Flexible Process Variant Binding in Information Systems with Software Product Line Engineering

TL;DR

This paper extends a process variant management approach in information systems by enabling runtime selection and concurrent execution of multiple activity implementations, enhancing flexibility in digitised business processes.

Contribution

It introduces a method for selecting process activity implementations at start time and runtime, allowing concurrent execution and data customization, building on previous compile-time approaches.

Findings

Data from expert interviews indicates widespread need for process variation management.

The approach supports dynamic, flexible process adaptation at runtime.

Concurrent execution of multiple implementations improves process flexibility.

Abstract

Different organisations often run similar digitised business processes to achieve their business goals. However, organisations often need to slightly adapt the business processes implemented in an information system in order to adopt them. Various approaches have been proposed to manage variants in process models. While these approaches mainly deal with control flow variability, in previous work we introduced an approach to manage implementation variants of digitised business processes. In this context Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering was applied to manage a set of common core artefacts including a process model from which Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) can be derived, which differ in the implementation of their process activities. When deriving a PAIS, implementations are selected for each process activity and then included in the PAIS at compilation time. One challenge that has not yet been solved is giving users of digitised business processes the option of selecting multiple implementations at runtime. This paper extends our previous work by not only allowing for the selection of activity implementations at compile time, but also at start time and runtime. Consequently, it becomes possible to defer the decision as to which implementation should be selected to start time and runtime. Furthermore, multiple implementations of a particular activity may be selected and executed concurrently. The presented approach also allows customising the input and output data of activities. Data from expert interviews with German municipalities suggests digitising business processes with varying implementations is a widespread challenge and our approach is a way to mitigate it.