Research Challenges for Business Process Models at Run-Time

Today’s fast and competitive markets require businesses to react faster to changes in its environment, and sometimes even before the changes actually happen. Changes can occur on almost every level, e.g. change in demand of customers, change of law, or change of the corporate strategy. Not adapting to these changes can result in financial and legal consequences for any business organisation. IT-controlled business processes are essential parts of modern organisations which motivates why business processes are required to efficiently adapt to these changes in a quick and flexible way. This requirement suggests a more dynamic handling of business processes and their models, moving from design-time business process models to run-time business process models. One general approach to address this problem is provided by the community of models@run.time, in which models reflect the system’s current state at any point in time and allow immediate reasoning and adaptation mechanisms. This paper examines the potential role of business process models at run-time by: (1) discussing the state-of the art of both, business process modelling and models@run.time, (2) reflecting on the nature of business processes at run-time, and (3) most importantly, highlighting key research challenges that need addressing to make this step.