Article,
Amoeba: A Methodology for Requirements Modeling and Evolution of Cross-Organizational Business Processes
Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, (2008)submitted.
Abstract
Business service engagements involve processes that extend across two or more autonomous organizations. Because of regulatory and competitive reasons, requirements for business processes
often evolve in subtle ways. The changes may concern the business transactions supported by a
business process, the organizational structure of parties participating in the process, or the con-
textual policies that apply to the process. Current business process modeling approaches handle
such changes in an ad hoc manner, and lack a principled means of determining what needs to
be changed and where. Cross-organizational settings exacerbate the shortcomings of traditional
approaches because changes in one organization can affect the workings of another.
This paper describes Amoeba, a methodology for business processes that is based on business
protocols. Protocols capture the business meaning of interactions among autonomous parties via
commitments. Amoeba proposes guidelines for (1) specifying cross-organizational processes using
business protocols, and (2) handling evolution of requirements via a novel application of protocol
composition. This paper evaluates Amoeba using enhancements of a real-life business scenario of
auto-insurance claim processing.
