Service-based Processes : Design for business and technology

The concepts of processes and services can be used to structure both businesses and software systems. From a business perspective, the use of processes promises efficient management of organizations. From a software perspective, executable process descriptions provide a way to structure software systems according to the business process the systems should support. Furthermore, the concept of software services allows systems to be partitioned in a modular fashion, thereby enabling large-scale system integration on a technical level. By combining process descriptions with software services in service-based processes, it is feasible to address both business and more technical software needs. Aligning the business and software perspectives of processes and software services is, however, challenging, since implemented executable processes and software services need to cater for operational and strategic business needs as well as existing legacy software systems. In this thesis, several instruments are presented that aim at aiding the design and evolution of service-based processes. The aligning of operational business and software perspectives on process descriptions is addressed by the introduction of business and technical process model levels. These levels can be aligned by the use of a set of model transformations and associated transformation rules. Furthermore, the aligning is aided by introducing means for achieving flexibility on both the business and technical model levels. The development of service-based processes from a strategic business point of view is aided by the introduction of novel models and methods for goal-based design of software services. Taken together, the instruments can be used for the design and evolution of service-based processes.QC 20100810REMSServia