Dynamic Business Process Management Based on Process Change Patterns

In order to provide life cycle support of business process management, a framework for managing process improvement and dynamic process changes is required. In this paper, we propose a new approach to managing business process changes in dynamic business environment based on business process change patterns. We identify and categorize business process change patterns that occur recurrently based on workflow patterns. Several issues on managing process versions are discussed and a new version management method for managing process changes more flexibly based on the process change patterns is explained in detail. In order to maximize the flexibility in executing various process versions we propose a mechanism for abstract process execution with runtime encapsulation of a business process in dynamic business environment. In addition, we propose a useful mechanism to support dynamic process version selection with process promotion and demotion to support abstract process execution. This paper contributes to managing various business process changes efficiently and enhances the flexibility of BPM system.