Process Merging in Business-Driven Development

Business-driven development favors the construction of process models at different abstraction levels and by different people. As a consequence, there is a demand for consolidating different versions of process models by merging them. Process merging can be considered as a special case of model composition. However, in order to be applicable by a business user, process merging has to fulfill specific requirements such as user-friendliness and minimal manual intervention. In this paper, we present our approach to process merging. It is based on calculating differences and ordering them according to the underlying structure of process models. This allows to resolve differences in a particular user-friendly way by e.g. automating reconnection of inserted process elements.

By: Jochen M. Kuester, Christian Gerth, Alexander Foerster, and Gregor Engels

Published in: RZ3703 in 2008

LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE:

This Research Report is available. This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g., payment of royalties). I have read and understand this notice and am a member of the scientific community outside or inside of IBM seeking a single copy only.

rz3703.pdf

Questions about this service can be mailed to reports@us.ibm.com .