The REMIS Approach to Rationale-based Support for Process Model Evolution (PhD Theses in Experimental Software Engineering)

Changing process models in an organization is typically a complex and expensive task. In many cases, due to budget and time constraints, arbitrary decisions are made, and process models are evolved without storing or keeping track of the justification behind such changes. This frequently results in inconsistencies or ambiguity being introduced into the process models. This thesis work responds to the need for systematically performing changes to a process model by contributing an approach for rationale support of process model evolution called 'REMIS'. REMIS guides process engineers in the tasks of capturing the reasoning (i.e., rationale) behind such changes and analyzing the evolution. The main contribution of REMIS to current research in the field of process model evolution consists of transferring and adapting design rationale concepts in order to support systematic process model evolution. Observations made during the case studies revealed that attaching the rationale and change information directly to each of the process model entities, and storing it in such a way that it can be maintained and analyzed, makes the evolving activity easier for process engineers. The results of a formal experiment show that subjects who evolved process models with the support of rationale needed significantly less time - on average 22 per cent less - than those subjects who did not use it.