Artefact-oriented Business Process Modelling

An Ontological Dependency Approach

Yu-Chun Pan, Yinshan Tang and Stephen R. Gulliver

Informatics Research Centre, Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6UD, U.K.

Keywords: Artefact-oriented, Activity Theory, Organisational Semiotics, Ontology, Business Process Modelling.

Abstract: Business process modelling can help an organisation better understand and improve its business processes.

Most business process modelling methods adopt a task- or activity-based approach to identifying business

processes. Within our work, we use activity theory to categorise elements within organisations as being

either human beings, activities or artefacts. Due to the direct relationship between these three elements, an

artefact-oriented approach to organisation analysis emerges. Organisational semiotics highlights the

ontological dependency between affordances within an organisation. We analyse the ontological

dependency between organisational elements, and therefore produce the ontology chart for artefact-oriented

business process modelling in order to clarify the relationship between the elements of an organisation.

Furthermore, we adopt the techniques from semantic analysis and norm analysis, of organisational

semiotics, to develop the artefact-oriented method for business process modelling. The proposed method

provides a novel perspective for identifying and analysing business processes, as well as agents and

artefacts, as the artefact-oriented perspective demonstrates the fundamental flow of an organisation. The

modelling results enable an organisation to understand and model its processes from an artefact perspective,

viewing an organisation as a network of artefacts. The information and practice captured and stored in

artefact can also be shared and reused between organisations that produce similar artefacts.

1 INTRODUCTION

An organisation can be seen as a system that has

inputs, processes, and outputs, and also contains

various parts integrated to accomplish the shared

goal (Senge, 1990). The system view enables

management to view the organisation in flows,

processes and relationships, to achieve optimal

results (Seddon, 2008). The flows, processes and

relationships in a system are usually defined by the

sequence of activities and tasks. Hammer and

Champy (1993) defined a business process as a

collection of activities with a goal that takes one or

more types of input to create a valuable output to the

customer. Eriksson and Penker (2000) argued that a

business process focuses on addressing how work is

performed rather than describing the output of a

process. Business process therefore contains a

sequence of work activities that together contribute

to the customers’ desired outcome.

Business process modelling provides a shared

understanding and analysis of business processes

(Aguilar-Savén, 2004). It captures how the activities

are being performed, the sequence of activities

involved, and the presence of the business process in

a chosen approach. Business process modelling

helps an organisation conceptually structure the

architecture of its business process. The results of

business process modelling can therefore be used for

software development and for business process

restructuring (Phalp and Shepperd, 2000).

There are numerous methods and techniques for

business process modelling, which were all

developed for different purposes and needs (Aguilar-

Savén, 2004). The majority of business process

modelling methods capture the sequence and details

of activities, and then represent an organisation by

visualising or grouping the captured activities via

various techniques. Various attributes are used in

different methods for defining business process,

such as human roles (Holt et al., 1983), data and

information (Gane and Sarson, 1977, Yourdon and

Constantine, 1979), actions (Lakin et al., 1996), data

objects (Douglass, 2000), and duration (Aguilar-

Savén, 2004). Despite the numerous attributes used,

activities are still normally the starting point for

223

Pan Y., Tang Y. and R. Gulliver S..

Artefact-oriented Business Process Modelling - An Ontological Dependency Approach.

DOI: 10.5220/0004398502230230

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 223-230

ISBN: 978-989-8565-61-7

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

business process modelling. However, by reviewing

and analysing the elements within an organisation,

we identify the three elements as human agents,

artefacts and activities, and the interdependent

relationship between them. Due to the direct link

between these three elements, an instance of any

type of elements can be used as a basis to identify

the relevant instances of the other two elements. In

order to gather artefact-oriented information about

activities and human agents, a business process

modelling method that captures the business flow

from an artefact perspective has been developed.

In order to develop an artefact-oriented method

for business process modelling, we first adopted

activity theory to understand the relationship

between human beings, activities and artefacts.

Organisational semiotics was chosen as the

theoretical basis for the artefact-oriented method

development. The ontology chart for artefact-

oriented business process modelling was then

produced, however we extended the ontology chart

by applying the techniques from semantic analysis

and norm analysis in order to develop the artefact-

oriented business process modelling method, and

allow us to identify the artefact and agent’s activities.

Each step of the above method will be explained and

demonstrated in more details, via use of a supporting

example.

2 BACKGROUND

2.1 Activity Theory and Organisations

Business process modelling has been an important

topic in the study of business, because it facilitates

organisations to understand and improve their

business processes, therefore working towards better

performance. In order to model a business process, it

is essential to understand the structure, components

and workflows of an organisation. We used activity

theory (AT) (Engestrom et al., 1999) to define the

elements of organisations. AT identifies each goal

driven activity as an analysis unit. An activity model

contains object, subject and artefact. An object is

both something given and something projected or

anticipated. Object is the thing being modified to fit

the purpose. Subject is the human being that is being

motivated by the object to perform tasks to reach a

goal. Artefact refers to the mediating tools that can

either be physical or mental. Additionally, AT states

that activity model is artefact-mediated and object-

oriented, and the context has to be considered while

analysing human activities. The outcome of one

activity model can be the object or artefact of

another activity model. An AT model can therefore

operate independently, or cooperate with other

activity models. An organisation can be seen as a

network of activities. The interaction between the

object and the human subject is through the

mediation of tools. AT has been applied to

understand business process (Larkin, 2003, Rozycki

et al., 2012), and the process deconsolidation is

based on different perspectives of agents. According

to AT, subject modifies objects to generate outcome

(Barthelmess and Anderson, 2002). Activities are

therefore significantly related to human beings,

objects and tools. Both tools and objects are the

artefacts that are being modified or utilised by

human beings when performing activities. The

object of an activity can be reused as a tool by

another activity model. Hence, the tools and objects

can be categorised together by nature, whilst also

being viewed as a set of activities, since any form of

organisation requires the collaboration of human

beings performing sets of activities or tasks. Hence,

we define three major elements in an organisation as

being human, activities and artefacts. These three

elements construct to form an organisation through

intertwined relationships. An organisation can be

seen as a network of artefacts that are linked to

human beings and activities. Hence, artefacts, as

well as activities, can also be seen as the linkages in

a system, as artefacts within a system can normally

be defined at the input and output of the systems and

sub-systems. The sub-systems pass artefacts from

one sub-system to another; with the output of one

sub-system acting as the input of its succeeding sub-

system. By focusing on the input and outputs

between sub-systems, a more artefact-oriented

perspective for examining organisations emerges. As

artefacts are often directly involved with human

activity, the relationship between artefact instances

can further reveal the relationship between artefacts

and human beings; i.e. artefacts can be used as the

base for stakeholder mapping (Pan et al., 2013).

2.2 Organisational Semiotics

Organisational semiotics (OS) is a discipline that

applies semiotics to organisational study. It focuses

on the nature, function and effect of information and

communication within organisations (Liu, 2000).

Semantic Analysis Method (SAM) and Norm

Analysis Method (NAM) of OS are selected for this

research. SAM is a set of methods to elicit and

specify user’s requirements in a formal and precise

format, and the building blocks of SAM include

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affordances, agents and ontological dependency

(Liu, 2000, Bonacin et al., 2004). Gibson (1986)

defined affordances as patterns of behaviours that

are meaningful in the context of society. Affordance

is the perceived and actual properties of the thing,

and the properties determines the possible use of the

thing (Norman, 1988). Stamper (1985) explained

that a physical object can also be defined as an

affordance given the object’s ability to enable

patterns of behaviours. Hence, the entities, objects or

artefacts that can be utilised by human beings in an

organisation are all affordances. Agents are also

affordance, which distinguish themselves from other

affordances by being able to take responsibilities for

their own and others’ actions (Salter and Liu, 2002).

Agents can be individuals, groups or organisations,

as long as the agent takes responsibility for their

actions. Furthermore, affordances defined in a given

context are not isolated from each other. There are

relationships between affordances. The ontological

dependency means that the existence of an

affordance relies on its antecedents. The

relationships between affordances can therefore be

shown in an ontology chart where the nodes

normally represent universal affordances rather than

particular affordance instances.

Based on the results from SAM, NAM further

identifies and analyses rules and patterns of artefact

behaviour. NAM contains four steps, namely

responsibility analysis, proto-norm analysis, trigger

analysis and detailed norm specification (Liu, 2000).

The results of norm analysis can help the

organisation understand and potentially improve its

processes. These steps can be utilised to analyse and

model the activities related to the artefacts within the

organisation, once the ontological dependency

within the organisation has been clarified.

3 METHODS

By reviewing the literature in AT, OS and business

process modelling, we have identified the potential

use of artefacts as an approach to business process

modelling. AT and OS provide the theoretical

foundation for understanding the elements within

organisation and the ontological dependency among

them, which is used to develop the ontology chart

for artefact-oriented business process modelling.

Artefact orientation and ontological dependency

within organisation will be discussed in section 4.

The ontology chart for artefact-oriented business

process modelling demonstrates how agents and

afforded acts can be identified and linked through

artefacts in a defined environment. We also adopted

the concepts and analysis techniques from SAM and

NAM. The semantic analysis techniques helped

identify the affordances in the defined environment

and to examine the relationship between them. Once

the affordances and the relationship amongst them

are clarified, the techniques from NAM were used to

assign responsible agents to the identified afforded

acts and to further analyse the rules for the afforded

acts. The details of each step will be addressed in

section 5, with an example to demonstrate each step

of the artefact-oriented business process modelling.

4 ARTEFACT AND

ONTOLOGICAL DEPENDENCY

Developed from AT, artefacts, human agents and

activities have been identified as the three major

elements within an organisation. Organisations

would not be able to function with the absence of

any of the three elements. Artefacts are being

processed or produced by human agents performing

activities; and therefore they are the three co-

dependent corners of a triangle that explains how

organisation functions.

In order to understand the overall picture of an

organisation, any of the three major elements can be

used as the focal perspective to gather information

of the relevant occurrences of the other two

elements. By using artefact (affordance) as the

analysis unit, we aim to capture the associated

activities (afforded acts) and human subjects

(agents). Hence, our next step is to produce an

ontology chart for artefact-oriented business process

modelling. Each organisation as a system is

composed of many affordances and agents that are

related to, and have an effect on, each other through

their ontological dependency. The artefacts in the

system are the affordances of the system. The

artefacts are the linkage between sub-systems as the

input and output of the sub-systems. The artefacts

within a system can represent the components,

which refer to raw materials, services, or parts that

are required to deliver an output that is desired by

the end customers of a system (Pan et al., 2012).

The stakeholders are those who are involved

with the organisation, either actively or passively

(Vos and Achterkamp, 2006). The role-name

indicates that an agent has a specific role. The

agent’s afforded acts are the activities of the system.

Based on the semiotic analysis of stakeholders and

components, an ontology chart (

Figure 1) is

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produced. The business environment is the root to all

affordances, since all of the affordances are

dependent on the business environment. Therefore,

the affordances would not exist if there was no

business environment. All of the items in the

ontology chart are affordances, with the affordances

on the right of the ontologically being dependent on

the affordances to its left; i.e. its ontological

antecedent. The names attached to the lines between

the agents and afforded acts refer to the roles of the

agents. Determiners are a special type of affordances

that represent the measurement standards, which are

marked with a # symbol. The outputs are dependents

on the components, as the components are

assembled to produce the output. The oval shapes

represent the agents and standard affordances

(artefacts). The agents include the organisation and

stakeholders, and the artefacts cover both the output

and components. The rectangular boxes refer to the

afforded acts performed by agents. The ontology

chart reveals the ontological relationship between

the artefacts, human agents, and activities. Hence, an

organisation can be analysed and modelled

accordingly.

5 ARTEFACT-ORIENTED

BUSINESS PROCESS

MODELLING

Based on the concept of artefact orientation and the

ontology chart for artefact-oriented modelling, an

artefact-oriented method for business process

modelling is proposed. The modelling method

contains five steps, which will be explained and

demonstrated with a case study example in the

following sections.

5.1 Unit System Scoping

The scope of any system needs to be defined before

the analysis can be conducted. Scoping the unit

system sets the boundary, which ensures that the

analysis covers all of the essential parts and excludes

the elements beyond the scope.

A university’s programme support team is

selected for the case study. Since the programme

support team supports all of the postgraduate

programmes across the faculty, instead of any

specific school, the faculty is considered as the

business environment. Other schools and

departments are within the faculty; however they are

not the part of the defined organisation for process

modelling, yet might fall into the stakeholder

category as agents that interact with the unit system.

5.2 Artefact Identification

The modelling unit for this method is based on the

artefact instances, and therefore the artefacts need to

be identified first, once the scope has been defined.

Artefacts include the outputs and the components in

the defined organisation. Common data collection

methods, such as observation, interview and

document review (Sapsford and Jupp, 1996), can be

applied to identify the artefacts. The outputs are the

artefacts produced by the defined organisation for its

customers. The artefacts can be either tangible or

intangible, depending upon the nature of the defined

organisation. An output is the final product of the

organisation, and it can be the end result of either

routine manufacturing or an ad hoc project. Once the

outputs are identified, the analyst can further break

down the outputs into components.

The components of an output are the raw

material, parts, information and/or services that are

required to produce the output. Human agents

perform a set of activities to modify and process a

group of components to deliver a specific output.

Identifying the components of each output requires

the analyst to produce a component-based structure

(Pan et al., 2012) for each identified output, which

reveals the relationship between the output,

components, and sub-components.

There can be numerous outputs in a defined

organisation. For each identified output, the output

name, output ID, required components and the

specification have to be decided. The output ID

should be unique and readable by a machine, as this

ID can be used as a tag to identify the information

related to a specific output. The output name is the

term that human agents use to describe the output.

The ‘required components’ column lists all

component IDs for components that are required to

produce the output. The specification column

provides a brief description of the output, which

should include the functions, purposes, uses,

limitations, etc. In addition, more columns can be

added, as deemed necessary. In the context of the

programme support team example, we observed

their processes and conducted semi-structured

interviewed with two team members in order to

identify the organisation outputs, and their related

components, as shown in

Table 1 and Table 2.

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Figure 1: Ontology chart for Artefact-oriented business process modelling.

Table 1: Output list.

System Programme Support Team

Outputs

Programme Summary Report (PGT001)

Student Transcripts (PGT002)

Module Distribution Statistics (PGT003)

Table 2: Output description.

Output ID PGT001

Output Name Programme Summary Report

Required

Components

Student Information (PGT101)

Module Marks (PGT102)

Degree Classification (PGT103)

Specifications To be produced before the exam board

5.3 Activity Analysis

Activities are the afforded acts performed by agents.

The activities enable the artefacts to achieve their

defined purpose. For each output, the related

activities are divided into two categories, namely

assembling activities and post-assembling activities.

Assembling activities are the activities that

transform the components into the output. Not only

does an assembling activity apply to the physical

assembling of parts in a manufacturing domain, but

also apply to the collation of intangible services and

information. The assembling activities include

substantive activities and control activities that

ensure the substantive activities complying with the

rules. Post-assembling activities refer to the

activities that happen between the output and the

agents who are affected by the output.

OS classified activities into substantive activities,

communication activities and control activities (Liu,

2000). Substantive activities refer to the tasks and

activities that fulfil the main purpose of the action.

Communication activities enable the right sub-

components available at the right time at the right

place. Control activities ensure that all coordination

and production activities are conducted according to

the relevant regulations. The rules and regulations

are enforced by the conduction of control activities.

Hence, we identify that there are substantive

activities, communication activities and control

activities for each component.

Hence, there are five groups of activities

associated to identified output and components.

Each artefact should have a table listing all of the

associated activities. Each identified activity is then

assigned an activity ID, activity name, activity type,

and description. In the example of programme

support team, once the tables of activities that are

related to the output and components are produced,

the activity description can be generated for each

activity.

Table 3 is an example of activity

description.

Table 3: Activity description.

Activity ID PGTAC1023

Activity Name Checking the final mark

Associated

Artefact

PGT001, PGT102

Activity Type Control

Activity

Description

Ensuring that the final mark was decided

according to the regulations

5.4 Agent Identification

In the ontology chart for artefact-oriented business

process modelling, agents include the organisation

and the individuals. The organisation owns the

outputs, yet outputs are essentially dependent on

stakeholder components. All of the components are

ontologically dependent on agents who enable

components by performing their afforded acts.

Based on the afforded acts performed by the agents,

the agents can be categorised by their roles. For each

output, there are five types of roles, namely owner,

substantive actionee, control actionee, beneficiary

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and sufferer. For each identified component, there

should be substantive actionee, control actionee and

communication actionee. Each agent is linked to a

certain set of activities, and the agent’s role name

should reflect its afforded acts directly.

For the example, one output and one component

have been chosen to identify the related agents.

Once the relevant agents have been identified, an

agent description is then produced for each

identified agent.

Table 4 and Table 5 are the examples

of the agent identification and description.

Table 4: Output-agent identification.

Output ID PGT001

Owner Programme Support Team

Substantive

Actionee

Administrator (PGTAG002)

Senior Administrator (PGTAF003)

Control Actionee Team Manager (PGTAG001)

Beneficiary Exam Board (PGTAG201)

Sufferer N/A

Table 5: Agent description.

Agent ID PGTAG002

Agent Name Administrator

Agent Type Substantive, Communication

Contact Admin@example.ac.uk

Location Room 105, Admin Building

5.5 Rule Specification

The techniques from trigger analysis and detailed

norm specification of NAM (Liu, 2000) are adopted

to conduct rule specification. In order to formalise

the activities, it is essential to identify and specify

the norms that realise the activities. Hence, for each

identified activity, the analyst should specify the

activity type, time, associated artefacts, associated

agents and rule specification. The format of

behavioural norm (Liu and Dix, 1997) is considered

suitable for the rule specification, because most rules

and regulations in the business environment fall into

the category of behavioural norms. The format is

constructed as follows (Liu and Dix, 1997).

Whenever <condition> If <state> Then <agent> Is

This format is selected to present the rule

specification for each identified activity. All rules

within each identified activity need to be scripted

and listed to allow activity analysis.

Table 6 is an

example of activity rule specification.

5.6 Modelling Result

Each step of the artefact-oriented business process

modelling method provides a set of information

respectively. Once all of the steps are completed, the

component-based structures of identified outputs can

be used to reveal the organisation’s fundamental

processes from an artefact perspective. By using the

tables produced in artefact identification, activity

analysis, agent identification and rule specification,

all of the activities and agents within the

organisation can be explicitly linked to the output

and component to which they are related. Hence, the

practices and information can be encapsulated into

the artefact analysis unit. A component might be

associated to more than one output, and accordingly

the practice and knowledge embedded in the

component can be shared between outputs.

Table 6: Activity rule specification.

Activity ID PGTAC1023

Act Type Control

Rule

Specification

Rule 1:

Whenever <the resit box is ticked> If <the

resit mark is greater than 50%> Then

<administrator> Is <obliged> To <record

the final mark at 50%>

Rule 2:

Whenever <the resit box is ticked> If <the

resit mark is less than 50%> and <the resit

mark is greater than the calculated final

mark> Then <administrator> Is <obliged>

To <keep resit mark as the final mark>

6 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSIONS

This paper developed the ontology chart for artefact-

oriented business process modelling based on AT

and OS and then further proposed the artefact-

oriented method for business process modelling. An

artefact-oriented approach is different to a functional

flow, as it aims to treat the organisation as a system,

and place focus on the inputs and outputs of an

organisation. As a system, constructed of sub-

systems, an organisation can be modelled by

considering the outputs that it produces. The outputs

themselves can also be broken down and modelled;

with each artefact systematically used as an analysis

unit to extract activity and agent information. Based

on the ontology chart that defines the relationships

between agents, afforded acts and artefacts, we

propose an artefact-oriented method for business

process modelling. The method contains five steps

that identify the artefacts within the defined

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organisation and analyse the agents and activities

around the artefacts. The modelling results show the

organisation’s outputs and their component-based

structures, which view an organisation as a network

of artefacts. For each identified artefact, there will

be relevant agents and activities identified.

The term ‘artefact’ in the proposed artefact-

oriented approach is not to be confused with the

term ‘artifact’ in artifact-centric business process

model (Bhattacharya et al., 2007). In artifact-centric

business process model, artifacts are the moving

business-relevant objects/data that are created,

evolved and normally archived as they pass through

a business (Cohn and Hull, 2009), which contains

both the attributes and states describing the identity

of the artifact and its current stage in its lifecycle

(Bhattacharya et al., 2009). The term ‘artefact’ is our

approach does not refer to the data, but the things

actually being modified or produced.

The artefact-oriented approach focuses on an

organisation’s conceptual structure based on

artefacts. The artefacts are ontologically

interdependent. Unlike activity-focused modelling,

artefact-oriented modelling does not rely on the

sequence of activities, but the ontological

interdependency of artefacts. When the relationship

between artefacts is output-component relationship,

the component will need to be sourced or produced

before the production of the output can take place.

However, the existence of the component does not

necessarily lead to the production of the output, and

the relationship between them is not sequential.

Between the artefacts, as components, required by

the same artefact (output) there is also no sequential

relationship at all. There is no specific order in

which the components need to be sourced for the

production of the output. As long as the required

components are sourced, the production of the

output can be done, and the sequence of components

is irrelevant. Therefore, the artefacts can be viewed

and modified independently without affecting other

artefacts, while they are still ontologically

interdependent, which enables the flexibility of

artefacts as a base for process modelling.

Additionally, because the artefact-oriented

modelling method records the agent and activity

information linked to the artefact, the recorded

relationship between artefacts, agents and activities

can then be used in the event of an emergency, or in

the case of business process redesign, to identify

those agents involved and activities that will be

affected. If a specific agent or activity becomes

unavailable or faulty, the organisation can quickly

identify which outputs and components will be

affected. The component-based structure also gives

the organisation a clear view of which artefacts are

being to produce specific artefacts. The organisation

can use this information to consider which artefacts

can be replaced or reused across the whole

organisation. The activity of similar artefacts can be

reviewed and potentially improved by using

benchmarking criteria. The proposed method is

predominantly designed to capture and analyse the

formal and technical part of the organisation. Some

of the informal norms in the organisation might still

be captured and recorded, but some might not

necessarily be captured; if the informal activities do

not have a direct involvement with an artefact.

However, this issue can be resolved by incorporating

techniques that focus on informal norms.

Moreover, the modelling results can also be used

to design and configure Information System (IS). In

the example of programme support team, the

different IDs can all be used as the primary keys in

the database. The rule specifications can help

programmers or enterprise consultants compute the

business processes. The modelled business processes

than can be coded or implemented within software

systems. By formalising the information around the

artefacts, each artefact can then be considered as a

software component; with each artefact-based

software component truly reflecting its counterpart

in real world; and the practice of information sharing

can be conducted on the basis of artefacts. In

conclusion, the artefact-oriented method for process

modelling provides a novel perspective for

identifying and analysing business processes, as well

as agents and artefacts, as the artefact-oriented

perspective demonstrates the fundamental flow of an

organisation; with the information and practices

embedded in artefact allowing reuse across both the

organisation and/or the industry. Since the artefact

analysis unit consider the drill-down detail of

multiple level sub-components, the basis of

information and practices sharing can be scaled.

This scaling allows organisations to use the same

modelling approaches, irrelevant of the complexity

of the artefact; as additional levels can be added as

required in areas of complexity to allow scope of

modelling to be manageable.

Not only does the artefact-oriented approach lay

the groundwork for business process modelling, but

it paves the foundation for IS design and

configuration. The modelling results provide an

alternative basis for IS design, with the rule

specifications enabling the automation of process in

IS. The software component of information system

can be constructed based on the artefacts, instead of

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the conventional functional processes. The

development of artefact-oriented approach to

business process modelling is at an early stage.

Extension of this concept needs to be applied in

more scenarios, where task-centric methods

currently apply, in order to further refine the concept

and develop related methods or techniques.

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