Title: Applying the principle of separation of concerns to business process design

Authors: Artur Caetano; António Rito Silva; José Tribolet

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal; Centre for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC-ID and INOV, Rua Alves Redol 9, 1000-029 Lisboa, Portugal. ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal; Centre for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC-ID and INOV, Rua Alves Redol 9, 1000-029 Lisboa, Portugal. ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal; Centre for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC-ID and INOV, Rua Alves Redol 9, 1000-029 Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: Functional decomposition breaks down a business process into a set of progressively more detailed activities. It facilitates the modular design of a system, the reuse of its parts and also contributes to increasing its comprehensibility. But achieving these qualities requires a business process to be decomposed consistently. Separation of concerns is the principle of separating a system into distinct features with a minimum of overlapping. This paper proposes using this principle to consistently decompose a business process into its constituent activities. An activity is modelled as a collaboration between role types that are played by entities. The decomposition method successively separates the overlapping roles until an activity is specified by the collaboration of an orthogonal set of role types. This method facilitates the consistent decomposition and design of a business process and the unambiguous identification of its atomic activities.

Keywords: role modelling; business process modelling; separation of concerns; enterprise engineering; business process design; functional decomposition; collaboration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJODE.2012.049695

International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering, 2012 Vol.2 No.3, pp.250 - 270

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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