Unraveling the Never-Ending Story of Lifecycles and Vitalizing Processes
Stephan A. Fahrenkrog-Petersen, Saimir Bala, Luise Pufahl, Jan Mendling
TL;DR
The paper identifies a gap in business process management (BPM) by addressing lifecycle processes that center on a focal entity and are driven by vitalizing processes, rather than a defined end state. It presents a conceptual model with type- and instance-level components to connect lifecycle dynamics with interventions, and it derives a concrete set of analysis requirements to support these processes. By surveying related BPM techniques and neighboring fields (time-series, social sequence analysis, mortality analysis), it maps what is currently supported and where gaps remain, outlining a path toward integrated lifecycle analytics. The work lays foundational groundwork for new modeling and analysis techniques, enabling lifecycle-aware BPM across domains such as healthcare, agriculture, and software development, and calls for data collection to validate and extend these concepts.
Abstract
Business process management (BPM) has been widely used to discover, model, analyze, and optimize organizational processes. BPM looks at these processes with analysis techniques that assume a clearly defined start and end. However, not all processes adhere to this logic, with the consequence that their behavior cannot be appropriately captured by BPM analysis techniques. This paper addresses this research problem at a conceptual level. More specifically, we introduce the notion of vitalizing business processes that target the lifecycle process of one or more entities. We show the existence of lifecycle processes in many industries and that their appropriate conceptualizations pave the way for the definition of suitable modeling and analysis techniques. This paper provides a set of requirements for their analysis, and a conceptualization of lifecycle and vitalizing processes.