Variability mechanisms in e-business process families

Abstract

Nowadays, process oriented software systems, like many business information systems, don't exist only in one single version, but in many variants for better coverage of the target market. Until now, the corresponding customization has to be done manually, which is a timeconsuming and error-prone task, which could be realized much more efficiently by applying process family engineering techniques. Process family engineering is a modern software development approach, which allows for the rapid and cost-effective development and deployment of customer tailored process oriented systems. In this paper we present our findings in the area of process family architectures for e-business systems, described as variant-rich process models in the Business Process Modeling Notation. We moreover address variability implementation issues using Java variability mechanisms and code generators.