A study on the mapping guideline of IDEF for UMM adaptation

As various methodologies for business process analysis and design have been conducted in many organizations by their own ways, those methodologies are not compatible with each other. In order to reduce the cost of analysis for organizations, some mapping methods between different methodologies need to be developed. UMM(UN/CEFACT Modeling Methodology) that has an object-oriented point of view, can overcome the limits of existing bottom-up approaches and make it reasonable. It also simplifies the business and administrative procedures. IDEF (Integrated Definition Language) with a structural point of view that has been widely used as a system analysis and design method, needs to be mapped to UMM in order to reuse the existing IDEF models. In this study, we propose a guideline that deals with procedures of utilizing IDEF models from which we want to derive the UMM models for developing an electronic commerce system including electronic documents exchange. By comparing IDEF and UMM, we analyze the differences between those two methodologies. Based on these differences, we suggest the basic strategies for mapping method from IDEF to UMM. We also propose a mapping guideline that can make UMM results from the modeling results of IDEF. We can take advantage of the existing IDEF analysis/design results when we adopt UMM methodology for electronic business system. Many analysts who are familiar with the IDEF methodology can develop UMM work-flow by utilizing their existing results and skills.