=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2060/rebpm6
|storemode=property
|title=Requirements Engineering Approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from Business Process Management: a Systematic Literature Review
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2060/rebpm6.pdf
|volume=Vol-2060
|authors=Adriana Unger,Mauro Spinola,Marcelo Pessôa
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/modellierung/UngerSP18
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==Requirements Engineering Approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from Business Process Management: a Systematic Literature Review==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2060/rebpm6.pdf
Ina Schaefer, Loek Cleophas, Michael(ed.): 2018,
< book title>,
Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI), Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn 261
Requirements Engineering und Business Process Management (REBPM) 15
Requirements Engineering approaches to derive Enterprise
Information Systems from Business Process Management:
a systematic literature review
Adriana Unger 1, Mauro Spinola 2 and Marcelo Pessôa 3
Abstract: The advent of Business Process Management offered a new approach to improve
business and IT strategic alignment in organizations throughout development of process-aware
Enterprise Information Systems. For that matter, extracting software requirements from business
process models leverages engineering of adaptive information systems, which are able to adjust to
changes in operation as of process redesign. This study describes a systematic literature review in
Requirements Engineering approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from Business
Process Management, aiming to provide the state-of-the-art academic overview on this research
topic. Results reveal six different approach types, with variations on software development degree
of automation, suggesting diverse strategies for process-oriented information systems adoption.
Keywords: Business Process Management, Requirements Engineering, Enterprise Information
Systems
1 Introduction
Regardless of its origin in business reengineering as of [Da93] and [HC93] works,
development of BPM (Business Process Management) as a management discipline has
always been enriched by solid computer science field contributions, e.g. [Aa98], [Aa03],
[AHW03] and [We10], which were decisive to develop required methods and
technologies to enable modelling, analysing, simulating, implementing and monitoring
operational business processes. In this regard, BPM plays an important role in bridging
the gap between business and IT areas in organizations, providing support to strategic
alignment of business processes, e.g. [Mo12] and [Ro15].
Indeed, BPM initiatives in organizations are not rarely associated to EIS (Enterprise
Information Systems) adoption or adjustment, aiming to implement designed business
processes, fully or partly automated, in order to enhance effectiveness of process
improvement programs. This demands the deployment of process-oriented EIS that
support business processes (e.g. [He14]) and are able to quickly adapt to changes in
1
University of Sao Paulo, Production Engineering, Av. Prof Almeida Prado, 128, travessa 2, Sao Paulo/Brazil,
05508-070, ajacoto@usp.br
2
University of Sao Paulo, Production Engineering, Av. Prof Almeida Prado, 128, travessa 2, Sao Paulo/Brazil,
05508-070, mauro.spinola@usp.br
3
University of Sao Paulo, Production Engineering, Av. Prof Almeida Prado, 128, travessa 2, Sao Paulo/Brazil,
05508-070, mpessoa@usp.br
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operations in a constantly changing business scenario. (e.g. [WSR09]). In this context,
existing EIS can be considered in a broader view, e.g. [Xu11] and [AW04], and may or
may not be originally designed from a process-driven perspective.
To design such systems, business processes must be taken into account during RE
(Requirements Engineering) phase. This may involve deriving software requirements
from business process models and proceeding with regular software development
processes, but might also embrace adoption of commercial BPMS (Business Process
Management Suite). In fact, according to [DAH05], any information system developed
under process-driven orientation can be considered a PAIS (Process-Aware Information
System), which suggests there may be different RE approaches to address process-
oriented EIS. In any way, RE and BPM fields must be interrelated to address the design
of EIS aligned to business context, e.g. [HKW14].
Discovering varied RE approaches to derive EIS may contribute to strategic alignment of
organizations, since they can guide different strategies of PAIS adoption that can be
considered to orient EIS to business processes. The main motivation of this study is to
provide the state-of-the-art academic overview on how RE can be applied to derive EIS
from BPM. The study describes a systematic literature review on this research topic,
presenting the review phases and discussion of the results found.
2 Research methodology
To perform the SLR (Systematic Literature Review), guidelines from [KC07] were
followed. To start planning the review, an initial mapping study was performed in order
to expand research keywords used to search for primary studies. “Business process
management” and “requirements engineering” main keywords were used as a starting
point to search for article title, abstract and keywords in Scopus database [Sc17]. On
12/09/2017, this search produced 55 document results, whose metadata were exported to
VOSviewer software tool [EW10]. A co-occurrence network of keywords was then
created, based on the number of publications in which two keywords occur together in
the bibliographic data. The keywords co-occurrence map can be viewed in Fig. 1. This
initial mapping study resulted 395 keywords which were later analysed to compose SLR
search queries.
SLR protocol items were defined as follows:
• Objective: to provide a background in order to appropriately position research
activities in the field of BPM and RE for EIS.
• Research question: how RE can be applied to derive EIS from BPM?
• Keywords and synonyms: BPMN, BPMS, business IT alignment, business process
management, information system, requirements analysis, requirements elicitation,
requirements engineering, requirements gathering, requirements management,
Requirements Engineering approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from
Business Process Management:
RE approachesatosystematic
derive EISliterature
from BPM: review
a SLR 263
17
requirements model, requirements specification, software engineering, software
requirement, strategic alignment, system engineering, system requirement.
• Sources selection criteria definition: abstract and citation databases of peer-
reviewed literature.
Fig. 1: Keywords co-occurrence map in VOSviewer
• Source search method: web search engines.
• Source list: Scopus [Sc17] and Web of Science [We17].
• Primary studies’ language: English.
• Primary studies’ document types: article or conference paper
• Study selection criteria (IC – Inclusion Criteria and EC – Exclusion Criteria):
− IC1: BPM for requirements specification.
− IC2: information system derived from business process artefacts.
− EC1: information system not supporting business processes.
− EC2: process artefacts not related to business.
− EC3: date of publication before 2014.
− EC4: full-text not available.
− EC5: non-English language.
− EC6: invalid document type.
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• Data extraction criteria (AT – Approach Type):
− AT1 – BPM4UML: process-oriented RE approach in which software
artefacts, such as UML models, are derived from BPM artefacts, such as
business process models.
− AT2 – BPM4SOA: process-based approach to generate services-oriented
information systems, usually under SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture)
paradigm, handling different models and notations such as BPMN (Business
Process Model and Notation), BPEL (Business Process Execution
Language) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and
conversion methods between them.
− AT3 – BPM4APP: generation of application systems from business process
models that are automated and executed by process engines.
These predefined approach types were adapted from the common framework for the
concept of BPM in an EIS perspective from [MMT08].
3 Systematic literature review
To conduct the review, a search strategy was defined based on the relevance of each
keyword and synonym in the keywords co-occurrence map identified during the initial
mapping study. Expanded search queries for each source were developed as follows:
• Scopus: TITLE-ABS-KEY ( ( "business process management" OR "BPMN" OR
"BPMS" ) AND ( ( "requirement*" AND ( "business it alignment" OR "strategic
alignment" OR "information system*" OR "system* engineering" OR "software
engineering" ) ) OR ( "system* requirement*" OR "software requirement*" OR
"requirement* engineering" OR "requirement* analysis" OR "requirement*
elicitation" OR "requirement* gathering" OR "requirement* management" OR
"requirement* model*" OR "requirement* specification*" ) ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO
( DOCTYPE , "cp " ) OR LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE , " ar " ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO
( PUBYEAR , 2018 ) OR LIMIT-TO ( PUBYEAR , 2017 ) OR LIMIT-TO (
PUBYEAR , 2016 ) OR LIMIT-TO ( PUBYEAR , 2015 ) OR LIMIT-TO (
PUBYEAR , 2014 ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( LANGUAGE , "English " ) ).
• Web of Science: (TS=(( "business process management" OR "BPMN" OR "BPMS"
) AND ( ( "requirement*" AND ( "business it alignment" OR "strategic alignment"
OR "information system*" OR "system* engineering" OR "software engineering" )
) OR ( "system* requirement*" OR "software requirement*" OR "requirement*
engineering" OR "requirement* analysis" OR "requirement* elicitation" OR
"requirement* gathering" OR "requirement* management" OR "requirement*
model*" OR "requirement* specification*" ) ))) AND Languages: (English) AND
Requirements Engineering approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from
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Document types: (Proceedings Paper OR Article) Timespan=2014-2017.
Indexes=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI.
Some criteria (EC3, EC5 and EC6) could be included in the search strings. On
04/11/2017, search string execution produced 176 document results in Scopus and 78
document results in Web of Science. These results were then checked so that duplicated
papers were removed before studies selection. All steps of SLR are evidenced in Fig. 2.
Initial Duplicated
Indentification Study Study quality Data
mapping 55 of research 254 papers 192 selection 115 assessment 104 extraction
study removal
Fig. 2: Number of papers throughout SLR steps
During study selection step, IC1, IC2, EC1 and EC2 criteria were applied based on
analysis of abstract, keywords and title of each paper. Afterward, during study quality
assessment, EC3, EC4, EC5 and EC6 criteria were applied based on full text analysis. At
last, data extraction was performed so that each paper was classified into one of the
approach type categories.
4 Review results
Review results encompasses not only accepted papers, but rejected ones which could be
grouped into subcategories for each exclusion criterium, based on similarity of subjects
covered. Tab. 1 presents SLR results for rejected papers.
Exclusion criteria Results
EC1.1 – enterprise architecture 9
EC1.2 – management initiative 28
EC1.3 – process mining 6
EC2.1 – BPMN for software design 19
EC2.2 – modelling languages 15
EC3 – date of publication before 2014 0
EC4 – full-text not available 9
EC5 – non-English language 0
EC6 – invalid document type 2
Tab. 1: Papers rejected during SLR
Despite these papers were rejected, discussed subjects within each exclusion criterium
subcategory comprise solid research fields partially related to research question, which
may deserve deeper investigation as alternative approaches to those resulting from
accepted papers. The exclusion criteria subcategories are described as follows:
• EC1.1 – enterprise architecture: application of enterprise architecture frameworks
such as TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) [Th11] or business
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analysis practices such as those from BABOK (a guide to the Business Analysis
Body Of Knowledge) [II15], which consider multiple perspectives to look at
organizations (business, systems, data, processes, technology, among other ones),
usually also related to business and IT strategic alignment. Enterprise architecture is
a large and important research field, although not necessarily addressing information
systems development. Additionally, it cannot be considered a process-oriented
approach, even though some BPM methods and techniques may be eventually
applied.
• EC1.2 – management initiative: application of BPM as a management discipline
only, focused on business process improvement not related to information systems
development. Some BPM tools such as business process simulation might be used,
but not related to derivation of software requirements to develop enterprise
information systems that support business process operations. Management
initiatives may also apply software engineering methodologies such as elicitation,
quality assurance or agile methods on business process discovery.
• EC1.3 – process mining: application of techniques to extract business process
models from event logs of existing information systems. Process mining initiatives
demands availability of enterprise information systems and proper data, which
allows business process models to be derived from them. However, process mining
might be used for system maintenance or continuous requirements engineering
[AW04].
• EC2.1 – BPMN for software design: application of process modelling techniques or
notations during software design or deployment, without focusing on requirements
specification from business process models.
• EC2.2 – modelling languages: application of ontologies to create, evaluate or
compare alterative languages or notations for process modelling, without focusing
on requirements specification.
Even though EC6 had been included in the search strings, during full-text analysis 2
papers had invalid document types and were then rejected. No similar condition occurred
with EC3 and EC5 which resulted in no rejections at this phase. EC4 was also applied
during study quality assessment based on full-text availability, and 9 papers were
rejected due to this criterium.
Analysis of accepted papers could also group similar papers into subcategories of each
approach type. Tab. 2 presents SLR results for accepted papers. Specific approach types
are described as follows:
Requirements Engineering approaches to derive Enterprise Information Systems from
Business Process Management:
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Inclusion criteria Results
AT1.1 – BPM4EIS 18
AT1.2 – BPMN4EIS 21
AT1.3 – goal2BPMN 13
AT2.1 – extended BPMN 14
AT2.2 – BPMN2services 8
AT3.1 – PAIS 8
AT3.2 – BPMS 22
Tab. 2: Papers accepted during SLR
• AT1.1 – BPM4EIS: this approach type distinguishes itself by application of BPM as
a management initiative related to the development of enterprise information system
able to support business processes and improve business and IT alignment [VSP08].
Papers using this approach usually present business process models in different
levels of abstractions (notably business and IT levels) and describe how process
models are considered during information system requirements specification.
• AT1.2 – BPMN4EIS: application of business process modelling to support
requirements engineering and information systems modelling, as described in
BABOK [II15], SWEBOK (guide to the Software Engineering Body Of
Knowledge) [BF14] or REBoK (Requirements Engineering Body of Knowledge )
[Pe13] guides. Papers using this approach also cover ontologies for business process
application to requirements engineering, notably the development of methodologies,
languages and heuristics to derive software requirements from business process
models (such as UML artefacts from BPMN models, for example).
• AT1.3 – goal2BPMN: emergent research field with applies goal frameworks such as
KAOS (Knowledge Acquisition in autOmated Specification) [Da97] and i* [Fr16]
for GORE (Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering) [La01], which develops
software requirements engineering oriented to organizations strategic goals, in order
to improve business and IT strategic alignment. Papers using this approach use
business process modelling notations (such as BPMN) to formalize software
requirements.
• AT2.1 – extended BPMN: this approach type benefits from native extensibility of
BPMN to improve requirements specification. It acknowledges notation power to
capture software requirements and extends its elements to model specific
requirements, notably non-functional ones [BD11], such as those related to security,
risk, ubiquity, and others. Usually, extension proposal includes methods to convert
models using extended notations to software design/deployment artefacts.
• AT2.2 – BPMN2services: semiautomatic generation of information systems from
process-based requirements using SOA. This approach type is built upon MDA
(Model-Driven Architecture) paradigm [OM14], in which software design is
independent on the technology or programming language and involves CIM
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(Computation Independent Model) to PIM (Platform Independent Model)
transformations.
• AT3.1 – PAIS: academic research field for business process automation [WRR08],
this approach type covers the development of technologies such as ACM (Adaptive
Case Management) [HK11] and others that allow automatic generation of process-
oriented applications.
• AT3.2 – BPMS: commercial suites for application generation from automation of
business process modelled in the software platform [Re06].
Analyzing review results, it can be noticed that process-oriented RE approaches for EIS
range from little software development automation (AT1.1) to almost zero-code
generation of BPM applications (AT3.2). Such approaches may be applied in different
ways, being manually deriving software requirements from business process
management artefacts and following a traditional software development process, or
automatically generating process-oriented applications based on business process
models. SLR discussion of results is presented in Tab. 3.
Approach type Subcategory Description
Management initiative
AT1.1 – BPM4EIS including deriving EIS
requirements
Business process
AT1 – BPM4UML modelling for RE and
AT1.2 – BPMN4EIS
information systems
modelling
AT1.3 – goal2BPMN GORE
Extension of business
process modelling notation
AT2.1 – extended BPMN
for specific requirements
AT2 – BPM4SOA specification
AT2.2 – BPMN2services MDA
PAIS technologies
AT3.1 – PAIS
development
AT3 – BPM4APP
Business process
AT3.2 – BPMS automation for application
generation
Tab. 3: SLR results summary
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Business Process Management:
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5 Conclusion
It is worth mentioning that findings on this study address an interdisciplinary research
gap between operations management and computer science fields, by bringing together
strategic alignment approaches that can be considered from BPM or RE perspectives.
Referring to the research question, this SLR provided a comprehensive academic
overview on how RE can be applied to derive EIS from BPM, exposing the various
existing approaches in the current academic literature. Content analysis of selected
papers allowed identification of six subcategories of approach types, extending initial
data extraction criteria and unveiling emergent research fields that had not been
considered previously. For that matter, it can be claimed that the objective defined in the
SLR protocol has been successfully fulfilled.
Also, discovering different approach types that vary depending on software development
automation degree they demand, suggests that PAIS adoption for EIS goes beyond a
build-or-buy decision, but may embrace different strategies for different organizations
(e.g. varying on size, BPM maturity, business process’ characteristics, IT budget or other
aspects). These findings can guide further research activities, providing a base
framework to support surveying RE approaches to derive EIS from BPM in the practice
of organizations.
It is important to remark the contribution of initial mapping study based on keywords co-
occurrence map to the research methodology, which expanded the research search and
enabled such broad overview as a result. However, the SLR results offer only a first
approach to the research topic and therefore a wide but limited knowledge about the
subject. Further research including a detailed analysis of the literature must be carried
out in order to reference findings and enable proposal of a research framework.
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