A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive
Business Processes Modeling Formalism
Mariam Ben Hassen, Mohamed Turki and Faïez Gargouri
ISIMS, MIRACL Laboratory, University of Sfax, P.O. Box 242, 3021 Sfax, Tunisia
{mariembenhassen, mohamed_turki}@yahoo.fr, faiez.gargouri@isims.rnu.tn
Keywords: Knowledge Management, Sensitive Business Process, Business Process Modeling, Business Process
Meta-model.
Abstract: Sensitive business process (SBP) modeling has become primary concern for any successful organization to
improve the management of their individual and collective crucial knowledge on which it is necessary to
capitalize. This paper presents a multi-perspective evaluation framework for assessing the expressiveness of
current widely used BPM formalisms, in order to select the most suitable for the SBP representation and
improve the identification of crucial knowledge that is mobilized by these processes. Furthermore, the result
of the evaluation led us to justify the choice of the better one positioned nowadays, the standard BPMN 2.0.
Besides, we have illustrated the practical applicability of this notation on a medical process in the context of
the association of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS).
1 INTRODUCTION
Today’s organizations has been characterized by
collaborative, highly dynamic, complex and
knowledge-intensive actions. In order to improve
competitive advantage, they have been increasingly
conscious of the necessity to formalize and
capitalize knowledge produced and mobilized by
their business processes (BPs). According to this
view, business process modeling (BPM) has become
crucial concern for successful organizations to
improve the identification, acquisition, storage,
dissemination, sharing, creation and (re) use of their
individual and organizational knowledge.
Considering the large amount of knowledge to be
preserved and enhanced, such organizations must
first identify and model the SBPs which are likely to
mobilize crucial knowledge on which it is necessary
to capitalize. In fact, the more organization’s BPs
are sensitive, the more they can mobilize crucial
knowledge. Few existing research on Knowledge
Management (KM)-BPM focusing on the
identification, analysis and modeling of SBPs in
order to localize and identify the crucial knowledge.
We quote: the Global Analysis METHodology
(GAMETH) proposed by Grundstein (2000), the
identifying crucial knowledge methodology (Saad et
al., 2009) and the Sensitive Organization's Process
Identification Methodology (Turki et al., 2014a).
However, these methods do not explicitly and
conveniently address the critical operation of « SBPs
modeling ». A SBP typically lacks a description and
a representation that allow to explicit the rich
semantics embedded into a SBP. So, the
specification of a precise conceptualization, with a
subjacent representation notation, that explicitly and
adequately integrate the knowledge dimension
within their actions and other relevant SBP aspects,
is still an open issue. In fact, a SBP has its own
characteristics that distinguish them from classical
BPs. In fact, a SBP commonly mobilizes a high
number of critical activities with very specific
knowledge « crucial knowledge» (tacit and explicit).
It presents a diversity of knowledge sources and
possesses a high degree of dynamism in the
objectives’ change and high complexity.
Some conventional graphical BPM formalisms,
include, amongst others, Event Driven Process
Chain (EPC) (Korheer and List, 2006), Business
Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 2.0) (OMG,
2011a), Unified Modeling Language (UML 2.0)
activity diagram (OMG, 2011b), Specification
Language (PSL) (Schlenoff et al., 2000), Process
Business Process Modeling Ontology (BPMO)
(Cabral et al., 2009) and Role Activity Diagram
(RAD) (Weidong and Weihui, 2008), have been
adapted to allow the representation of the intrinsic
84
Ben Hassen M., Turki M. and Gargouri F.
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism.
DOI: 10.5220/0006222500840097
In Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2016), pages 84-97
ISBN: 978-989-758-190-8
Copyright
c
2016 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
elements of knowledge within BPs. But, these
languages/notations do not include all the required
features to describe a SBP. In addition, the literature
shows a set of approaches dedicated to knowledge
highly intensive processes (KIPs) representation,
originate from the knowledge modeling context,
including the Business Process Knowledge Method
(BPKM) (Papavassiliou and Mentzas, 2003),
DECOR (Abecker, 2001), CommonKADS
(Schreiber et al., 2002), Knowledge Transfer Agent
(KTA) Modeling Method (Strohmaier et al., 2007),
PROMOTE (Woitsch and Karagiannis, 2005), the
work of Donadel (Donadel, 2007), DCR Graphs
(Hildebrandt and Mukkamala, 2010), Knowledge
Modeling Description Language (KMDL 2.2)
(Gronau et al., 2005) (Arbeitsbericht, 2009), GPO-
WM (Heisig, 2006), Oliveira’s methodology
(Oliveira, 2009), and the Notation for Knowledge-
Intensive Processes (NKIP) (Netto et al., 2013), etc.
However, none of these proposals, as shown in (Ben
Hassen et al., 2015a), adequately addresses all the
relevant SBP elements.
In order to address existing limitations and
improve the SBP representation, we proposed, in
previous work (Ben Hassen et al., 2015a) (Ben
Hassen et al., 2015b), the Business Process Meta-
Model for Knowledge Identification (BPM4KI)
BPM4KI comprises concepts from several
perspectives that are crucial for a complete
understanding, characterization and representation of
a SBP, namely the functional perspective, the
organizational perspective, the behavioral
perspective, the informational perspective, the
intentional perspective and the knowledge
perspective. The generic meta-model we have
developed is semantically rich and well founded on
COOP, a core ontology of organization’s processes
proposed by Turki et al. (2014b) which is useful to
characterize the concepts useful for the analysis and
identification of SBPs. Furthermore, BPM4KI serves
as a comprehensive evaluation framework of the
expressiveness and adequacy of current widely-used
BPM formalisms, to check their suitability to cover
all the relevant elements of a SBP. Precisely, the
(objective) evaluation facilitates selecting and
justifying the most appropriate BPM formalism for
the representation of SBP taking its semantic
dimensions into account.
The overall goal of the present work is to carry
out an evaluation of which BPM4KI elements are
potentially supported by the above-mentioned
language meta-models.
Besides, it presents a practical
example using the best evaluated formalism.
Furthermore, it points alternatives for representing
elements that not adequately addressed yet.
The remainder of the paper is structured as
follows. Section 2 presents the core concepts that
describe Sensitive Business Process and related
work about modeling SBP. Section 3 presents the
main characteristics of current formalisms for BPM,
evaluates their suitability to support the
representation of all relevant SBP elements. Section
4 presents a practical example. Section 5 concludes
the paper and underlines some future research
topics.
2 SENSITIVE BUSINESS
PROCESSES
2.1 SBP Fundamentals
According to Ben Hassen et al. (2015b), a SBP
represents the core process of organization which
constitutes the heart of the organization’s activities.
It is commonly mobilizes very specific knowledge
«crucial knowledge» (i.e. the most
valuable/important knowledge on which it is
necessary to capitalize). It includes a high number of
critical activities which mobilizes and produces
different types of knowledge: (i) imperfect
individual and collective knowledge (tacit and/or
explicit) (i.e. missing, poorly mastered, incomplete,
uncertain, etc.) which are necessary for solving
critical determining problems; (ii) a great amount of
heterogeneous knowledge recorded on diverse
knowledge sources (dispersed and sometimes
lacking accessibility); (iii) expertise and/or rare
knowledge held by a very small number of experts;
flexible knowledge owned by experts; (iv) very
important tacit organizational knowledge (like
competences, abilities and practical experiences).
Moreover, it contains activities that valorize the
acquisition, storage, dissemination, sharing, and
creation and (re) use of individual and organizational
(tacit and explicit) knowledge, in the sense that it
mobilizes a large diversity of knowledge sources
consigning a great amount of very important
heterogeneous knowledge. Its execution involves a
large number of business domains/competencies (in
terms of internal and external organization
unit/agents operating in the BP), having distinct
experience and expertise levels. Furthermore, it
include a high number of organizational
collaborative activities that mobilize, exchange,
share and generate new individual and collective
knowledge that is created by dynamic conversion of
existing ones in the process in order to achieve
organizational objectives. So, it depends on
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
85
knowledge flows and transfer of data, information
and knowledge objects between communicating
process participants. Other typical characteristics of
SBPs presented in Ben Hassen et al. (2015b)
includes: (i) A SBP is unstructured or semi-
structured. Yet, a flexible process typically contains
a very dynamic and unpredictable control-flow,
comprising complex activities (individual and /or
collective) that may frequently change over time or
at design-and run-time. The process agents (e.g.
experts) is often not able to predetermine the overall
process structure in terms of the activities to be
executed and their ordering, the data and knowledge
sources to be exploited and the roles and resources
required for process progression and completion. (ii)
It is driven by constraints and rules. Indeed, process
participants may be influenced by or may have to
comply with constraints and rules that drive
organizational actions performance and decision
making. (iii) It possesses a high degree of dynamism
in the objectives’ change associated to it, essentially,
in decision making context.
The change of
organizational objective leads to a new organizational
distal intention (which is necessary to control the SBP)
and influences experts’ decision making.
(iv) Its
contribution to reach strategic objectives of the
organization is very important. Also, their
realization duration and cost are important.
According to above mentioned, representing and
organizing the knowledge involved in SBPs is very
complex, especially when applying traditional
approaches.
However, it is difficult to find out an
approach/formalism that addresses all or at least
most of these characteristics in the representation of
a SBP model. Nevertheless, the Object Management
Group (OMG, 2011a) states that, in addition to
underlining the concepts inherent to a domain, a
notation enhances the clarity of the models and
allows the ability of communicating the concepts
uniformly. The selection and adoption of a suitable
BPM formalism for representing SBP models is still
an open issue, allowing the knowledge mobilized
and generated by the BP instances to be located,
identified, modeled, stored and reused. In this
context, several BPM approaches and notations are
found in literature as likely to represent SBP.
2.2 Related Work: SBP Modeling
Approaches
Although there is abundance of BPM formalisms
and despite their diversity, only a few were
applicable for SBP modeling. Some traditional
workflows/BPM formalisms that are widely-
followed in current research and practice scenarios
(such as BPMN, EPC, UML AD), have been
adapted to allow the representation of the intrinsic
elements of knowledge within BPs. However, they
were not meant for SBPs, since they focus on the
representation of "deterministic" process, composed
by a well- structured control flow among its
activities, low uncertainty and complexity (that is,
the existence of few and pre-defined exceptions).
Besides, these notations can be used to implicitly
identify certain issues related to knowledge flows,
such as the information sources that are required,
generated, or modified by an activity.
Moreover, some authors have attempted to
develop approaches for the representation of
processes with high knowledge intensity (KIP)
(Gronau et al., 2005) (called also Process-oriented
knowledge modeling approaches) where basic
phenomenon is knowledge. In these processes, the
principal success factor is adequate modeling of
knowledge conversions. It is noteworthy that SBP
shares many common characteristics with KIP
approaches. In fact, KIPs are processes whose
conduct and execution are heavily dependent on
knowledge workers performing various
interconnected knowledge intensive decision making
tasks. KIPs are genuinely knowledge, information
and data centric and require substantial flexibility at
design- and run-time. These approaches that focus
on KM within the BP level have not been widely
adopted by organizations and are still very incipient.
Also, they have limited capabilities, in the sense that
they do not conveniently include process
perspective, as well as they do not provide an
opportunity to clearly distinguish between data,
information and knowledge.
The CommonKADS (Schreiber et al., 2002)
approach focuses on knowledge representation.
Various stages of modeling attempt to establish a
structured approach so that knowledge can be
managed with the support of technical and
engineering tools. Three basic points characterize
these demands: the details of the skills involved in
process execution, the representation of the
processes through artifacts and semantic analysis,
and the opportunities for improvement regarding the
process and use of knowledge. The BPKM-
Business Process Knowledge Method (Papavassiliou
and Mentzas, 2003) provides a methodological
guidance for the implementation of BP-oriented
KM. It presents a meta-model for integrating BPM
aspects with KM. This meta-model transcribes the
four perspectives of a workflow: task,
organizational, logical and data. It was extended to
Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
86
include KM tasks that support BPs represented by
the elements: knowledge management task,
knowledge object and knowledge archive. Two other
approaches of knowledge representation are the
Knowledge Transfer Agent (KTA) Modeling
Method (Strohmaier et al., 2007) and the DECOR
approach (Abecker, 2001). The first describes how
to create knowledge transferring models. The
method consists of modeling and analyzing in three
distinct levels of detail. The DECOR Project
delivers context-sensitive organizational knowledge
and has its focus in representing processes
knowledge across diagrams embedded in
organizational memory. It aims to structure the BP,
the dynamic context, contextual information and the
representations of memories embedded in the
production process. In the method proposed by
Donadel (2007) aims to support the management of
knowledge resources related to BPs. The
organizational value chain is mapped and the
knowledge aspects that may influence the
organizational processes are represented. The
aforesaid knowledge oriented approaches do not
explicitly differentiate between tacit and explicit
which is relevant in SBPs due to, for instance, the
high degree of tacit knowledge developed and
exchanged among agents through inter-
organizational collaboration. And most of them do
not provide special attention to the graphical
notation for BP representation.
Furthermore, knowledge is modeled using
another specific knowledge modeling notations (e.g.,
KMDL, GPO-WM, Oliveira) and only few of them
include process perspective (e.g., PROMOTE,
RAD)). The Knowledge Modeling Description
Language (KMDL) (Gronau et al., 2005)
(Arbeitsbericht, 2009) formalizes KIPs with a focus
on certain knowledge-specific characteristics in
order to identify process improvements in these
processes. It represents both tacit and explicit
knowledge of the process. Thus, the different
possibilities of knowledge conversion can be
modeled and the flow of knowledge between actors
is depicted. However, this notation does not
distinguish between data and information, and does
not address the representation of artefacts and
dynamic aspects of BP and modeling agents.
Besides, it is hard to understand and to apply for the
purpose of facilitating the involvement of modeling
participants. Method for integration of KM into BPs
(GPO-WM) (Heisig, 2006) describes and evaluates
the current state of handling core knowledge
domains, to gather improvement ideas for systematic
knowledge handling and to integrate selected KM
methods and tools into existing BPs. The notation
does not allow the modeling of knowledge
conversions. The abovementioned proposals focus
on storing and sharing knowledge. Thus, they lack
the ability to model in an adequate manner the
decisions, actions and measures, which are causing a
sequence of processes. Most of these methods are
convenient only for knowledge management experts
and require additional training for non-experts. The
method for integrated modeling of BPs and
knowledge flow based on a Role Activity diagram
(RAD) (Weidong and Weihui, 2008) provides
integration of BPs and knowledge flow and helps
KM build on existing process management efforts.
This method does not differentiate between tacit and
explicit knowledge and does not present different
types of knowledge conversion that are relevant in
SBP. Also, it does not present and separate data and
information from knowledge. Supulniece et al.
(2010) argued an extension of BP models with the
knowledge dimension in order to take advantage of
some opportunities such as identifying, planning and
managing required knowledge for the role that
participates in a particular activity; evaluate the
amount of lost knowledge if a person would leave
the organization; improve understanding about the
knowledge usefulness, validity and relevance for
particular activities; enable competence
requirements management and proactive training.
They extended BPMN incorporating concepts
defined by KMDL (Gronau et al., 2005), where three
different objects: knowledge objects, information
objects and data objects were used. However, the
proposed approach does not present knowledge flow
between process participants; it lacks information
about the knowledge structure; it does not integrate
and separate the different knowledge types (like
experience, basic knowledge, general knowledge)
and it does not explicitly represent the tacit
knowledge that is owned by a particular person.
Recently, Netto et al. (2013) proposed KIPN, a
notation for building KIPs graphical model that
promotes the cognitively-effective understanding of
this process. KIPN covers all characteristics defined
by the knowledge-intensive processes ontology
(KIPO) (França et al., 2012). It comprises a set of
diagrams to represent the main dimensions within a
KIP: the KIP, socialization, decision and good
diagrams. In KIPN, activities are detailed through
socializations. The agents interact and collaborate,
contributing to the creation and acquisition of
knowledge. Agents’ contribution is represented by
innovation, intention, belief, desire, feeling,
experience and mental image elements, that are
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
87
difficult to be predicted and then modeled. The
notation is able represent tacit knowledge through
informal exchange and mental image elements, but it
still does not capture explicitly the knowledge
conversion. Moreover, NKIP is very incipient, hard
to understand, not yet used and applicable for KIP
modeling in current research and practice scenarios
and not adopted by any available modeling tools.
Despite it mobilizes crucial knowledge within an
organization and their key role for organizational
KM, existing BPM approaches/notations have
shortcomings concerning their ability to explicitly
incorporate the knowledge dimension within BPs
models as well as relevant issues at the intersection
of KM and BPM. None of those proposals
conveniently includes or addresses all or at least
most of the SBPs important characteristics presented
previously (critical activities (individual and/or
collective), intensive acquisition, sharing, storage
and (re)use of knowledge in challenging activities,
large number of agents (external and internal) who
have various business domains and different
knowledge levels, high degree of tacit knowledge
mobilized and exchanged among many experts,
diversity of information and knowledge sources
involved, high degree of collaboration (intra/inter-
organizational) among agents/experts, dynamic
conversion of knowledge, flexibility and dynamic
aspects, deliberate actions, the influence of (distal)
intentions in achieving objective and decision
making, etc.). This leads to ambiguity and
misunderstanding of the developed SBPs models.
2.3 SBPs Specification
In our previous research (Ben Hassen et al., 2015a),
we have proposed a semantically rich
conceptualization for describing a SBP organized in
a meta-model, the Business Process Meta-model for
Knowledge Identification (BPM4KI), which
integrates all aforementioned perspectives. This
meta-model intends to develop a rich and expressive
graphical representation of SBPs in order to improve
the localization and identification of crucial
knowledge. BPM4KI is a well-founded meta-model
whose concepts and relationships are semantically
enriched by the core ontology organization’s
processes (COOP) (Turki et al., 2014b). BPM4KI
covers all relevant aspects of BPM and KM within a
SBP, and is composed by six perspectives:
(i) Functional Perspective, represents the BP
elements which are being performed. The main
concept that reflects this dimension is Action. It
includes: Individual Action, Collective Action,
Action of Organization, Inter Organizational
Action, Organizational Action /Activity,
Organizational Individual Action, Task,
Organizational Unit Action, Organizational
Sub Process, Organizational Critical Activity,
Organizational Intensive Activity and
Organizational Collaborative Activity.
(ii) Organizational Perspective, represents the
different participants (the organizational
resources) invoked in the execution of process
elements as well as their affiliation. It display
the process flows between different
organizations and participants involved. The
basic element of this perspective is Agentive
Entity and includes: Collective, Organization,
Organization Unit, Human, Expert, Internal
Agent, and External Agent.
(iii) Behavioral perspective, basically presents the
logical sequence of elements to be executed in
a BP. It includes synchronization, sequence,
feedback-loop, complex decision requirements,
in-and ouput criteria, etc. The basic element of
this perspective is Control Object (such as
control flow elements, pre-conditions, post-
conditions, triggers, performance indicators,
constraints, business rules, etc.).
(iv) Informational perspective, describes the
informational entities (such as data, artefacts,
products and objects) which are generated,
consumed, or exchanged within a process or an
activity. It also includes both their structure and
the relationships among them. The following
concepts are related to this dimension:
Resource, Material Resource (like
informational and software resources),
Physical Knowledge Support, Event,
Contingency, Input Object (like data and
information), Output Object (as data,
information, services and results) and
Collaboration Protocol.
(v) Intentional perspective, provides an overview
perspective of the process and captures
important BP context information. It describes
major BP characteristics and addresses the
intentional information (such as objective,
strategies, quality characteristics, metrics,
measurement units, the deliverables, the
process type and the customer), in order to
ensure the BP flexibility. It comprises:
Intention, Objective, Distal Intention,
Collective Intention, Collective Distal
Intention, Organizational Distal Intention,
Objective, Individual Objective, Collective
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Objective, Organizational Objective, Strategic
Objective, Operational Objective, Deliberate
Action, Culminated Process, Output Object
(deliverables), Control Object (e.g.,
performance measures, constraints, business
rules, etc.), Client, Sensitive Business Process,
Knowledge Intensive Process, Inter
Organizational Process, Internal Process,
External Process, Partial External Process,
Inter Fonctional Process, Core Process,
Management Process, Strategic Process,
Operational Process, etc. (which are some
process types).
(vi) Knowledge perspective, provides an overview
perspective of the organizational and individual
knowledge mobilized and created by an
BP/organization as well as the knowledge flow
proceeding within and between
BPs/organizations. It addresses all relevant
aspects related to KM (collection, organization,
storage, transfer, sharing, creation and reuse
among process participants). This vantage
presents: Knowledge (as an Immaterial
Resource), Tacit Knowledge, Individual Tacit
Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge,
Explicit Knowledge, Individual Explicit
Knowledge, Collective Explicit Knowledge,
Expert and Physical Knowledge Support. It
should be noted that some concepts are shared
by different perspectives. For instance,
Collaborative Organizational Activity and
Critical Organizational Activity belong to all
perspectives.
Nevertheless, BPM4KI does not provide a specific
graphical notation for representing SBP. Although
BPM4KI does not address the problem of
representing SBP graphically, it opens a way to
explore the potential of traditional BPM formalisms
for it, as well as the usage of the specific process-
oriented knowledge modeling/ KIP approaches. In
the following section, we discuss the usage of
BPM4KI concepts (which represent our evaluation
framework) as a basis to model SBPs graphically.
3 A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE
FRAMEWORK FOR
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF
SBPS REPRESENTATION
FORMALISMS
Based on the potential of BPM4KI to portray the
essential features of SBP, this section presents a
comparative analysis of different BPM formalisms
to represent SBPs. Precisely, in this research work,
BPM4KI acts as a multidimensional evaluation
framework for assessing the suitability of six
selected BPM formalisms to cover all or at least
most relevant elements of a SBP. We consider
guiding and justifying the choice of the most
suitable
formalism for SBPs representation to
characterize and improve the knowledge localization.
Before we present our evaluation framework for
SBP representation, we will briefly refer to some
related work about BPM languages (i.e. comparison
and analysis) available in the field of meta-modeling
and ontology. Many frameworks ((Söderström et
al., 2002); (Lin el al., 2002); (Mendling et al., 2004);
(List and Korherr, 2006)) have been proposed for
evaluating the suitability of some BPM languages
for specific purpose, according to generic meta-
models. Most of them only focus on some aspects of
BPM languages. Besides, the BWW (Bunge-Wand-
Weber) ontological framework (Wand and Weber.,
1990) has been widely used for assessing the
ontological completeness and clarity of BPM
languages, include (Rosemann et al.,2006); (Recker
et al., 2009); (Penicina, 2013) and (Prezel et al.,
2010). Furthemore, several works addressing the
integration of KM into BPs, incorporating the
knowledge into BP models. França et al. (2012)
proposed KIPO, a formal meta-model/ontology that
highlights the key concepts and relationships
characterizing KIPs and used it as a reference for
evaluating the adequacy of some existing BPM
languages to represent each concept. However, this
meta-model is not well adapted to represent SBPs.
Sultanow et al., (2012) created a systematic
comparison of thirteen selected methods based on a
multidimensional framework to summarize the
differences, also the most suitable situation for using
each method. However, this framework do not
consistently support SBP model requirements and
concepts.
Therefore, considering existing research in
the KM-BPM domain, the knowledge dimension
(i.e.
the knowledge required to perform activities, the
knowledge created as a result of BP activities, the
sources of knowledge and their localization, the
explicit knowledge, the tacit knowledge, individual
and collective dimension of knowledge/activities,
the knowledge flows between sources and activities,
the different opportunities of knowledge conversion,
etc.) needed for BPM is not explicitly represented,
integrated and implemented in BP meta-models.
Hence, a comprehensive evaluation framework
of the representational capabilities of current BPM
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
89
formalisms for SBPs is missing.
For discussion purposes, in this paper we take
the constructs from BPM4KI as a relevant set of
elements that are required to precisely represent a
SBP, and evaluated some existing formalisms,
which are based on different fields, to verify their
suitability to cover and represent each concept. The
multi-dimensional evaluation provides not only a
useful framework to summarize the advantages and
limitations of each formalism, but also select the
most suitable positioned nowadays for SBP
modeling, in order to localize the knowledge
mobilized and created by these processes, which
may be crucial. The evaluated representation
languages were UML AD, BPMN 2.0, eEPC (which
are adopted by many available modeling tools in
current organizations), PROMOTE, KMDL 2.2 and
Oliveira’s methodology.
3.1 The BPM Formalisms -
An Overview
In this section, we describe the BPM formalisms
which have been chosen for evaluation. Some are
process oriented and some are knowledge oriented.
They represent the most frequently studied BPM
formalisms in scientific/professional literature and
practice scenarios.
UML 2.0 Activity Diagram (UML AD): UML AD
(OMG, 2011b) in the behavior category are typically
used for BPM. It is mainly and originally for
modeling IT systems. UML AD is a semi-formal
language with the following basic graphical
notations: initial node and activity final node,
activity, flow/edge, fork and join, decision and
merge, partition/swimlane. This diagram is more
expressive for modeling data flows inside
information system and is less suitable for BPM.
Extended Event Driven Process Chain (eEPC):
EPC (Scheer, 2000) is a semi-formal graphical
modeling language for modeling, analyzing, and
redesigning BPs, easily understood and used by
business people. The basic notations include events,
functions and connectors. It emphases more on the
operational/functional and control perspectives than
data transaction perspective. The basic version of
EPC was supplemented by other constructs
(organizational unit, position, information object,
service object and application, resulting in the
extended EPC (eEPC), intended to supplement
process models with organizational structure and
data flow. In eEPC, knowledge is represented by
two object types, knowledge category and
documented knowledge, and can be model by two
model types, knowledge structure diagram and
knowledge map. In the first diagram, knowledge
categories can be organized into subgroups based on
their content. While the second depicts the
distribution of various knowledge categories within
an organization.
Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN):
BPMN 2.0 (OMG, 2011a) represents the most
popular and widely acceptable graphical notation to
represent BPs, understandable by all business
stakeholders, one that has now been ratified by the
OMG as a BPM standard. It divides process
knowledge into broadly five categories: flow-
objects, connectors, artifacts, swimlanes and data.
BPMN is initiated as a standard BPM language for
conventional business, B2B and services process
modeling. Hence BPMN has the capabilities of
handling B2B business process concepts, such as
public and private processes and choreograhies, as
well as advanced modeling concepts, such as
exception handling and transaction compensation in
addition to the traditional BP. The Collaboration and
Choreography Diagrams allow modeling interaction
among process’ actors (between business partners,
or different departments in a same company,
members of a teams or even single workers and
software systems), who exchange messages, while
performing their tasks to reach a common objective.
PROMOTE: The PROMOTE (Woitsch and
Karagiannis, 2005) integrates strategic planning with
the evaluation of KM and BP management and
defines KM requirements on the basis of business
needs. It captures, models and evaluates the
knowledge in enterprises and KIPs. It provides three
diagram types: a knowledge diagram, a knowledge
application diagram and an evaluation diagram. This
notation can specify the knowledge conversion
types. But, it does not explicitly separate tacit and
explicit knowledge.
Knowledge Modeling and Description Language
(KMDL): is a semi-formal modeling method for the
detection, visualization, analysis and evaluation of
BPs and knowledge flows (Gronau et al., 2005). It
increases the transparency of the existing knowledge
in enterprises and optimizes the process of KIPs.
This notation represents both tacit and explicit
knowledge of the process, also the different types of
knowledge conversion. It provides an object library
containing the basic objects: information object,
task, role, task requirements, person, knowledge
object, type of knowledge conversion and
knowledge descriptor. The current KMDL 2.2,
provides three views: (1) process-based view, (2)
activity-based-view (considers the knowledge con-
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90
Table 1: Verification of BPM4KI concepts representation by BPM formalisms.
UML AD eEPC BPMN 2.0 PROMOTE Oliveira KMDL 2.2
Collective Action -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+
Organizational Unit Action + -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+
Critical Organizational
Activity
-/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+
Collaborative Organizational
Activity
-/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+
Agentive Entity + -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+
Collective -/+ -/+ + -/+ -/+ -/+
Organizational Unit -/+ + + + -/+ -/+
Expert - - - - -/+ -
Control Object
-/+ -/+ + -/+ - -/+
Material Resource -/+ -/+ + -/+ -/+ +
Input Object -/+ -/+ + - -/+ -/+
Output Object -/+ + + -/+ -/+ +
Contingency - - -/+ - - -
Collaboration Protocol -/+ -/+ + - - -/+
Intention/Distal Intention - -/+ - - - -
Objective - - - -/+ - -/+
Sensitive Busines Process - -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+ -/+
External Process -/+ - -/+ - - -
Culminated Process -/+ -/+ -/+ - -/+ -/+
Tacit Knowledge - -/+ - -/+ - +
Individual Tacit Knowledge - - - - - -
Collective Tacit Knowledge - - - - - -
Explicit Knowledge - -/+ - -/+ -/+ -/+
Individual Explicit
Knowledge
- - - - -/+ -/+
Collective Explicit
Knowledge
- -/+ - - -/+ -/+
Physical Knowledge Support - -/+ -/+ -/+ + +
versions during the fulfilling of a special tasks), and
(3) communication-based view.
Oliveira’s Methodology: The Oliveira’s
methodology (Oliveira, 2009) is an extension of
Ericsson et al., (2000) for BPM that is composed of
diagrams representing a hierarchy of models. It uses
constructs adapted from KMDL to model BPs,
considering KM aspects.
The evaluation of the BPM formalisms was
performed by three experts, who were responsible
for observing how well the BPM4KI concepts could
be represented in each language. The experts
individually evaluated the correlation between
formalism elements and meta-model concepts,
considering its definitions and relationships.
3.2 The Evaluation
An overview of the evaluation results can be found
in Table 1. Our evaluation scale ranges from
comprehensively fulfilled (depicted by +), partially
fulfilled (+/-) to not fulfilled (-). The evaluation is
carried out from each of the six perspectives making
up the BPM4KI meta-model. Results show that none
Functional
Pers
p
ective
Organizational
Perspective
Knowledge Perspective
Informational
Perspective
Behavioral
Perspective
Intentional
Perspective
BPM
BPM4KI Concepts
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
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of the studied formalisms, individually, satisfies
SBP modeling requirements.
Generally, the functional and the behavioral
perspectives are very well represented in all BPM
formalisms, while the organizational and
informational perspectives are only partly supported.
But a lack of the models is that the knowledge and
intentional perspectives are not explicitly supported.
In fact, Expert, Individual Tacit Knowledge,
CollectiveTacit Knowledge, are not addressed at all,
in any of the formalisms.
From the process perspective, we can conclude
that the traditional BPM formalisms BPMN 2.0 and
ARIS eEPC are more expressive for modeling this
perspective as a whole. While BPMN offers
extended notation for control flow organization,
encompasses a high level of detail, numerous
constructs (for modeling process logic, decision
points, control flows, processes and event types,
etc.) offering a very complex expressive model of
BPs. In constrat, eEPC has less expressiveness than
BPMN, and its constructs are considerable fewer
and not so well specified as in BPMN. Furthermore,
EPC process models are not intended for being
detailed in order to be executed. It is a notation to
model the domain aspects of BPs. The focus of the
notation is mainly on domain concepts and processes
representation rather than the formal specification or
technical realization. Besides, the defined concepts-
actions specification (Process, Activity, Sub-process,
Task, function, action) defined by the selected list of
formalisms do not explicitly take into account the
individual/collective dimension of the actions.
However,
taking into consideration such a dimension
is very important in our research context, given that we
are interested in the localization of knowledge
mobilized to realize the BP
. This knowledge taken in
the action may be either individual or
collective/organizational (tacit or explicit).
From the knowledge perspective, knowledge
modeling is possible with KMDL 2.2, Oliveira and
PROMOTE (including ARIS eEPC, but it
incompletely supports this dimension). However, the
BP oriented knowledge modeling notation have not
been widely adopted by organizations and are very
incipient. At the same time they have limited
capabilities: (i) They have poor capabilities of
process control flow modeling (decisions, actions,
control flows, etc.), also they lack the ability to
model in an adequate manner the process
perspectives as a whole (the structural, behavioral,
organizational and informational dimensions); (ii)
Information and data concepts are not distinguished;
(iii) Most of them do not explicitly differentiate
between tacit and explicit knowledge, which is
relevant in SBPs due to, for instance, the high degree
of tacit knowledge developed and exchanged among
agents through inter-organizational collaboration;
(iv) These notations allow modeling knowledge flow
perfectly, but BP modeling with KMDL or Oliveira
is challenging - understanding a model requires
special thinking, learning and significant effort for
analysis, design and implementation. They are
convenient only for KM experts and require
additional training for non-experts.
From the informational perspective, the other
notations (BPMN, UML AD and ARIS eEPC)
enable data and information modeling, but do not
offer a strict border between these terms and are
often represented by the same modeling constructs
and symbols. It is noteworthy that this distinction is
useful and essential for our modeling context. Data
and information form the basis for knowledge
generation, distribution and utilization in the context
of collaboration between BP agents.
To sum up, our evaluation results showed an
important loss of information in SBP
representations, either because relevant concepts
were not addressed by existing formalisms or
because these concepts were represented in a very
high abstraction level. This may lead to ambiguous
and unclear SBP models. The BPMN 2.0 standard
was the BPM formalism that presented the broadest
coverage of the set of BPM4KI concepts,
incorporating requirements for SBP modeling better
than other formalisms. Therefore, we select BPMN
2.0 as a basis for representing SBPs to address our
research problem, which consists in improving the
localization and identification of the crucial
knowledge that is mobilized by these processes.
In brief, the best characteristics of BPMN are: (i)
BPMN is currently the BP notation most used
among strong process modeling practitioners, very
simple, easy to use and readily understandable; (ii)
BPMN is a BPM standard backed up by OMG, so
the language definition is based upon a meta-model
built with UML, the notation which is the de facto
standard for modeling software engineering
artefacts; (iii) BPMN is one of the most recent BPM
languages, so it is grounded on the experience of
earlier BPM languages, which ontologically makes it
one of the most complete BPMLs (Recker et al.,
2009); (iv) BPMN is supported by almost all popular
BPM tools; (v) BPMN is extensible (with standard
extension mechanisms); (vi) BPMN offers a
standardized bridge for the gap between the BP
design and process implementation, etc.
Nevertheless, despite its strength representation,
Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
92
some of its concepts should be adapted and extended
to be convenient for a rich and expressive
representation of SBPs. In fact, this notation does
not explicitly support the key concepts of BPM4KI
(as Critical Organizational Activity, Individual Tacit
Knowledge, Collective Tacit Knowledge, Expert,
Knowledge Explicit Knowledge, Distal Intention,
Collective Objective, etc.). So, to overcoming the
shortcomings of BPMN 2.0, this extension must take
into consideration, on the one hand, the knowledge
dimension, and on the other hand, integrate the new
concepts of BPM4KI to represents issues relevant at
the intersection of KM and BPM clearly and with a
sufficient level of details.
4 CASE STUDY: A SBP MODEL
REPRESENTATION
4.1 Case Study Description
In this section, we describe a case study carried out
to demonstrate the feasibility, suitability, and
practical utility of the evaluated approach to
represent and analyze SBP. Precisely, this section
illustrates a SBP model using BPMN 2.0, on top of
the ARIS express tool (IDS Scheer, 2013) to
evaluate its potential in providing an adequate and
expressive representation of a SBP, to improve the
knowledge localization and identification. The
chosen process for this example reflects a medical
care process in the Association of Protection of the
Motor-disabled of Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS). This
organization is characterized by highly dynamic,
unpredictable, complex and highly intensive
knowledge actions. Particularly, we are interested in
the early care of the disabled children with cerebral
palsy (CP) (Ben Hassen et al., 2015b). In fact, the
amount of medical knowledge mobilized and
produced during this medical care process is very
important, heterogeneous and recorded on various
scattered sources. One part of this knowledge is
embodied in the mind of health professionals.
Another part, is preserved in the organizational
memory as reports, medical records, data bases,
therapeutic protocols and clinical practice
guidelines). The created knowledge stems from the
interaction of a large number of multidisciplinary
healthcare professionals with heterogeneous skills,
expertise and specialties (such as neonatology,
neuro-pediatrics, physical therapy, orthopedics,
psychiatry, physiotherapy, speech therapy, and
occupational therapy) and located on geographically
remote sites (University hospital of Sfax Hedi
Chaker, University hospital of Sfax, Habib
Bourguiba, faculty of medicine of Sfax, research
laboratories, etc.). Therefore, the raised problem
concerns on the one hand, the insufficiency and the
difficulty to localize and understand the medical
knowledge that is necessary for decision-making,
and on the other hand, the loss of knowledge held by
these experts during their scattering or their
departure at the end of the treatment. The ASHMS
risks losing the acquired know-how for good and
transferring this knowledge to new novices if ever
no capitalization action is considered. Thus, it
should identify the so called «crucial knowledge» to
reduce the costs of capitalization operation. Our
main objective consists in improving the
localization, identification and sharing of different
types and modalities of crucial medical knowledge
necessary for performing the medical care process of
children with CP.
Indeed, this SBP is composed of several sub-
processes which consists of a succession of many
actions in the form of medical and paramedical
examinations and evaluations in different specialties
(like neonatology, neuro-pediatrics, physical
medicine, orthopedics, psychiatry, physiotherapy
and occupational therapy). The different BPs (such
as process related to neonatology care, process
related to neuro-pediatric care, process related to
physiotherapy, etc.) require certain medical
information as well as certain medical knowledge
(results of para-clinical exams, hospitalization
reports, patient-specific knowledge recorded in the
medical case file, practice guidelines, etc.).
4.2 The SBP Modeling
In this study, we take into consideration the results
of experimentation of the Sensitive Organization's
Process Identification Methodology (SOPIM)
proposed by Turki et al., (2014a) for the early care
of children with CP. As a reminder, the proposed
multi-criteria decision making methodology was
conducted and validated in the ASHMS organization
and aims at evaluating and identifying SBPs for
knowledge localization. We have opted for the SBP
«Process of neonatology consultation of a child with
CP» to illustrate and evaluate the potential of BPMN
2.0 with regard to its applicability and capability of
making relevant knowledge embedded in a SBP
explicit. Indeed, this SBP is highly dynamic, very
complex, in the sense that it involves a large number
of organizational units, agents and experts (internal
and external who are not affiliated to the
organization) from various business/ skills often
residing in different physical locations), neonatology
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
93
Figure 1: Fragment of SBP model in BPMN related to the neonatology consultation of a child with CP.
disciplines and critical organizational activities
(individual and collective). It is very dependent on
explicit knowledge sources and on tacit knowledge.
In addition, it involves an intense collaboration and
interaction between participants to achieve
organizational objectives, make decision to deal with
an unexpected situation and create value. Some of its
activities are highly dependent on the experts
experience, expertise and creativity.
Figure 1 outlines a SBP model extract of the
neonatology consultation process using BPMN 2.0,
enriched with the knowledge dimension (modeled
according to BPM4KI). As stated above, this
notation does not, however, provide primitives to
explicitly represent all relevant aspects related to
knowledge dimension in BP models. To remedy for
the shortcomings, we tried to extend this notation
and started by integrating some specific graphical
icons in the form of some BPMN modeling elements
relating to several new BPM4KI concepts (Figure
1). The BPMN SBP model is evaluated and
validated through some interviews made with 2
stakeholders: the neonatologist and the neuro-
pediatrician. During our experimentation, we have
identified different types of medical knowledge
mobilized and created by each critical activity
related to the SBP of neonatology care. We have
distinguished missing or poorly mastered knowledge
(individual or collective) necessary to resolve
critical problems, expertise, unexplainable tacit
knowledge and mastered knowledge necessary and
relevant to the proper functioning and development
of the activity or produced by the activity. We have
also identified the different sources of knowledge,
their localization, actors who hold the knowledge,
the places where they are usable or used, their nature
(like experience, basic knowledge, general
knowledge), their degree of formalization
(tacit/explicit dimension), their organizational
coverage (individual/collective dimension), as well
as their quality (perfect or imperfect).
For instance, the knowledge A
2
K
p1
related to «
Knowledge about result of the evaluation of the
clinical neurological examination, neurological
abnormalities, cerebral palsy category, and clinical
signs and symptoms associated of young children
with cerebral palsy » is produced by the critical
activity A
2
« Clinical neurological examination».
Sixth International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design
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Note that this materialized/externalized knowledge
is created as a result of the activity execution by the
Neonatologist, during which he interacts with
information (i.e. source of knowledge information)
related to the child with CP (based on his previous
experiences and tacit knowledge) to generate and
communicate his own knowledge. A
2
K
p1
is stored in
the following physical media: the neurological
assessment sheet, neuropsychological assessment,
the sensitive assessment sheet and the neuro-motor
assessment. These physical media of knowledge are
located internally within the Neonatology service in
the University Hospital Hedi Chaker, precisely in
the various archives drawers or patients’ directories.
A
2
K
p1
is of a scientific, technical and measure nature
which is related to patients. It represents a collective
explicit knowledge, part of which can be represented
in the form of an individual explicit knowledge
recorded on the care data collection sheet of the
Neonatologist. This knowledge is imperfect
(general, incomplete and uncertain). A
2
K
p1
is
mobilized by the activity A
3
« Evaluation of
intellectual functioning of young child with CP ».
It is important to mention that not all BPM4KI
concepts are applicable and must be instantiated in
every SBP scenario. Precisely, relevant tacit aspects
could not be represented explicitly, such as: the tacit
knowledge embedded in the neonatologist's mind,
the knowledge conversion and the knowledge flows
exchanged between communicating process
participants and among activities, and the distal
intentions which are responsible for making
neonatologist to perform any action and achieve an
organizational objective.
Therefore, the relevance of extending BP models
with the knowledge dimension (according to
BPM4KI meta-model) is manifold:
1. Enhance the localization and identification of the
crucial knowledge mobilized and produced by
the critical activities: (i) Illustrating the
knowledge and its sources that are necessary for
the execution of BP activities and are generated,
created and/or modified as a results of activities.
(ii) Illustrating the knowledge localization
(where knowledge can be obtained and clearly
stated) as well as experts who hold the (tacit)
knowledge. (iii) Illustrating the way in which
specific knowledge flows among the activities,
or how a specific source is used and modified
through the activities. (iv) Illustrating transfers of
knowledge between sources, and among
activities as well as the different opportunities of
knowledge conversion. (v) Defining the
knowledge that is being captured or obtained
from specific sources. (vi) Giving an opportunity
to improve understanding about the knowledge
usefulness, validity, and relevance for particular
activities in a SBP. (vi) Possibility to evaluate
the amount of lost knowledge if a person-owner
of knowledge- leaves the organization (i.e., to
identify which tacit knowledge in which cases
should be transformed into explicit knowledge).
2. A deeply characterizing of the identified
knowledge to determine which ones are more
crucial to be exploited: (i) Illustrating the nature
and degree of formalization of knowledge. (ii)
Illustrating the organizational coverage of
knowledge, their quality.
5 CONCLUSION AND
PERSPECTIVES
This paper presented an evaluation framework of
BPM formalisms to represent the SBP, taking the
conceptualization defined by BPM4KI (Ben Hassen
et al., 2015a) as a baseline. Several BPM notations
are reviewed, some are process oriented and some
are knowledge oriented. This evaluation concluded
that current BPM formalisms are not adequate for
the representation of SBPs, since important SBP
characteristics details could not be observed. All
formalisms were very similar in the number of
concepts represented, whereas ARIS eEPC and
BPMN 2.0 address the highest representation
coverage. In order to observe the practical
applicability of the selected formalism, a SBP model
of a real neonatology care process of a child with CP
was illustrated using BPMN 2.0.
There are several open issues in this paper that
we plan to address in the future to deepen the so-
called problematic of knowledge identification
mobilized by SBPs. Further work is underway to
present an extended version of BPM4KI, improving
the definition of some BPM4KI concepts so as to
ease their understanding, as well as adding new
elements to take into consideration issues relevant at
the intersection of KM and BPM in greater detail.
So, we consider relying on core ontologies (such as
core ontology of know-how and knowing-that
(COOK) (Ghrab et al., 2015) and Knowledge-
Intensive Process Core Ontology (KIPCO) (França
et al., 2012). Work for the medium term is to extend
the proposed evaluation framework and perform
further comprehensive evaluation considering
several relevant criteria. Besides the six BP aspects,
there are further non-functional requirements a BP
meta-model should fulfill: ease of use and
A Multi-criteria Evaluation Framework for Selecting Sensitive Business Processes Modeling Formalism
95
understandability, ontological completeness
/expressibility, extendibility/ flexibility, notations,
modularity, level of details/granularity, exception
handling, pattern support, tools availability, security
and privacy, etc. Moreover, the evaluation of six
BPM formalisms provides a good starting point that
can be easily extended with both further BPM
languages and supporting tools. Also, the evaluation
will be carried out from each of the six perspectives
making up the BPM4KI meta-model. Further down
the track, we plan to propose a rigorous scientific
approach for extending BPMN 2.0 for KM.
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