A Knowledge-driven Business Process Analysis Canvas
This work addresses the long-standing problem of improving business process analysis for information system developers and business experts, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing strategies.
The paper tackles the critical phase of business process analysis in information system development by proposing a methodology for early involvement of business experts, resulting in a Business Process Analysis Canvas and an ontology to improve specification quality.
Business process (BP) analysis represents a first key phase of information system development. It consists in the gathering of domain knowledge and its organization to be later used in the software development, and beyond (e.g., for Business Process Reengineering). The quality of the developed information system largely depends on how the BP analysis has been carried out and the quality of the produced requirement specification documents. Despite the fact that the issue is on the table for decades, business process analysis is still a critical phase of information systems development. One promising strategy is an early and more important involvement of business experts in the BP analysis. This paper presents a methodology that aims at an early involvement of business experts while providing a formal grounding that guarantees the quality of the produced specifications. To this end, we propose the Business Process Analysis Canvas, a knowledge framework organized in eight knowledge sections aimed at supporting the business expert in carrying out the analysis, eventually yielding a BP analysis Ontology.