the Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) [Sch94b, Sch00] support the creation of such multi-perspective models. The architecture enables the integration of different perspectives. It distinguishes between an object and its oc- currences. By using occurrences, the same object can be used in several models and modelling perspectives. Within ARIS, the process modelling language of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs) is used as an anchor point for the integration of the different per- spectives. EPCs are commonly used to depict the control flow of a business process, i.e. the order in which tasks have to be performed (see Figure 1). In addition EPCs provide the integration of multiple perspectives. They allow connecting occurrences of elements used within specialised perspectives (e.g. data, organisational units, or utilities) to functions. So the relevance of the particular element for the function becomes obvious. However, the current assignment notation lacks of information about the interaction between multiple connected elements. For that reason we introduce new connectors which are depicting dif- ferent kinds of collaboration in the first part of this paper (e.g., see function Release Invoice manually in Figure 1). We focus on the assignment of organisational units to functions, but connectors for other assignments should be definable in a similar way. 3XUFKDVH *RRGV 6HUYLFHLV ,QYRLFH ,QYRLFH RUGHU DFFHSWHG UHFHLSW UHFHLYHG UHFHLYHG (YHQW FUHDWHG SRVWHG 3URFHVV 9 ,QYRLFH )XQFWLRQ 9 ;25 &RQQHFWRU 1RUWK(DVW 1RUWK(DVW 2UJDQLVDWLRQDO 3URFHVV 8QLW :HVW ,QYRLFH 5HOHDVH VRPH 3URFHVV RQHHOVH ,QWHUIDFH 6RXWK ;25 ,QYRLFH ,QYRLFH 0DWHULDOLV SRVWHG  SRVWHGIRU UHOHDVHG EORFNHG UHOHDVH 9 1RUWK(DVW 6RXWK 5HOHDVH 5HOHDVH ,QYRLFH ,QYRLFH :HVW DXWR PDQXDOO\ PDWLFDOO\ 0DQDJHU ;25 6RXWK 3D\PHQW PXVWEH HIIHFWHG Figure 1: Example Invoice Verification Process By adding additional elements like stakeholders or data to the process flow even small EPCs can become fairly complex [KKS04]. E.g., the simple and clearly arranged invoice verification process in Figure 1 needs almost half an A4 page. Also the structure of EPCs (with, functions, surrounding events, connectors, and arcs in between) drives the model complexity, especially when creating models with a large number of functions and con- nectors. However, it is important that a user of a model quickly identifies those parts of the model that are relevant to him, i.e. the level of information presented must correspond to his requirements [MG75, BDFK03]. Thus, we introduce a reduction mechanism for EPCs in the second part of the paper so that the resulting process model is of high relevance for a selected organisational unit. E.g., in the depicted invoice verification process the man- ager should just see the function Release Invoice automatically and its direct environment. For this we not only consider the selected elements from the original process (similar to [BDFK03, BDKK02, RSD05]) but also introduce interfaces making the overall process flow and therefore the contribution to the value chain visible. To conclude we summarise the contribution of this paper and we give an outlook on po- tential future extensions. 2 Assigning Organisational Units to Functions: Who has to do it? To depict the involvement of organisational units within a process, EPCs allow connecting organisational units to functions. The reasons for such a connection (and therefore for the involvement) are manifold. E.g., the ARIS Toolset [Sch94a] suggests reasons like: • The organisational unit executes the function. • The organisational unit contributes to the function. • The organisational unit must be informed about result of the function. • The organisational unit has a consulting role in the function. In the definition of eEPCs it is requested that each organisational unit is involved in at least one function and that each function is allocated to at least one organisational unit as depicted in the meta model in Figure 2. LV 2UJDQLVDWLRQDO P Q DVVRFLDWHG )XQFWLRQ 8QLW WR 5HODWLRQVKLSW\SH Figure 2: Meta model for allocating organisational units and functions (adapted from [RzM97, Sch00]) The meta model depicts that an organisational unit can be involved in more than one func- tion as well as more than one organisational unit can be involved in a function – also for the same reason. E.g., it may be required that the management as well as the sales depart- ment have to contribute actively to the performance of a market analysis. Table 1 provides a matrix illustration of the involvement of different departments in a real-world order pro- cessing situation where three kinds of involvement are distinguished [Sch00]. 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