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working under the authority of the Academy of
Grenoble. This example motivates our choice of
the case study used in this chapter dealing with
a number of business processes used to manage
application procedures of students to university
formations.
process models that can be transformed into an
executable notation of a workflow engine.
This chapter takes interested in modeling
business processes. Although, it does not deal
with designing business processes from scratch
as we analyze existing ones in order to generate
well structured and complete models reflecting
the real and the operational scheduling of these
processes. The modeling task is a highly skilled
task that should be achieved by the business
process modeler.
The beginning of the 1990's was marked
by an increasing awareness of the importance
of business processes. The orientation towards
business process was promoted by works like
Hammer (1990) and Harrington (1991). Since that,
modeling business process was accorded a large
interest. In the literature, three areas of interest
are identified. First, a large number of works were
interested in the study of languages for modeling
business process. We cite for example (Wohed
et al, 2006; Barn & Oussena, 2009; Engels et al,
2005). Secondly, some works were interested
in considering design issues in building process
models (Koubarakis & Plexousakis, 2000; Suka-
viriya et al, 2007). Finally methods for modeling
business process were proposed for reengineering
purposes (Damij et al, 2008; Irani et al, 2000). In
this chapter we study a novel modeling issue that
was not considered before despite the multiple dif-
ficulties seen in some organization for abstracting
and modeling executable processes.
There are several languages for modeling busi-
ness processes: OSSAD (Office support System
Analysis and Design), EPC (Event driven Process
Chain), IDEF (Integration Definition methods),
UML (Unified Modeling Language), BPMN
(Business Process Modeling Notation). We chose
BPMN, a standard of the OMG, which is a specific
language for business process modeling. It has
the advantage of providing a rich vocabulary to
present the process as a flowchart (OMG, 2006).
BPMN was proposed in 2002 by IBM and is now
standardized by the Object Management Group
The method of business process reverse
engineering proposed in this chapter takes into
account these motivations and highlights them
to guide the modeling process which represents
a strength point for the approach. The method
may be considered as an all-purpose method, as
it is based on a generic metamodel capturing all
the elements involved in a business process. The
metamodel consists of 5 complementary views
studying the process from different perspectives.
In this chapter, some choices adopted for
the proposed reverse-engineering method are
described. Then, the multi-view metamodel is
presented and the different phases of the proposed
reverse-engineering process are described. Each
phase is illustrated by examples extracted from
the academic web application of University of
Grenoble. We give also a brief overview on re-
flection tracks that will constitute future trends in
research in the field of process modeling.
bAckground
In the literature, the BPM lifecycle consists of
three major phases. The first phase is the design
phase which consists of two steps: analyzing and
modeling business processes. The second phase is
the execution phase where some or many of the
following technologies should be used: integrating
business processes in the information systems,
automating business processes and orchestrating
operational business processes between them.
The third and final phase is the monitoring phase
where business processes should be supervised
and controlled continuously in order to optimize
their functioning. The design phase should provide
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