freebpmnquality — A Service to Check BPMN Diagrams and Find Modeling Mistakes
About
This is a free, client-side tool for evaluation of BPMN business process model quality and correctness. This tool helps to check BPMN diagrams and find modeling mistakes.
Homepage: https://freebpmnquality.github.io/
Solutions
Capabilities
- Our solution is compatible with the de-facto standard of business process modeling — BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation).
- It can detect various modeling faults and poor design solutions, and highlight them on a model diagram, so users do not need to find which exactly element causes troubles.
- Highlighted weak spots are interactive — users may hover them and the detailed enough explanation what is wrong with this element is provided.
- It is accessible and easy-to-use for all non-technical users involved into the business process modeling activity.
Motivation
Business process modeling helps organizations to represent scenarios of their activities in a graphical way in order to find possible drawbacks, identify potential improvements, or just instruct employees with detailed descriptions of workflows they should follow.
Business process modeling requires certain training, but even experienced analysts that know literally everything about workflows under description may commit some mistakes: models could be redundant and workflow paths could be inconsistent, which leads to poor quality models that are not understandable enough and barely modifiable.
Business process models of high quality are expected to be deployed and executed without errors that may lead to extra expenses and delays.
Idea
The idea of this service has grown from the PhD project of Andrii Kopp supervised by Dmytro Orlovskyi. After the dissertation was finished and defended, focus has shifted from theoretical issues to practical implementation.
According to our idea:
- This software could be developed as the web-service with the user-friendly interface and API for its integration with business process modeling and automation systems.
- The basic features should be free-to-use, so customers get interested and involved by trying these features.
- Advanced features, such as integration API, detailed model analysis, configurable validation rules, improvement suggestion, auto-correction of typical modeling mistakes or “typos”, repository of assessed BPMN models, and some others could be provided after subscription or one time purchase.
Research
Investigation on business process model quality analysis, estimation, and improvement. First results were published in CEUR-WS Proceedings of ICTERI 2019 PhD Symposium. Refined research paper on this topic were published in Springer CCIS Volume. Research is still in progress, however certain novel results have been already obtained.
In future we are planning to came up with:
- Advanced models and methods for detailed business process model analysis, configurable validation rules, and improvement suggestion.
- Intelligent algorithms for auto-correction of typical modeling mistakes or “typos”.
- Semantic repository of assessed BPMN models powered by AI & ML models and methods.
- Knowledge extraction algorithms and methods for advanced BPMN model querying.
Roadmap
PoC (done) The solution is compatible with the de-facto standard of business process modeling — BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation). Accessible and easy-to-use for all non-technical users involved in the business process modeling activity. Can detect various modeling faults and poor design solutions, and highlight them on a model diagram, so users do not need to find which exactly element causes troubles. Highlighted weak spots are interactive — users may hover them and a detailed enough explanation of what is wrong with this element is provided.
MVP (in progress) Personal user workspace available after sign up. BPMN models storage/repository with advanced querying features. Advanced BPMN model assessment features, such as configurable validation rules, improvement suggestions, and auto-correction of modeling “typos”. API for integration with major business process modeling and automation software.
Ready Product (planned) DevOps-like pipeline for business process models with continuous quality assurance and deployment in a platform repository. Corporate user accounts with multiple roles and privileges. Integration with version control and bug-tracking systems. Business process model quality management ecosystem.
Contacts
