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Business process model abstraction: a definition, catalog, and survey

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Abstract

The discipline of business process management aims at capturing, understanding, and improving work in organizations by using process models as central artifacts. Since business-oriented tasks require different information from such models to be highlighted, a range of abstraction techniques has been developed over the past years to manipulate overly detailed models. At this point, a clear understanding of what distinguishes these techniques and how they address real world use cases has not yet been established. In this paper we systematically develop, classify, and consolidate the use cases for business process model abstraction and present a case study to illustrate the value of this technique. The catalog of use cases that we present is based on a thorough evaluation of the state of the art, as well as on our cooperation with end users in the health insurance sector. It has been subsequently validated by experts from the consultancy and tool vendor domains. Based on our findings, we evaluate how the existing business process model abstraction approaches support the discovered use cases and reveal which areas are not adequately covered, as such providing an agenda for further research in this area.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the following industry partners: AOK Nordost in Teltow, Germany; Infosys in Bangalore, India; and Pallas Athena in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. The authors thank Tassilo Glander for sharing his research expertise on map visualization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hasso Plattner Institute, 2-3 Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Strasse, Potsdam, 14482, Germany

    Sergey Smirnov & Mathias Weske

  2. Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Hajo A. Reijers

  3. Deloitte Consulting BV, P.O. Box 300, Laan van Kronenburg 2, 1180 AH, Amstelveen, The Netherlands

    Thijs Nugteren

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  1. Sergey Smirnov
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Correspondence to Sergey Smirnov.

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Communicated by Asuman Dogac.

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Smirnov, S., Reijers, H.A., Weske, M. et al. Business process model abstraction: a definition, catalog, and survey. Distrib Parallel Databases 30, 63–99 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10619-011-7088-5

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