Puzzling Aris/archimate objects mapping ?

Deleted User on April 19, 2019

Hi all,

For archimate "business function" and archimate "business process" the mapping to Aris elements is as what follows :

archimate "business function" <-> Aris Function object
archimate "business process" <-> Aris Participant object ?????

I can't figure out why this choice has been made, and any explanation is welcomed.

Let's say for example that I have a high-level view of the enterprise processes made in Archimate using Archimate Business Processes.

If I want or need to reuse these processes in an Aris Value-Added chain diagram, I can't because these archimate processes would be mapped to participants which is not allowed. (And if it were allowed, it would not make any sense anyway)

Had I used archimate business functions in the first place, I could have reused them in the value-added chain diagram (but in my archimate model I would have used business functions to represent business processes)

Would a rule of thumb be: don't share elements of Aris native models with Archimate models and vice-versa? ( at least for the business layer)

Regards

Michel

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M. Zschuckelt on April 23, 2019

Hello Michel,

I'll try an explanation. A Participant is an object type defined in BPMN. A Pool in BPMN Collaboration represents a Participant object and is used to represent an internal or external process (taking part in the collaboration). Since external processes usually are not modelled, the external process kind of mutates to an external role (e.g. "Customer"). Hence the "Participant" of BPMN is kind of "hybrid" in nature. This also leads to a misconception in Appendix D.2 of the Archimate specification:

"(...) BPMN has a more fine-grained set of elements, with various types of events, tasks, and gateways. Its metamodel also distinguishes explicitly between process and sub-process (although it lacks a graphical representation of a business process itself). The BPMN concept of participant (or pool) and the ArchiMate concepts of business role or business actor (or application component for automated processes) also correspond."

I would disagree with this "correspondence". The graphical representation of the "business process itself" is the Pool representing the Participant object. Rather BPMN does not have a graphical representation of "business role" or "business actor". Most people use Lanes for that purpose, but that is not prescribed by the BPMN standard.

So if you want to do your high-level landscape in Archimate and link it with BPMN collaborations you can easily do that by creating occurrences of your Archimate business processes as Pools in BPMN collaboration diagrams.

The mapping of Archimate "business function" to the ARIS "function" object is also a bit ambivalent. The Archimate standard describes a "potential many-to-many relation" between business function and business process. If you decided to do that, "Capability" (ARIS) would have been the proper mapping for the Archimate business function. In ARIS a function is the meeting point of business resources (roles, skills, IT-systems, knowledge) in the context of a specific business process (hence with the goal of producing a defined internal or external service or product). If you leave out the business process context and want to reuse functionality (roles, skills...) in EPC we would be using the "capability" as the re-usable functionality "supporting" a process step (of type "function").

Since Archimate wants to define business functionality at a higher level of abstraction this is not so much of a problem. When you are thinking of Value-added chain diagrams what you represent there tends to be at a granularity that you easily want to play with also in terms of re-use. It would be the "processes behind" that would have to deal with their (re-)usage scenarios in End-2-End process chains.

However you may argue that the Archimate definition of the business function

"A business function is a collection of business behavior based on a chosen set of criteria (typically required business resources and/or competencies), closely aligned to an organization, but not necessarily explicitly governed by the organization."

does not properly match the usual usage of "function" in EPC, but rather the capability. On the other hand the "chosen set of criteria" is not prescriptive.

Regards, M. Zschuckelt

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RD

Roy de Vries on April 23, 2019

Hi Michael,

We had the same question, especially for a migration from archimate 2.1 to 3. We never had a clear answer from SoftwareAG and ended with a system wide change to a function. Mainly to enable re-use objects from the repository over disciplines as process modeling and architecture.

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M. Zschuckelt on April 23, 2019

Best reply

Hello Michel,

I'll try an explanation. A Participant is an object type defined in BPMN. A Pool in BPMN Collaboration represents a Participant object and is used to represent an internal or external process (taking part in the collaboration). Since external processes usually are not modelled, the external process kind of mutates to an external role (e.g. "Customer"). Hence the "Participant" of BPMN is kind of "hybrid" in nature. This also leads to a misconception in Appendix D.2 of the Archimate specification:

"(...) BPMN has a more fine-grained set of elements, with various types of events, tasks, and gateways. Its metamodel also distinguishes explicitly between process and sub-process (although it lacks a graphical representation of a business process itself). The BPMN concept of participant (or pool) and the ArchiMate concepts of business role or business actor (or application component for automated processes) also correspond."

I would disagree with this "correspondence". The graphical representation of the "business process itself" is the Pool representing the Participant object. Rather BPMN does not have a graphical representation of "business role" or "business actor". Most people use Lanes for that purpose, but that is not prescribed by the BPMN standard.

So if you want to do your high-level landscape in Archimate and link it with BPMN collaborations you can easily do that by creating occurrences of your Archimate business processes as Pools in BPMN collaboration diagrams.

The mapping of Archimate "business function" to the ARIS "function" object is also a bit ambivalent. The Archimate standard describes a "potential many-to-many relation" between business function and business process. If you decided to do that, "Capability" (ARIS) would have been the proper mapping for the Archimate business function. In ARIS a function is the meeting point of business resources (roles, skills, IT-systems, knowledge) in the context of a specific business process (hence with the goal of producing a defined internal or external service or product). If you leave out the business process context and want to reuse functionality (roles, skills...) in EPC we would be using the "capability" as the re-usable functionality "supporting" a process step (of type "function").

Since Archimate wants to define business functionality at a higher level of abstraction this is not so much of a problem. When you are thinking of Value-added chain diagrams what you represent there tends to be at a granularity that you easily want to play with also in terms of re-use. It would be the "processes behind" that would have to deal with their (re-)usage scenarios in End-2-End process chains.

However you may argue that the Archimate definition of the business function

"A business function is a collection of business behavior based on a chosen set of criteria (typically required business resources and/or competencies), closely aligned to an organization, but not necessarily explicitly governed by the organization."

does not properly match the usual usage of "function" in EPC, but rather the capability. On the other hand the "chosen set of criteria" is not prescriptive.

Regards, M. Zschuckelt

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AC

Deleted User Author on April 23, 2019

Thanks M. Zschuckelt,

well that's a lot to mull over. I'll think about it and get back to you here !

Regards,

M

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