Extracting business logic from business process models

Business rules and business process management (BPM) are increasingly considered as complements towards the quest of better business process insight and control by researchers and practitioners. The important role of business rules in BPM is now widely accepted among application software producers, researchers and business process managers. This development resulted in extensive process maps created by many enterprises. Increasingly needed tool support for business rules management and modeling became a relevant element at the market of business application software. Although systems and organizational units involved in the business process were captured in process diagrams, business rules that govern them were often not explicitly included in the models. This paper suggests an extraction process for business rules identification from business process models. Applying this process introduces a structured approach and management aspects within rules discovery by focusing on rule sources that are important for the process goal and providing a rule structure.