A. Persson and J. Stirna (Eds.): PoEM 2009, LNBIP 39, pp. 115–129, 2009. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2009 A Combined Framework for Development of Business Process Support Systems Shang Gao and John Krogstie Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway shanggao@idi.ntnu.no, krogstie@idi.ntnu.no Abstract. In this paper, a combined modeling framework consisting of goal modeling, process modeling and business process characterizing modeling is presented. The framework is made to guide both business experts and model developers during the life cycle of a modeling-based project development. We consider a business process characterizing model (BPCM) as a starting point for developing an IT system. Then, the start of goal models and process models can be derived from a BPCM model. Process models are then used as inputs for de- riving a candidate IT system. A development methodology to guide the devel- opment of process models from business process characterizing model is proposed. Furthermore, the development methodology is illustrated by an exemplar in the field of scientific conference organization. Keywords: Business Process Characterizing Model, Process Modeling. 1 Introduction Information system development often starts with development of process models. However, being focused on processes from the start might be premature. The process model tends to primarily focus on process-oriented aspect, and might not address some business requirements properly. Some industry projects and case studies [19], indicates that process models are not a good starting point for identifying stakeholder requirements. Many business people want to start a modeling-based project with the development of a business oriented model addressing essential business aspects (i.e. what are the essential requirements of the project, what is offered by whom to whom etc), rather than look at a relative complicated business process model showing how things are executed operationally. Furthermore, when using for instance BPMN [46] the process model might too quickly turn into a diagrammatic representation of the executable solution with implementation attributes added because of technical consid- erations, which is quite difficult for business experts to understand. As illustrated in [14], one of the main ways of utilizing models is to describe some essential information of a business case as informal support in order to facilitate communication among stakeholders. In [15], by taking inspiration from this idea, we proposed a business process characterizing model (BPCM), which can be seen as an important early, business-oriented model in a modeling-based project. BPCM aims to provide an enhanced ability to understand and communicate business processes to all