Compliance by design for artifact-centric business processes

Compliance to legal regulations, internal policies, or best practices is becoming a more and more important aspect in business processes management. Compliance requirements are usually formulated in a set of rules that can be checked during or after the execution of the business process, called compliance by detection. If noncompliant behavior is detected, the business process needs to be redesigned. Alternatively, the rules can be already taken into account while modeling the business process to result in a business process that is compliant by design. This technique has the advantage that a subsequent verification of compliance is not required.     

How collaborative technology supports cognitive processes in collaborative process modeling: A capabilities-gains-outcome model

We examine which capabilities technologies provide to support collaborative process modeling. We develop a model that explains how technology capabilities impact cognitive group processes, and how they lead to improved modeling outcomes and positive technology beliefs. We test this model through a free simulation experiment of collaborative process modelers structured around a set of modeling tasks. With our study, we provide an understanding of the process of collaborative process modeling, and detail implications for research and guidelines for the practical design of collaborative process modeling.     

A view framework for modeling and change validation of artifact-centric inter-organizational business processes

Over the past several years, more efficient approaches have been on increasing demands for designing, modeling, and implementing inter-organizational business processes. In the process collaboration across organizational boundaries, organizations still stay autonomic, which means each organization can freely modify its internal operations to meet its private goals while satisfying the mutual objectives with its partners. Recently, artifact-centric process modeling has been evidenced with higher flexibility in process modeling and execution than traditional activity-centric modeling methods. Although some efforts have been put to exploring how artifact-centric modeling facilitates the collaboration between organizations, the achievement is still far from satisfaction level, particularly in aspects of process modeling and validating. To fill in the gaps, we propose a view framework for modeling and validating the changes of inter-organizational business processes. The framework consists of an artifact-centric process meta-model, public view constructing mechanism, and private view and change validating mechanisms, which are specially designed to facilitate the participating organizations to customize their internal operations while ensuring the correctness of the collaborating processes. We also implement a software tool named Artifact-M to help organizations to automatically construct a minimal and consistent public view from their processes.     

Selection,ranking and composition of semantically enriched business processes

In Service Oriented Architectures a Business Process can be composed of several subprocesses, often exposed as platform-independent and autonomously implemented Web services. In this paper, we propose a methodological framework to support the selection, ranking and composition of semantically annotated subprocesses coming from distinct Business Process Repositories according to advanced semantics-enabled techniques.     

Introducing decision-aware business processes

Business processes are designed to smoothly operate under multiple contexts (or business situations). Each context technically implies taking a different course of action. Be that as it may, going for the most appropriate action is still left up to the business process participant without any kind of assistance. Such a situation demonstrates that there is a lack of a context-aware decision-making feature. This paper addresses the issue of enabling a context-aware decision-making within the frame of business processes. We combine the concepts of business process, context-awareness and decision-making to introduce a new concept of Decision-Aware Business Processes in which decision partitions are the cornerstones. A decision partition reacts to the collected contextual parameters by selecting or recommending the most appropriate decision(s). In fact, the focus of this research is to introduce a new formalism for designing these partitions by means of patterns. Throughout our approach, each proposed pattern leads to building decision partitions in a straight-forward fashion. An overall example is proposed to illustrate our approach. It is inspired from the banking industry and introduces a decision-aware business process that handles loan applications. To sum up, whether seasoned, novice or in-between, business process participants will be able to save time in taking action(s). Moreover, the workflow becomes no longer stagnant across the business process. Instead, it dynamically adapts itself to each new set of business requirements imposed by the collected contextual input(s).     

Automated runtime repair of business processes

Concurrent business processes frequently suffer from mutual interference, especially in highly distributed service environments, where resources are shared among different stakeholders. Interference may be caused by supposedly stable case-related data, which are modified externally during process execution and may result in undesirable business outcomes. One way to address this problem is through the specification of dependency scopes, that cover critical parts of the process, and intervention processes, which are triggered at runtime to repair the inconsistencies. However, for complex processes, the manual specification of the appropriate intervention processes at design time can be particularly time-consuming and error-prone, while it is difficult to ensure that all important intervention cases are taken into account. To overcome this limitation, we propose an approach for automating the generation of intervention processes at runtime, by using domain-independent AI planning techniques. This way, intervention processes are composed on the fly, taking into account the characteristics of the business process in execution, the available compensation activities, and the properties that have to be fulfilled to recover from the erroneous situation. A prototype has been implemented and evaluated on a real case study of a business process from the Dutch e-Government.     

Plural: A decentralized business process modeling method

Top-down and centralized approaches prevail in the design and improvement of business processes. However, centralized structures pose difficulties for organizations in adapting to a rapidly changing business environment. Here we present the Plural method which can be used to guide organizations in performing process modeling in a decentralized way. Instead of a centralized group of people understanding, modeling and improving processes, our method allows individuals to model and improve their own processes to help in fulfilling their roles in the organization. An individual model depicts a set of activities performed by a role, which together result in a cohesive service within the organization. These individual models are then integrated as necessary to show the way the organization works. We applied the Plural method in a case study of a small-size software organization. We describe the method and its underlying principles and then discuss the findings of our case study, lessons learned, and limitations. The study thus provided evidence of Plural's utility and showed how an organization might exploit its strengths.     

Conceptual framework for business processes compositional verification

Context

To guarantee the success of Business Process Modelling (BPM) it is necessary to check whether the activities and tasks described by Business Processes (BPs) are sound and well coordinated.

Objective

This article describes and validates a Formal Compositional Verification Approach (FCVA) that uses a Model-Checking (MC) technique to specify and verify BPs.

Method

This is performed using the Communicating Sequential Processes +Time (CSP+T) process calculus, which adds new constructions to timed Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) modelling entities for non- functional requirement specification.

Results

Using our proposal we are able to specify the BP Task Model (BPTM) associated with BPs by formalising the timed BPMN notational elements. The proposal also allows us to apply MC to BPTM verification. A real-life example of verifying a BPTM in the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is discussed as a practical application of FCVA.

Conclusion

This approach facilitates the verification of complex BPs from independently verified local processes, and establishes a feasible way to use process calculi to verify BPs using state-of-the-art MC tools.     

Recommendation-based editor for business process modeling

To ensure proper and efficient modeling of business processes, it is important to support users of process editors adequately. With only minimal modeling support, the productivity of novice business process modelers may be low when starting process modeling. In this article, we present a theoretically sound and empirically validated recommendation-based modeling support system, which covers different aspects of business process modeling. We consider basic functionality, such as an intuitive search interface, as well as advanced concepts like patterns observed in other users' preferences. Additionally, we propose a multitude of interaction possibilities with the recommendation system, e.g., different metrics that can be used in isolation or an overall recommender component that combines several sub metrics into one comprehensive score. We validate a prototype implementation of the recommendation system with exhaustive user experiments based on real-life process models. To our knowledge, this is the only comprehensive recommendation system for business process modeling that is available.     

The impact of context-aware fisheye models on understanding business processes: An empirical study of data flow diagrams

We investigated whether a “context-aware” fisheye view can more successfully communicate the information contained in a set of process models (data flow diagrams) than a traditional “context-free” presentation. We conducted two controlled experiments: the first included a simple set of DFDs and tasks that required a basic understanding of the system, while the second involved more detailed views of the same processes, and also a more complex task. Subjects who used the fisheye process models outperformed those using the traditional presentations. This difference was reflected in task performance for all subjects, and in task completion time for inexperienced subjects.     

Configuration vs. adaptation for business process variant maintenance: An empirical study

Many approaches for process variant management employ a reference model for deriving a target variant either using configuration or adaptation mechanisms. What is missing at this stage is empirical insight into their relative strengths and weaknesses. Our paper addresses this gap. We selected C-YAWL and vBPMN for a comparative, empirical user study. Both approaches center on a reference process, but provide different types of configuration and adaptation mechanisms as well as modularization support. Along with this aspect, we investigate the effect of model complexity and professional level on human process variant modeling performance. Given unlimited processing time, we could not show that complexity or the participant's professional level significantly impacts the task success rate or user contentment. Yet, an effect of model complexity can be noted on the execution speed for typical variant maintenance tasks like the insertion and deletion of process steps. For each of the performance measures of success rate, user contentment and execution speed, vBPMN performs significantly better than C-YAWL. We argue that this is due to vBPMN's advanced modularization support in terms of pattern-based process adaptations to construct process variants. These insights are valuable for advancing existing modeling approaches and selecting between them.     

Performance evaluation of collaboration in the design process: Using interoperability measurement

A design process, whether for a product or for a service, is composed of a large number of activities connected by data and information exchanges. The quality of these exchanges, called in this paper collaboration, requires the ability to exchange useful, understandable and unambiguous data and information to the different designers involved. In this paper, a global framework is first set for process/product performance management. Then, the research question focuses on the definition and evaluation of the performance of collaborations, and by extension, of the design process in its entirety. This performance evaluation requires the definition of several key elements such as object to evaluate, the performance criteria, indicators and action variables. In order to define the object of evaluation, this paper relies on a literature study on collaboration resulting in an ECORE meta-model of collaborative processes. The collaboration performance measurement is for its part based on the concept of interoperability. This measure estimates the technical and conceptual interoperability of the different pairwise collaborations. The paper is concluded by proposing a tooled methodology for collaborations’ performance evaluation including two main phases: process modeling and interoperability measurement. Tooling is provided through the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) using its (meta-) model edition, constraint validation and model comparison features. The applicability of the methodology is also illustrated using a case study in design.     

Modeling languages for business processes and business rules: A representational analysis

Process modeling and rule modeling languages are both used to document organizational policies and procedures. To date, their synergies and overlap are under-researched. Understanding the relationship between the two modeling types would allow organizations to maximize synergies, avoid content duplication, and thus reduce their overall modeling effort. In this paper, we use the Bunge–Wand–Weber (BWW) representation theory to compare the representation capabilities of process and rule modeling languages. We perform a representational analysis of four rule modeling specifications: The Simple Rule Markup Language (SRML), the Semantic Web Rules Language (SWRL), the Production Rule Representation (PRR), and the Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) specification. We compare their BWW representation capabilities with those of four popular conceptual process modeling languages. In our analysis, we focus on the aspects of maximum ontological completeness and minimum ontological overlap. The outcome of this study shows that no single language is internally complete with respect to the BWW representation model. We also show that a combination of two languages, in particular SRML and BPMN, appears to be better suited for combined process and rule modeling than any of these modeling languages used independently.     

Discovery and analysis of e-mail-driven business processes

E-mail is used as the primary tool for business communication and collaboration. This paper presents a novel e-mail interaction mining method to discover and analyze e-mail-driven business processes. An e-mail-driven business process is perceived as a human collaboration process that consists of interactions between people who may each play different roles. The notion of message threads (i.e. sets of e-mail messages that are replies to each other) is used as the fundamental building block to construct the interactions in the e-mail-driven business process. The proposed method adopts an interaction-centric business process modeling language to visualize the discovered e-mail-driven business process. The method identifies message threads from an e-mail archive, and constructs an interaction-centric process model based on the temporal order and similarity of the threads. Process-related information is extracted from e-mail header fields. A software tool, named E-mail Interaction Miner, implements the proposed method. A case study is used to apply and evaluate the method on a set of e-mails collected from a Dutch gas transport company. The evaluation results are discussed. These results comprise business process improvement opportunities for the case organization, and contributions to theory and language development.     

Interaction protocols as design abstractions for business processes

Business process modeling and enactment are notoriously complex, especially in open settings, where business partners are autonomous, requirements must be continually finessed, and exceptions frequently arise because of real-world or organizational problems. Traditional approaches, which attempt to capture processes as monolithic flows, have proven inadequate in addressing these challenges. We propose (business) protocols as components for developing business processes. A protocol is an abstract, modular, publishable specification of an interaction among different roles to be played by different participants. When instantiated with the participants' internal policies, protocols yield concrete business processes. Protocols are reusable and refinable, thus simplifying business process design. We show how protocols and their composition are theoretically founded in the phi;-calculus.     

基于集成产品与过程建模的设计进程管理

本文研究虚拟原与设计过程模型的集成问题以及基于该集成模型的设计进程管理,首先提出基于虚拟原型的设计过程模型生成,然后讨论基于虚拟原型和设计过程集成建模的、面向并行工程的设计过程管理、最后重点讨论通过初步设计信息交换加快设计进程的问题。     

An adaptive design process generated by the integration of systematic design process and design patent protection mechanism

The conventional design processes are merely directed at measures for resolving problems, but fail to feature measures for procuring design patent protection. To overcome such a shortage, the authors have made a breakthrough by integrating the systematic design process (SDP) and design patent protection mechanism (DPPM) to develop an adaptive design process (ADP). The ADP includes 14 steps, as follows: (1) Problem, (2) Analysis, (3) Patent needs, (4) Concept, (5) Patent database searching, (6) Design database searching, (7) Integration, (8) Evaluation, (9) Decision, (10) Claim, (11) Solution, (12) Monitor, (13) Enforce and (14) Patent protection. In actual implementation, ADP allows designers to create novel creations easily and helps efficient procurement of design patent protection. In summary, ADP is a brand new design process with an advanced and effective nature.