Reuse of Semantic Business Process Patterns

Reusing business process artefacts, in business process modelling, can accelerate the design activity and improve the quality of the resulting products. Among the variety of reusable artefact types proposed during the last decade, Semantic Business Process Pattern (SB2P) offers business patterns that encapsulate knowledge and expertise in a particular domain. The reuse of a SB2P provides for the adoption of commonly used practices while offering guidance on possible variations. This paper proposes a reuse method that assists a business process designer, first, in retrieving an appropriate SB2P from a repository, and then adapting it through a set of instantiation operators to meet its specific requirements. The retrieval method relies on both semantic and behavioural information encapsulated in the SB2P. In addition, the instantiation operators ensure the derivation of a business process design that respects a set of quality metrics. The reuse method is illustrated through an example.