State-Oriented Business Process Modeling: Principles, Theory and Practice

One more book on business processes! Why? This book gives you a view on the subject that substantially differs from the views typical for other books. Instead of defining the concept of process from the business perspective, it adopts the definition already existing in other disciplines and applies it to business. More exactly, it uses the conceptual ideas from the mathematical system theory that deals with modeling and controlling physical processes. A characteristic feature of the approach is that a business process is viewed as a trajectory in a state-space rather than a sequence of activities. This view requires reconsidering all issues essential for the business process domain, including languages and methods for business process modeling, and building process support systems. The book summarizes the author's research and practical experience of working with these issues. It is of interest for researchers and practitioners already working in the domain, as well as for other professionals, especially with engineering background, who want to be introduced in the domain of business processes (no prior knowledge on business processes or mathematical system theory is required).