Business process modelling often requires people with little experience of
system modelling methods to model their business problems. Modelling methods
have been invented which, although different in motivation and presentation to
traditional system modelling languages, employ precise notations and have their
own notions of design lifecycles. These methods employ a mixture of informal
and precise information. It is interesting to see how much of such methods
can usefully be represented in a formal way and what return we can expect from
doign this. As an example, we chose IBM's Business System Development
Method (BSDM) - a paper-based method which is extensively documented through
a series of manuals.
We have developed a prototype tool which supports the design of different
stages of BSDM model (including entity models and process models). By
formalising parts of each stage in design we are able to perform many of the
consistency checks and guidelines described in the BSDM manual. We are also
able to give recommendations on adherence to standard practice based on
previous experience, via a case-based reasoning method applied to a library of
previous models. Finally, we can assist in the construction of executable
simulations of processes - something which was outside the scope of the
original (paper baseD) BSDM method.
