Non-functional requirements in business process modeling

Abstract

Business process modeling entails the capture of a set of tasks that invariably model the functional behavior of a system. Another aspect of business process modeling involves the accurate capture of operational behavior and the associated process constraints. Whether the process is automated or manual, such operational constraints and behavior exist. This may include a variety of properties including performance expectations, policy constraints, and security controls. These characteristics later manifest as the non-functional requirements of an intended system, and often such information is generally identified at some point after the business process modeling exercise. The non-functional characteristics of the business are arguably more difficult to capture in business process modeling, since the focus of such methods is the modeling of functional behavior. We propose how two new artifacts may be applied to model the constraints associated with a business process. This is the operating condition to denote a business process constraint and the control case to define controlling criteria to mitigate risk associated with an operational condition. Modeling constraints in this way provides an opportunity to capture these characteristics of business process early in the systems development life-cycle. This contributes to a model that provides a more complete representation of the overall business process. The methods will assist in mitigating risk and facilitate the early discovery of non-functional requirements during systems development. Copyright © 2008, Australian Computer Society, Inc.