While there are many tools that can depict a business process on any level of detail, there is lack of tools to depict and/or design process architectures - an interconnected set of business processes that exist or are to be introduced in an organization. The FEM toolkit bridges this gap by providing a tool for process architects to discover the process architecture of an organization as-is or to develop a new one. The FEM toolkit facilitates this by providing means to discover or develop a so-called Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM) for an organization. FEM depicts interconnections between the business processes in an enterprise by connecting them to the assets they use and manage. Assets considered in the model could be tangible (buildings, heavy machinery, etc.) and intangible (reputation, business process definitions, etc.). The FEM toolkit has been developed with the help of the metamodeling environment ADOxx. It was successfully used in a number of practically oriented projects and for teaching purposes.
The field of Business Process Management has a variety of languages and notations to model, depict,
design, simulate and analyze individual processes, including mainstream notations used in practice, like
BPMN [
A toolkit – the FEM toolkit – described in this demo paper fills the gap described above by providing
both, a modeling notation and a tool for drawing architectural diagrams. As a modeling notation, it uses
a so-called Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM) [
The three distinct features of FEM are: 1. It allows to depict indirect connections between two processes via assets that these processes share, or one process manages an asset and the other process uses it. 2. It allows to depict the context of each process, internal – related assets and processes, as well as external – related pools and external actors. 3. It includes a so-called unfolding procedure supported by archetypes (patterns) that guide the modeler when he/she is building a FEM. This is especially important for modern organizations, in which there seldom exists a person who has a holistic view on operational activities of the whole company.
The FEM toolkit is a computerized tool that supports drawing FEM diagrams. It is built on the
ADOxx metamodeling environment [
FEM is unique in its approach to represent connections between the processes via assets [
In FEM, a label inside an oval names the given process, and a label inside a rectangle names the given asset. Arrows are also labeled to show the type of relationships between the processes and assets. A label on an arrow pointing from an asset to a process identifies the role the given asset plays in the process, for example, workforce or infrastructure. A label on an arrow pointing from a process to an asset identifies the way in which the process affects (i.e., changes) the asset. In FEM, an asset is considered as a pool of entities capable of playing a given role in a given process. Labels leading into assets from processes reflect the way the pool is affected, for example, the label acquire identifies that the process can/should increase the pool size.
Note that the same asset can be used in multiple processes playing the same or different roles in them, which is reflected by labels on the corresponding arrows. It is also possible that the same asset plays multiple roles in the same process. In this case, several labels can be placed on the arrow between the asset and the process. Similarly, a process could affect multiple assets, each in the same or in different ways, which is represented by the corresponding labels on the arrows. Moreover, it is possible that a single process affects a single asset in multiple ways, which is represented by having two or more labels on the corresponding arrow.
Labels inside ovals (which represent processes) and rectangles (which represent assets) are not standardized. They can be set according to the terminology accepted in the given domain, or be specific for a given organization. Labels on arrows (which represent the relationships between processes and assets) are standardized. This is done by using a relatively limited set of abstract relations, such as, workforce or acquire, which are clarified by the domain- and context-specific labels inside ovals and rectangles. Standardization improves the understandability of the models.
While there are a number of types of relationships that show how an asset is used in a process, there are only three types of relationships that describe how an asset is managed by a process – Acquire, Maintain and Retire.
To make the work of building a fractal model more systematic, FEM uses archetypes (or patterns) for fragments from which a particular model can be built. An archetype is a template defined as a fragment of a model where labels inside ovals (processes) and rectangles (assets) are omitted, but arrows are labelled. Instantiating an archetype means putting the fragment inside the model and labelling ovals and rectangles; it is also possible to add elements absent in the archetype, or omit some elements that are present in the archetype.
FEM has two types of archetypes, process-assets archetypes and an asset-processes archetype. A process-assets archetype represents the kinds of assets that can be used in a given category of processes, see an example in Fig. 2. The asset-processes archetype shows the kinds of processes that are aimed at changing the given category of assets. The whole FEM graph can be built by alternative application of these two archetypes in a recursive manner representing self-similar patterns on different scales, fractals. The term fractal in the name of our modelling technique points to the recursive nature of the model.
The unfolding procedure supported by archetypes has proven to be useful when gathering information to depict the process architecture of an organization. As soon as a process that exists in the organization has been discovered, a set of questions, which are derived from an archetype, can be asked, e.g., who participates in the process, or which software systems are used. Also, as soon as an asset is discovered, another set of question arises, e.g., which processes add new elements to the asset. This way of gathering information is especially useful for novice modelers and in a situation when a modeler investigates an organization unknown to him/her.
Besides the processes and assets, FEM has two, recently added elements – external pools and external actors – to represent the external context of internal processes, see Fig. 1, which has one pool – a cloud shape, and one external actor – a rectangle with round corners; the double line in the external actor shape indicates that there is more than one competitor.
The FEM toolkit was developed with the goal to support drawing of FEM diagrams. Besides
ensuring syntactic correctness when drawing a diagram, the FEM toolkit also implements a number of
useful features, which make the task of the process architect easier, namely the toolkit:
1. Supports archetypes that can automatically expand a FEM diagram. An archetype is invoked by
pressing on the “+” sign at the bottom of the element of the model to which that archetype is to
be applied to (see Fig.1).
2. Supports ghosting to solve the problem of multiple instances of the same model element
appearing in the same or different diagrams. A ghost is a copy of an already existing model
element, which has an arrow on the upper-left side of the shape (see Fig. 1). Ghosting is
accompanied with a navigation mechanism that allows to find all occurrences in the same or
different diagrams (e.g., via clicking on the arrow).
3. Supports decomposing processes and assets.
4. Supports flexible subclassing defined by a modeler at “runtime”, which are expressed by
dedicated background colors of FEM elements. This is demonstrated in Fig. 1, which is related
to a business model transformation example from [
Some of these features (1 and 2) where implemented directly in the first version of the tool, others
(3 and 4) “emerged” in the subsequent versions based on the experience of using the tool in practice. A
more detailed introduction to these features is given in [
FEM as a language and notation is relatively mature, and it was used in a number of projects through
the years, see, for example, [
Besides the usage of the toolkit in practical projects by professionals, it was successfully used by master students in their thesis projects. One such project was finding areas of improvements in a sourcing (purchasing) process in an international concern. The toolkit was also used for teaching in two master-level courses – one course was hold at Stockholm University, the other one at the University of Tartu.
More resources related to FEM and the FEM toolkit, including bibliography, video recording of
presentations, and the latest version of the FEM toolkit for download are freely available from [
The work of the first author was partly supported by the Estonian Research Council (grant PRG1226). The authors are very grateful to Steven Leego, Erik Falenius and August Carlsson who independently tested the FEM toolkit in practical projects. (Accessed 2021)