Business process archeology using MARBLE

ContextLegacy information systems age over time. These systems cannot be thrown away because they store a significant amount of valuable business knowledge over time, and they cannot be entirely replaced at an acceptable cost. This circumstance is similar to that of the monuments of ancient civilizations, which have aged but still hold meaningful information about their civilizations. Evolutionary maintenance is the most suitable mechanism to deal with the software ageing problem since it preserves business knowledge. But first, recovering the underlying business knowledge in legacy systems is necessary in order to preserve this vital heritage.ObjectiveThis paper proposes and validates a method for recovering and rebuilding business processes from legacy information systems. This method, which can be considered a business process archeology, makes it possible to preserve the business knowledge in legacy information systems.MethodThe business process archeology method is framed in MARBLE, a generic framework based on Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM), which uses the Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM) standard. The proposed method is validated using a case study that involves a real-life legacy system. The case study is conducted following the case study protocol proposed by Brereton et al.ResultsThe study reports that the proposed method makes it possible to obtain business process models from legacy systems with adequate levels of accuracy. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed method is also validated positively.ConclusionThe proposed method semi-automatically rebuilds the hidden business processes embedded in a legacy system. Therefore, the business process archeology method quickly allows business experts to have a meaningful understanding of the organization’s business processes. This proposal is less time-consuming and more exhaustive (since it considers the embedded business knowledge) than a manual process redesign by experts from scratch. In addition, it helps maintainers to extract the business knowledge needed for the system to evolve.

► Legacy information systems are an obstacle to manage business processes since they evolve independently from business processes.
► Much business knowledge is buried into legacy information systems as a result of uncontrolled maintenance overtime.
► Business process archeology studies the business processes in an organization by analysing their existing software artifacts.
► MARBLE is a model-driven framework supporting business process archeology aimed to retrieve the embedded business knowledge.