Extending CMMN with entity life cycles

In the domain of business process modeling, a case denotes a situation that requires a customized treatment, and this may take place if the case workers are entitled to decide the tasks to perform as well as their ordering. In the recent CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation) standard, a case involves both an information structure and a process. The former is patterned on the file system structure and the latter is made up of stages, which are groupings of interrelated tasks. The standard leaves some open issues, such as the determination of the performers of the tasks, and the definition of the inputs and outputs of the tasks in terms of the information items affected. To address these issues, this paper proposes an extension to CMMN in which stages represent states of information items whose types along with their attributes and relationships are defined in an information model. The benefits of the extension are illustrated by means of an example that concerns the handling of papers submitted to conferences.