Goal-driven analysis of process model validity

Business process modeling and design, which has attracted much attention in recent years, emphasizes mainly graphical representation, usually without an underlying theory. The lack of a theoretical foundation causes several important issues to remain intuition- rather than theory -based. In particular, many process-modeling methods, being semi-formal, lack a mechanism for verifying the "correctness" of a process in terms of completeness, consistency, and feasibility. The paper proposes a generic theory-based process modeling (GPM) framework and criteria for validity evaluation of process models. The framework, which is based on Bunge's ontology, is formal and notation-independent. Validity is defined as the possibility of the process to achieve its goal. The paper discusses and characterizes causes for process invalidity and suggests ways to avoid these situations. The concepts of the framework and their usefulness for evaluating the validity of process models are demonstrated by applying them to a process taken from the Supply-Chain Operations Reference-model (SCOR).