A Structural Variants Process Models Collection for Process Similarities Evaluations

Abstract

Organizations having years of involvement in business process management, regularly keep up business process model repository containing hundreds or even a large number of process models. The process models in their repositories typically evolve from different sources and are created by various stakeholders. A new process models may be by expanding or refining existing models. Therefore, process models have a tendency to collect duplicate process models which, if left unconsolidated, may develop autonomously and cause irregularities. Similarly, it frequently happens that many organizations manage the business process models that have similar objectives but involve different business unit which may differentiate one another. The similarity (Correspondence) of process models can be explored through label, structure and behavior. This study is mainly focusing structural similarity measurement. The variations in the process model though structural correspondences have already been proposed in literature. But, majority of them are conceptual i.e. not providing the implication and verification on process model collections. Moreover, the previous studies on structural changes are not yet defining any proper classification for the structural variations. The first contribution of this study is the provision process model design classification through structural variations. We have tried to explore the availability of BPMN dataset and found some existences, one of which is SAP business process repository but, that was not available publically. So, as a contribution the complete repository was created with 600 different variants of 150 original models. The original models were taken from a verified source of our research group available dataset. Furthermore, the regenerated models were once verified from domain experts and finally included. The rigor evaluations were performed on dataset both manually and automated.