Abstracting BPMN models

The growing orientation in processes of contemporary information systems and service-oriented architectures has led to the existence of large repositories of complex process models that even though they are a great source of knowledge, they are managed with difficulties. Abstraction is a means to reduce the size and complexity of such models. The aim of this short paper is to present a set of abstraction rules that may be used to simplify complex BPMN process models while focusing on important process model elements (abstraction objects), such as activities, data etc. The abstraction rules are applied to real world process models.