Towards a Meta Model for Business Process Concepts

Information systems involved in automating parts of a business process need to be process-aware, in order to become an integral part of it. Before automation is achieved, the part of the business process to be automated needs to be made explicit and then operationalized. Business process models could be used to make the process explicit. Domain standards could be used to make it operational. However, there is no approach available to evaluate to what extent both the chosen modelling technique and standard are able to cover the actual requirements of the business process. A meta model for business process concepts can help for such an evaluation. Although there have been attempts to identify business process concepts and to create a meta model of business process concepts, the current studies do not include an explicit approach on how to identify these concepts. Further, how to construct such a meta model and how to include new elements to it remains implicit. This paper presents an approach on how to construct a meta model for business process concepts. The approach defines how to capture and define business process concepts, how to construct a meta model using these concepts and how to extend the meta model. The paper also illustrates how to apply the approach. The actual construction of the meta model for business process concepts is a subject of further research.