CONTROL FLOW PATTERN RECOGNITION FOR BPMN PROCESS MODELS

Business process modeling is the first and the most important task in business process management (BPM). Business process models are implicitly composed of a set of control flow patterns, such as the Parallel Split, Synchronization, Exclusive Choice, and Simple Merge, etc. Several studies have proposed the concepts and definitions of control flow patterns. But, few analyzed the structure of process models to identify the constituent control flow patterns. This research proposes a three-phased framework to recognize the constituent control flow patterns and their interrelationship for a Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) process model. The conceptual phase first describes the conceptual process for identifying the control flow patterns from a process model. The design phase then develops the detailed procedure and methods based on the proposed conceptual process to recognize the control flow patterns for a BPMN process model. Finally, the implementation phase carries out the proposed procedure and methods by developing a workflow pattern representation system for BPMN process models. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]