Remco Dijkman of the Technical of Technology of Eindhoven presented a paper on Diagnosing Differences between Business Process Models, focusing on behavioral differences rather than the structural differences that were examined in the previous paper by IBM. The problem is the same: there are two process models, likely two versions of the same model, and there is a need to detect and characterize the differences between them.
He developed a taxonomy of differences between processes, both from similar processes in practice and from completed trace inequivalences. This includes skipped functions, different conditions (gateway type with same number of paths traversed), additional conditions (gateway conditions with a potentially larger number of paths traversed), additional start condition, different dependencies, and iterative versus once-off.
You can tell it’s getting near the end of the day — my posts are getting shorter and shorter — and we have only a panel left to finish off.
Sandy, thanks for covering my presentation. I would like to use this comment to stress the practical relevance of my research.
I developed the technique as an aid to perform a merger at an operational level. I have applied it in four mergers now (three only on paper and one ‘for real’.) From that experience I claim that the technique indeed helps in practice.
Although the formal background of the technique is not very helpful in practice, the ‘taxonomy’ of differences helps practitioners to understand where their organizations are similar and where there exist differences that need to be addressed in the merger.
Thanks for a good presentation, Remco. I was getting a bit burnt out by the end of the day, not sure that I was giving you my full concentration — I will have to review your paper in the proceedings! I liked a lot of the presentations today for their practical applicability, since I work more with real-world implementations.