Design of Decision Service Using Cause-and-Effect Business Process Analysis

Business processes are executed according to a specific business logic that can be formulated as business rules. Often decisions are taken during the course of the process to fulfill conditions or exceptions leading to process variations. These decisions are meant to support business process operations and are composed of a set of business rules, additionally being based on a solid process relevant knowledge and know-how. These processes are here referred to as decision knowledge intensive processes. In this paper the question of how business rules and consequently operational decisions can be derived from the business process model is addressed. The therefore necessary business process analysis and decision identification are performed using the cause-and-effect approach. Service-oriented implementation of the found decisions is suggested and outlined.