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Collaborative method to maintain business process models updated

Castela Nuno (Center for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC INOVAÇÃO, Lisbon, Portugal + Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Technology School, Castelo Branco, Portugal)
Dias Paulo (Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, Castelo Branco, Portugal)
Zacarias Marielba (Center for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC INOVAÇÃO, Lisbon, Portugal + Research Center for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, University of Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, Faro, Portugal)
Tribolet José (Center for Organizational Design and Engineering, INESC INOVAÇÃO, Lisbon, Portugal + Dep. of Computer Science and Engineering, IST, University of Lisbon, Campus Alameda, Lisbon, Portugal)

Business process models are often forgotten after their creation and its representation is not usually updated. This appears to be negative as processes evolve over time. This paper discusses the issue of business process models maintenance through the definition of a collaborative method that creates interaction contexts enabling business actors to discuss about business processes, sharing business knowledge. The collaboration method extends the discussion about existing process representations to all stakeholders promoting their update. This collaborative method contributes to improve business process models, allowing updates based in change proposals and discussions, using a groupware tool that was developed. Four case studies were developed in real organizational environment. We came to the conclusion that the defined method and the developed tool can help organizations to maintain a business process model updated based on the inputs and consequent discussions taken by the organizational actors who participate in the processes.

Keywords: collaborative business process updating method, groupware modeling tool, shared business process models