=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2420/papeDT13
|storemode=property
|title=bpmpatterns.org - An Interactive Catalog of Business Process Modeling Patterns Literature
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2420/papeDT13.pdf
|volume=Vol-2420
|authors=Ralf Laue,Agnes Koschmider,Michael Fellmann,Andreas Schoknecht,Arthur Vetter
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/bpm/0001KFSV19
}}
==bpmpatterns.org - An Interactive Catalog of Business Process Modeling Patterns Literature==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2420/papeDT13.pdf
bpmpatterns.org - An Interactive Catalog of
Business Process Modeling Patterns Literature
Ralf Laue1 , Agnes Koschmider2 , Michael Fellmann3 , Andreas Schoknecht4 , and
Arthur Vetter4
1
University of Applied Sciences Zwickau, Department of Computer Science,
Dr.-Friedrichs-Ring 2a, 08056 Zwickau, Germany ralf.laue@fh-zwickau.de
2
Process Analytics Group, Kiel University, 24098 Kiel, Germany
ak@informatik.uni-kiel.de
3
Institute of Computer Science, University of Rostock, Germany
michael.fellmann@uni-rostock.de
4
KIT, Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods
arthur.vetter@partner.kit.edu
Abstract. Patterns – descriptions of proven and well-documented so-
lutions for recurring problems – have gained widespread interest and
acceptance in the area of business process modeling.
In the past years, a large number of such patterns have been documented
in the literature. However, it is still difficult to find patterns that can be
useful in a given context. The reason is that the relevant publications are
spread in various journals and other types of publications, and there is
no guidance for locating a pattern that can be useful for solving a given
problem.
In this demo, we present an interactive web-site that provides a compre-
hensive overview on published work in the field of business process model-
ing patterns. It allows finding publications on business process modeling
patterns based on various search criteria. It is intended to be useful both
for business process modeling practitioners as for researchers in need of
sound literature references. Currently, this catalog (meant to be a grow-
ing resource) provides an categorization of 95 publications on patterns
as well as 50 publication on anti-patterns.
Keywords: patterns · anti-patterns · workflow patterns.
1 Introduction
The idea of publishing well-documented and proven solutions to recurring prob-
lems in a structured way as patterns can be traced back to the work of Alexander
et al. [1] which discussed patterns for town planning and architectural design
of buildings. In computer science, the software design patterns introduced by
Gamma et al. [5] paved the way for pattern use.
Although a considerable number of papers about patterns in the area of
business process modeling (BPM) have been published, it is rather difficult for
2 R. Laue et al.
a process modeler or a researcher to find out which published patterns could be
helpful in a given situation. There are two reasons for this:
First, relevant publications can be found in a great variety of proceedings,
journals and web sites. For certain types of patterns, compilations of the patterns
and related work can be found on the web. The most remarkable web site is http:
//www.workflowpatterns.com, which is a great resource for getting familiar
with a certain kind of business process model patterns. However, this site is
restricted to “low-level” patterns that describe the basic building blocks that
a workflow engine or process modeling language should support. Prior to our
work, no single resource existed that provides an entry point for searching the
full spectrum of BPM pattern papers.
And second, patterns dealing with the same topic are not named in a unified
way. For example, patterns dealing with adaption and change between model
variants are called change patterns [10], adaption patterns [3], variability design
patterns [12], high-level change operations [8] or just differences [2] by different
authors.
To overcame the second problem, we suggested a taxonomy for BPM patterns
[4] and anti-patterns [7]. For this purpose, we conducted an extensive literature
review, followed by a classification of 89 papers on BPM patterns and 48 papers
on anti-patterns. Details can be found in our mentioned publications.
Once having the literature overview as well as the classification, it was our
aim to provide a starting point for the search for business process modeling
patterns that can be used by practitioners and researchers. The result – our
interactive pattern catalog http://www.bpmpatterns.org – will be presented
in this paper.
2 Target Audience and Use Cases
The tool is intended to serve both researchers as practitioners.
The benefit for researchers who want to get an overview over existing work
is that they can easily get access to the existing literature despite the problem
that different authors use a different terminology.
The same is true for people who aim to publish an own pattern paper. For
this kind of publications, a paragraph “Related Patterns” is usually an important
part of a pattern documentation. Our catalog provides access to these patterns
and allows to put the own publication into context. While we do not recommend
to use the pattern catalog as the only source for searching the literature, we are
convinced that it is a good starting point to locate relevant references quickly.
The second target audience are practitioners who want to model a common
situation in a good manner. For example, take the requirement to model an
approval process where several roles must agree before approval will be granted.
Without any doubt, this is a frequently occurring situation. It would be nice to
reuse an existing solution that has been published as a pattern.
The typical way to search for such a pattern would be to use a search en-
gine, e.g. Google or Google Scholar with a query such as approval AND pattern
bpmpatterns.org 3
AND (workflow* OR "business process"). Unfortunately, neither of the men-
tioned search engines would list the highly relevant patterns published in “Sim-
plifying the Design of Signature Workflow with Patterns” [6] among the first ten
results pages. It is rather unlikely, that a practitioner would expand the search
after reading more than 10 result pages from the favourite search engine.
In our catalog, this paper (and others relating to model a approval process)
can be found immediately by searching for “approval”, as well as by searching
for synonyms such as “permission”, “authorization” (or “authorisation”), etc.
3 The Interactive Pattern Catalog
The online catalog at http://www.bpmpatterns.org provides an overview of
the published literature on BPM patterns. If possible, each entry directly links
to the original paper. There are several ways to access the catalog:
By browsing the (anti-)pattern taxonomy As can be seen in Fig. 1, the catalog is
organized by topics using a two-level taxonomy for patterns and another one for
anti-patterns. Example category names such as “Business Process Compliance”,
“Role and Resource Assignment” or “Domain-dependent Content Patterns” give
an impression on the broad scope of BPM patterns.
Fig. 1. Accessing the Catalog by Browsing the Taxonomy
By searching for a pattern name All publications on patterns who have got a
name can be found by entering the name in the search field. Fig. 2 shows the
result when searching for the pattern name “Structured Loop” (which is one
of the well-known workflow patterns). The search results in Fig. 2 illustrates
a decision that has been made when selecting the literature represented in the
catalog. While the paper “Workflow Control-Flow Patterns: A Revised View”
[9] is represented, older papers such as [11] or works discussing how modeling
languages support workflow patters were deliberately not included. It was not
our aim to create a catalog that contains metadata for all publications which
mention pattern in the area of business process modeling. Rather, it was our
aim to establish a concise reference of all those papers where the original pattern
definitions can be found.
Up to now, 1444 names of patterns and anti-patterns are currently included
in the catalog.
4 R. Laue et al.
Fig. 2. Searching for a Pattern Name
By searching for properties or keywords It is also possible to search the catalog
according to various aspects. For example, it is possible to search for patterns
that are relevant to a given modeling language only. In addition, 1064 keywords
have been manually added to the papers. This addresses the fact that in the
pattern literature it is not uncommon that different phrases are used for indi-
cating the same concepts. Fig. 3 shows the first lines of the search results when
searching for the keyword “soundness” among the literature on anti-patterns.
Fig. 3. Keyword Search at http://www.bpmpatterns.org
4 Outlook
It is our aim to keep the bibliography our pattern catalog up-to-date by adding
further pattern papers. Currently, the online catalog already contains references
to pattern papers that are not yet included into our literature surveys [4,7].
Therefore, we will be grateful for being informed about any new work in
this area. We will be glad to add any relevant work that will be published in
the future. We hope that http://www.bpmpatterns.org will become a starting
point for everyone who is interested in learning about business process modeling
patterns.
bpmpatterns.org 5
5 Tutorial
While we hope that the catalog at http://www.bpmpatterns.org can be used in
an intuitive way, a short text tutorial can be found at http://www.bpmpatterns.
org/files/tutorial.pdf
References
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