The Process-Rule Continuum - Can BPMN & SBVR Cope with the Challenge?

With increasing needs for business agility and cost pressures on IT, Business Process Management (BPM) is asked to move towards "Dynamic BPM" and "Intelligent Case Management" instead of freezing process flows in hard to change IT solutions. Although business rules are considered an important ingredient of dynamic BPM solutions, only little is understood about the interplay of business processes and business rules. We report on the results of a case study in the area of electronic billing where we explored the interplay between business processes and business rules based on a set of scenarios for the so-called process-rule continuum proposed by Gartner. We critically review these scenarios and argue that they can be reduced to 4 key patterns of rule usage. We review the BPMN and SBVR standards to which extent they support these 4 key patterns and identify critical gaps that should be addressed by future standardization efforts.

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