Impact Analysis for Supporting the Co-Evolution of Business Processes and Supporting Software Systems Thierry Bodhuin, Raffaele Esposito, Cristina Pacelli and Maria Tortorella RCOST - Research Centre On Software Technology, Department of Engineering, University of Sannio Via Traiano, Palazzo ex-Poste 82100 Benevento, Italy {bodhuin, r.esposito, pacelli,tortorella}@unisannio.it Abstract. The co-evolution of business processes and supporting software systems is needed for keeping them aligned and it requires managerial and technological effort for adequately planning it. In fact, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software systems may impact the process activities in terms of input/output and/or purpose of the software system and, therefore, cause misalignment. A coarse grained strategy is proposed for detecting misalignment between business processes and supporting software systems when changes are executed, and for identifying which objects should be considered by additional change for restoring the alignment. The strategy proposes the exploitation of quality parameters, for codifying the alignment concept, and impact analysis techniques, for propagating the change and identifying all the process objects impacted by the change and requiring new interventions. 1 Introduction Fast changes of business requirements are forcing enterprises to innovate their business processes [8, 9] as well as their supporting software systems, incorporating new requirements implementation. The evolution activities should take in consideration the alignment between the business processes and their support instrumentation (BPMDS 2003). Nevertheless, modifications in the operational context can cause misalignments between business processes and supporting software systems. They can be due to either technological and/or management innovations or unchecked change in the way the activities are executed or the supporting software systems are exploited. Unfortunately, a modification may regard not only the considered object but it can impact also other objects having a dependence relation with the modified one. Misalignment must be detected and alignment actions must be acted. The alignment can consist of modification interventions that can involve one or more objects of the analyzed business process, which are mainly activities and components of the supporting software systems. Therefore, a modification of an object may impact other objects. Such impacts may be detected and change may be planned on