The idea of this thesis is to develop a concrete syntax (i.e., notation) for the Business Process Architecture Language (BPAL) we are currently developing. The development is a joint effort of UGentMIS (Prof. Geert Poels) and the ALARCOS research group of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Prof. Francisco Ruiz, Prof. Felix Garcia, Prof. Mario Piattini).

A good starting point for the research is a recent paper co-authored by Geert Poels, as an output of a joint research project with the ALARCOS research group of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Ciudad Real, Spain). You can download the paper here: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8625249

BPAL is a modelling language that can be used to describe the ‘system’ of business processes in an organisation. Contrary to BPMN, it does not focus on a single process, but on the interplay of different work processes and on their role within the organisation’s enterprise architecture. After having developed a conceptualisation (i.e., ontology) and meta-model for business process architecture, the current research focuses on modelling and analysis techniques. A modelling language with an intuitive, but well-defined notation is an important component of such techniques.

The thesis research involves

  1. Study of business process architecture, modelling language design, and the research on BPAL to determine the language requirements;
  2. Design of alternative concrete syntaxes (i.e., notations) for BPAL;
  3. Experimentation to determine the best alternative;
  4. Evaluation of the language requirements.

The research might require some collaboration with researchers/students from ALARCOS, in particular with respect to activities 2 and 3.