Enterprise Modelling: A Declarative Approach for FBPML

The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the author’s and shouldn’t be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.Enterprise Modelling (EM) methods are well-recognised for their value in describing complex, informal domains in an organised structure. EM methods are used in practice, particularly during the early stages of software system development, e.g. during the phase of business requirements elicitation. The built model, however, has not always provided direct input to software system development. Despite the provision of adequate training to understand and use EM methods, informality is often seen in enterprise models and presents a major obstacle. This paper focuses on one type of EM methods: business process modelling (BPM) methods. We advocate the use of a BPM language within a three-layer framework. The BPM language merges two main and complimentary business process representations, IDEF3 and PSL, to introduce a Fundamental Business Process Modelling Language (FBPML) that is designed for simplicity of use and under-pinned by rich formality that may be used directly to support software and workflow system development