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ARIS flexibility and limitations

In this chapter we show ARIS capabilities to fulfil Enterprise BPM conception and well also mention some limitations. ARIS in requirement gathering In general business processes itself can be the documentation of requirements, especially if we capture a solid amount of artefacts like roles, data, systems, services, business rules, KPIs and more. We can also link documents outside of ARIS to a specific object which can be useful in certain cases, but theres a relative new object type in ARIS IT Architect: the Requirement. With this object ARIS can be an integrated part of requirement gathering and models can be used to generate the requirement document itself. With this we get a widely useable doc format and a searchable ARIS metadata format as well. Cost effective usage with ARIS Express At subsidiaries with initiative period of project modellers can use ARIS Express. Its free of charge and models can be imported to enterprise global database at the end. Its useful also for training and presentation solution variants for a small group at subsidiaries. It can be a good solution in case there is no direct connection with enterprise ARIS database at subsidiaries or at a specific department.

Usage of variants Creating variants are general in case of being Enterprise Standard Workflows and localised versions of them. The main benefit of usage variants is the built-in comparison capability. In general its a useful way of handling local differences but, there are some limitations: Under the hood ARIS can create a definition and occurrence copies also from the objects in the master process. It can be adjusted in detail but once a definition copy has been created from an object the object in master and in variants become totally different. The process of creating variants should be in control of a well experienced ARIS expert to avoid unintended incidents. In case of using definition copies of some objects and the separation of the the master and the variants processes are not proper it can happen, that an inexperienced modeller unwittingly use the wrong object in modelling. In some cases the master process also could change. In that case the maintenance of existing variants can be a big issue. If its possible the best way to delete all the existing variants and create variants from the new master, and depict the local differences in the newly created variant. For perfect usage of variant copies in localisation modellers there has to be a deeper understanding of ARIS storage and possibilities of the maintenance. (Further lifetime of variants). At subsidiaries (especially at MT) ARIS modellers used ARIS only for visualisation of processes, like in Visio. As we think for optimal results, solid training sessions are necessary at subsidiaries.

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some advanced possibilities: With a master as-is process concept the variants gives possibilities to analyse multiple to-be scenarios. Variants can be merged across databases as well, which really can be useful in case of using different databases for the subsidiaries. A variant can be modified in one database and after it is merged back to the original database, the relationships will stay in place.

and some recommendations: A proper prefix methodology can help to identify models immediately e. g. M_ for masters and V_ for variants and so on. All library objects should be occurrence copies to avoid replacement of the originales in case of a back-merge. Events should be a definition copies, and functions should be occurrence copies in first. If a function really differs it can be replaced with a definition copy. If we want to use simulations with the master and variants model as its better to use definition copies of functions as well. Always create model variants with wizard rather than simply easy copy and paste. In the wizard you can select properly which objects do you want to copy as definition and which as occurrence.