Can We Engineer Better Process Models?

This paper proposes an engineering design view of process modelling that helps address the high complexity and low flexibility of many process models. In this view, processes are understood as artefacts that need to be designed, realised and adapted throughout their life cycle. The paper argues that the issues of complexity and flexibility arise as symptoms of the more fundamental problem of “delineation”. This problem describes the difficulty of identifying and specifying the relationships between the various models that describe the engineering view of processes: artefact models, realisation models, and adaptation. Finally, the paper shows that the notion of design features from engineering design, represented using the function-behaviour-structure (FBS) ontology, can provide the basis for addressing the delineation problem and substantially improving process models.