Beyond SDLC: Process Modeling and Documentation Using Thinging Machines

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel process modeling approach using Thinging Machines, providing a comprehensive diagrammatic method for organizational process documentation beyond traditional SDLC phases.

Contribution

It proposes a new diagrammatic representation with five actions and two relationship types, enabling multi-level process visualization and documentation.

Findings

Effective process visualization and documentation for organizations.

Re-modeling of literature examples demonstrates viability.

Supports process improvement and redesign efforts.

Abstract

The software development life cycle (SDLC) is a procedure used to develop a software system that meets both the customer s needs and real-world requirements. The first phase of the SDLC involves creating a conceptual model that represents the involved domain in reality. In requirements engineering, building such a model is considered a bridge to the design and construction phases. However, this type of model can also serve as a basic model for identifying business processes and how these processes are interconnected to achieve the final result. This paper focuses on process modeling in organizations, per se, beyond its application in the SDLC when an organization needs further documentation to meet its growth needs and address regular changes over time. The resultant process documentation is created alongside the daily operations of the business process. The model provides process visualization and documentation to assist in defining work patterns, avoiding redundancy, or even designing new processes. In this paper, a proposed diagrammatic representation models each process using one diagram comprising five actions and two types of relationships to build three levels of depiction. These levels consist of a static description, events, and the behavior of the modeled process. The viability of a thinging machine is demonstrated by re-modeling some examples from the literature.