Prelims of Kant get Marx 2.0: a general politics quiz
Analyzing critical decision based processes
1. ANALYZING CRITICAL DECISION-BASED PROCESSES
Abstract
Decision-based processes are composed of tasks whose application may depend on
explicit decisions relying on the state of the process environment. In specific domains such as
healthcare, decision-based processes are often complex and critical in terms of timing and
resources. The paper presents a variety of tool-supported techniques for analyzing models of
such processes. The analyses allow a variety of errors to be detected early and incrementally on
partial models, notably: inadequate decisions resulting from inaccurate or outdated information
about the environment state; incomplete decisions; non-deterministic task selections;
unreachable tasks along process paths; and violations of non- functional process requirements
involving time, resources or costs. The proposed techniques are based on different instantiations
of the same generic algorithm that propagates decorations iteratively through the process model.
This algorithm in particular allows event-based models to be automatically decorated with state-based
invariants. A formal language supporting both event-based and state-based specifications
is introduced as a process modeling language to enable such analyses. This language mimics the
informal flowcharts commonly used by process stakeholders. It extends High-Level Message
Sequence Charts with guards on task-related and environment-related variables. The language
provides constructs for specifying task compositions, task refinements, decision trees, multi-agent
communication scenarios, and time and resource constraints. The proposed techniques are
demonstrated on the incremental building and analysis of a complex model of a rea l protocol for
cancer therapy.