An Integrated Notation for Business Process Models

Since business processes may address complex behavioral requirements resulting from the integration of several items, i.e. tasks, business entities (also called artifacts), control flow rules and data flow rules, they need notations able to accommodate several viewpoints. This chapter proposes a notation, ARTS, aimed at integrating the traditional activity-oriented viewpoint and the artifact-oriented one. The major benefits are the unification of the control flow and the data flow and a clear representation of the choices to be carried out by the participants. The basic features are illustrated with the help of three versions of a simplified hiring process. This chapter also deals with the structure of work lists, which are the major interface between the participants and their tasks. The organization of the work lists leverages the artifacts to emphasize human choices; for this reason, the traditional linear structure is replaced with a network one, which shows the artifacts along with their states, correlations and valid options.