The Deployment of an Enhanced Model-Driven Architecture for Business Process Management

Business systems these days need to be agile to address the needs of a changing world. Business modelling requires process management to be highly adaptable with the ability to support dynamic workflows, inter-application integration (potentially between businesses) and process reconfiguration. Designing in the ability to cater for evolution is critical to success. To handle change, systems need the capability to adapt as and when necessary to changes in users' requirements. Using our implementation of a self-describing system, a so-called description-driven approach, new versions of data structures or processes can be created alongside older versions providing a log of changes to the underlying data schema and enabling the gathering of traceable ("provenance") data. The CRISTAL software, which originated at CERN for handling physics data, uses versions of stored descriptions to define data and workflows which can be evolved over time and thereby to handle evolving system needs. It has been customised for use in business as the Agilium-NG product. This paper reports on how the Agilium-NG software has enabled the deployment of an unique business process management solution that can be dynamically evolved to cater for changing user requirements.