Consolidate and Extend the Representation of Business Process Variability Using a new Feature Model Notation and it's Procedure

Adopting principles from Software-Product Line (Engineering) to Business Process Management allows the representation of business process variability. This includes a Feature Model and its belonging Business Process Model Template (also known as a Business Process Family). Several approaches describe different notations and procedures, how this variability representation can be reached. To get an overview and a position-list, a qualitative benchmarking is performed including twelve different state of the art approaches (chapter 4). Its five best ranked approaches are applied to a predefined set of requirements based on Bike-Sharing Systems, a common field of “smart cities” (chapter 5). Out of this real-world case scenario and the theoretical benchmarking, a list of requirements based on i) commonalities, ii) differences as well as advantages and disadvantages, and iii) extensions, is defined (chapter 6). In a next step, these requirements are implemented in a new Feature Model technique, with the consolidation of the five best ranked approaches and extensions to enhance the coverage of representing business process variability (chapter 7) via the new modeling language. The modeling procedure supports the modeler with a step-by-step guideline to build the needed two models (Feature Model and Business Process Model Template), its inter-model referencing (mapping) and a manual on how to configure an individual business process variant (chapter 8). The final validation of this new modeling technique (approach) confirms the consolidation and extension to represent business process variability, according to the already used real-world case scenario of Bike-Sharing Systems (chapter 9).