From Feature Models to Business Processes

The variability level of average-size business information systems (BIS) is highly enough for making the design of this kind of systems a complex task. There is an approach called process family engineering (PFE) that tries to ease the design of BIS using ideas from the software product lines (SPL) field. Roughly speaking, they propose to, first, study the variability of the system without entering into details by means of building a variability model (called feature model), that is used later for building the business process. However, in PFE the process of deriving the business process from the feature model is performed manually. Authors use feature models with a different meaning that is commonly accepted in SPL. In this paper, we provide a rigorous description for the new meaning of feature models, and a mapping relationship that defines how to use the information in the FM for obtaining the basic structure of the business process. In addition, as a proof of concepts, we have implemented an MDD transformation that provides the expected results.