Business process model repositories – framework and survey

Context: Large organizations often run hundreds or even thousands of different business processes. Managing such large collections of business process models is a challenging task. Software can assist in performing that task, by supporting common management functions such as storage, search and version management of models. It can also provide advanced functions that are specific for managing collections of process models, such as managing the consistency of public and private processes. Software that supports the management of large collections of business process models is called: business process model repository software. Objective: This paper contributes to the development of business process model repositories, by analyzing the state of the art. Method: To perform the analysis a literature survey and a comparison of existing (business process model) repository technology is performed. Result: The results of the state of the art analysis are twofold. First, a framework for business process model repositories is presented, which consists of a management model and a reference architecture. The management model lists the functionality that can be provided and the reference architecture presents the components that provide that functionality. Second, an analysis is presented of the extent to which existing business process model repositories implement the functionality from the framework. Conclusion: The results presented in the paper are valuable as a comprehensive overview of business process model repository functionality. In addition they form a basis for a future research agenda. We conclude that existing repositories focus on traditional functionality rather than exploiting the full potential of information management tools, thus we show that there is a strong basis for further research