MINERVA: Model drIveN and sErvice oRiented framework for the continuous business process improVement & relAted tools

This page contains the elements comprising MINERVA framework, grouped by the defined dimensions: conceptual, methodological and tool support. The first link allows navigating to the conceptual dimension where an ontology comprising seven sub-ontologies for the business process lifecycle supported by services is defined, to conceptualize the use of defined elements in the framework. The second link allows navigating to the methodological dimension where the BPSOM for services development from business processes is presented as an Eclipse Process Framework Composer (EPF Composer) method plug-in, and the BPCIP for guiding the business process improvement cycle is described. Finally, the third link allows navigating to the tool support dimension where the needed tools to support MINERVA definitions are integrated into the Eclipse environment as existing or new Eclipse plug-ins.  

MINERVA dimensions:

 

 

 

Overview

MINERVA constitutes a framework for the business process improvement based on the business process lifecycle (Weske,2007) that is defined in three dimensions: conceptual, methodological and tool support. It also takes into account the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) (OMG,2008) standard, and measures for the design and execution of business processes, which will drive the improvement effort in the business process lifecycle. The Business Process Continuous Improvement Process (BPCIP) defines an improvement cycle to guide the improvement efforts to be carried out in the organization, based on the analysis of the execution logs that are registered when running the business processes in the process engine. In Fig.1 the general conceptual and technical architecture of MINERVA framework is shown.  

Fig. 1 MINERVA framework method of work

Starting from the modeling of business processes in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN2) (OMG,2011) by business people, taking into account the process patterns (van der Aalst, 2003), MINERVA automatically generates from this model (round red marked steps): (1) the execution model expressed in BPMN2, WS-BPEL (OASIS,2007) or XPDL (WfMC,2008) using existing generators, to be run in a suitable process engine and including the invocation to generated services, and (2) the serialization of the BPMN2 model (XMI) to be loaded into the Eclipse IDE where software people can use it as input for the service oriented development: to generate (3) a services model expressed in the Service Oriented Architecture Modeling Language (SoaML) (OMG,2009) guided by the Business Process Service Oriented Methodology (BPSOM) by means of QVT (OMG,2008) transformations defined from BPMN2 to SoaML models. The Eclipse SoaML plug-in we have developed allow importing the generated model to visualize it, and also to specify SoaML service models from scratch.

From the generated SoaML services model it is possible to obtain (4) the corresponding code for different platforms, using existing generators (for example ModelPro) or implementing them manually, obtaining the services components that (5) will be invoked from the process engine running the business process, when needed. The business process execution (6) is monitored, and data on the business process execution is registered in execution logs, which are then evaluated by means of the Prom framework (van der Aalst, 2011) and its analysis plug-ins including the BPEMM plug-in we are developing, to find improvement opportunities to be integrated into the business processes (7) based on the improvement activities added to the business process lifecycle.

The square purple marked steps show the execution measurement activities added to the business process lifecycle, to explicitly put the focus on execution measurement of business processes implemented by services guiding the measurement effort. The Business Process Execution Measurement Model (BPEMM) is key for the selection, implementation, collection and analysis of execution measures in the context of BPCIP. 

 

Key Publications:

Author: Andrea Delgado 2010