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Chapter 2
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4891-2.ch002
ABSTRACT
Process fexibility has been investigated for intra-organizational processes, but it is still an open issue
for collaborative processes (CP), each of which is defned as a set of intra-organizational processes that
interact together. In the literature, the version-based approach is largely used in the feld of business
process management (BPM) to cope with process fexibility. However, BPM practitioners can face dif-
fculties in a multi-version environment. So, the following questions arise: How can we use the version-
based approach to easily model fexible CP? Does an appropriate version exist for a given situation
or is it necessary to create a new one? The chapter answers these questions recommending a solution
for the modeling of CP versions and the retrieval of the adequate CP version for a given situation. This
solution comprises (1) a meta-model to consider the modeling of the CP versions, (2) an ontology-based
approach to model and query the context of use of CP versions, and (3) a framework to provide support
for both the modeling of CP versions and the context querying.
A Version and Context-Based
Approach to Easily Model
Flexible Collaborative Processes
Fatma Ellouze
Faculty of Economics and Management of Sfax, Tunisia
Mohamed Amine Chaabane
Higher Institute of Business Administration, Tunisia
Eric Andonoff
University of Toulouse 1, France
Rafik Bouaziz
Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax, Tunisia