Business Process Management (Part-2 Business Process Modelling[Chapter V Process Choreographies ] ) Sec C -- By Mathias Weske

Process Choreography Design

The design of process choreographies involves a series of activities. In each
of these activities, artefacts are developed. These activities are described as
follows:
1. High-level Structure Design: In high-level choreography design, the participant
roles as well as their communication structures are identified. High level structure design is conducted during the Participant identification
phase.
2. High-level Behavioural Design: High-level behavioural models specify the
milestones of the collaboration and the order in which the milestones
are reached. High-level behavioural design is done during the milestone
definition phase.
3. Collaboration Scenarios: High-level choreographies are refined by introducing
dedicated collaboration scenarios that relate the reaching of milestones
to the communication between process participants. Collaboration
scenarios are developed during the choreography definition phase, based
on the scenarios informally specified during scenario modelling.
4. Behavioural Interfaces: From these collaboration scenarios, for each participant
role, a behavioural interface is derived.

High-Level Design

High-level process choreography design involves structure design and behaviour
design. In high-level structure design, participant roles of the choreography
are defined, as part of the participant identification phase. Figure 5.5
shows a high-level structure diagram for participants involved in a bidding
scenario. This diagram identifies a seller, an auctioning service, and multiple
bidders as participants. It also shows that these participants are pairwise interconnected.
Therefore, any participant can interact directly with any other.
High-level behaviour design uses milestones that are achieved during the
collaboration; it is therefore part of the milestone definition phase. Each milestone
represents a state in the overall collaboration that has a business meaning,
represented by some business value. Milestones correspond to subgoals
reached during the collaboration on the way to reaching its ultimate goal.
For instance, the ultimate goal in the bidding scenario is that the offered
goods are sold, paid for, and delivered to the bidder with the highest bid. Several
intermediate steps can be distinguished: the initial setup of the auction,
the entry of potential bidders into the auction, the actual bidding process,
and the delivery and payment.
Each milestone can be identified by an expression that describes the state
reached in that milestone. The milestones of (a part of) the bidding scenario
are depicted in Figure 5.6, where expressions like Auction is set up and
Bidding phase is over are used. These expressions indicate states during the
collaboration that have a business meaning.
In that figure, milestones are defined by circles, where the initial milestone
has a single border, the intermediate milestones have double borders, and the
ultimate goal milestone has a bold border. This notation follows the BPMN,
where start events, intermediate events, and end events are drawn in the same
manner. Mapping milestones to events is valid, because reaching a milestone
effectively realizes an event. For instance, the completion of the bidding phase
can be represented by an event Bidding phase is over.
Milestones have dependencies with respect to other milestones. For instance,
the auction has to be set up before the bidding process can be finished.
During the bidding scenario, first the auction is set up, defining the
first milestone, Auction is set up. The next milestone, Bidding phase is over, is
reached when the bidding phase completes. Then there is an and split gateway,
so that the next milestones Goods are delivered and Payment is completed,
can be reached concurrently. If both milestones are reached, the auction can
complete, reaching the final milestone, Auction has finished successfully.
It might also happen that a milestone is not reached in a certain conversation.
This situation occurs in the bidding scenario, for instance, if no single
bid is placed during the auction. In this case, delivery and payment cannot
occur, and the conversation ends without the final goal being reached. This
negative outcome can be modelled by introducing new milestones, reflecting
the positive and negative outcome of the bidding phase, respectively.