Comparative Analysis between Document-based and Model-based Compliance Management Approaches

Compliance of an organization´s business processes with legislation is difficult to assess, and even more so as laws and processes evolve. Using seven criteria, we evaluate five different approaches for documenting and managing such compliance that involve models and/or legal documents, with or without tool support for traceability. It is argued that a mixed approach that combines models and original documents, with tool support, offers the best trade-off. We also discuss an example of such an approach based on the user requirements notation and a commercial requirements management system.