Research Project Application: A Universal Repository of Process Models, submitted to Vetenskapsrådet, April 15, 2008

The rapid development of the Internet during the last decade has supported enterprises in building novel infrastructures, setting up virtual organisations, and operating in larger geographical spaces. To manage this new environment, enterprises need to align their IT infrastructures to the business processes. Therefore, the interest in business process management using Process Aware Information Systems (PAIS) has been rapidly increasing. Solutions implemented in PAISs are often complex and time-consuming to develop. One way to address this problem is to utilize repositories of reusable process models. However, while repositories have proved to be successful within object-oriented and component-based development, similar success has not yet been achieved in the area of PAIS. This is because we still lack the critical mass of process models within a single repository and we lack transparency between different repositories. The main goal of this research is, therefore, to design the architecture of a universal process repository, i.e. a repository that is independent of process modelling languages, comprises a large number of existing process repositories, and is open for change and growth by any potential user. The long term goal of the research is to lay the foundations for a Business Process Management Wikipedia, which will become a universal knowledge resource on process models that can be used by researchers for empirical investigations in the business process management area.