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2012 | Buch

Introduction Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems

Challenges, Methods, Technologies

verfasst von: Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

In today’s dynamic business world, the success of a company increasingly depends on its ability to react to changes in its environment in a quick and flexible way. Companies have therefore identified process agility as a competitive advantage to address business trends like increasing product and service variability or faster time to market, and to ensure business IT alignment. Along this trend, a new generation of information systems has emerged—so-called process-aware information systems (PAIS), like workflow management systems, case handling tools, and service orchestration engines.

With this book, Reichert and Weber address these flexibility needs and provide an overview of PAIS with a strong focus on methods and technologies fostering flexibility for all phases of the process lifecycle (i.e., modeling, configuration, execution and evolution). Their presentation is divided into six parts. Part I starts with an introduction of fundamental PAIS concepts and establishes the context of process flexibility in the light of practical scenarios. Part II focuses on flexibility support for pre-specified processes, the currently predominant paradigm in the field of business process management (BPM). Part III details flexibility support for loosely specified processes, which only partially specify the process model at build-time, while decisions regarding the exact specification of certain model parts are deferred to the run-time. Part IV deals with user- and data-driven processes, which aim at a tight integration of processes and data, and hence enable an increased flexibility compared to traditional PAIS. Part V introduces existing technologies and systems for the realization of a flexible PAIS. Finally, Part VI summarizes the main ideas of this book and gives an outlook on advanced flexibility issues.

The book’s target groups include researchers, PhD students and Master students in the field of information systems. After reading the book, they will better understand PAIS flexibility aspects. To support the easy use as a textbook, a series of exercises is provided at the end of each chapter and slides and further teaching material are available on the book’s web site www.flexible-processes.com. Professionals specializing in business process management (BPM) who want to obtain a good understanding of flexibility challenges in BPM and state-of-the-art solutions will also benefit from the presentations of open source as well as commercial process management systems and related practical scenarios.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Basic Concepts and Flexibility Issues

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction
Abstract
During the last decade process-aware information systems (PAISs) have become increasingly popular to effectively support the business processes of a company at an operational level. However, to cope with the dynamic nature of business processes, PAISs not only need to be able to deal with exceptions, change the execution of single business cases on the fly, efficiently deal with uncertainty, and cope with variability, but must also support the evolution of business processes over time. The goal of this book is to address these flexibility needs and to provide an overview of PAIS flexibility issues including challenges, methods, and technologies. This chapter discusses the scope of the book in detail, describes its intended target audiences, and presents learning objectives.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 2. Process-Aware Information Systems
Abstract
The success of commercial enterprises increasingly depends on their ability to flexibly and quickly react to changes in their environment. Businesses are therefore interested in improving the efficiency and quality of their business processes and in aligning their information systems in a process-centered way. This chapter deals with basic concepts related to business process automation and process-aware information systems (PAISs). Characteristic properties, perspectives, and components of a PAIS are presented based on real-world process scenarios.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 3. Flexibility Issues in Process-Aware Information Systems
Abstract
Traditionally, process-aware information systems (PAISs) have focused on the support of predictable and repetitive business processes. Even though respective processes are suited to be fully prespecified in a process model, flexibility is required to support dynamic process adaptations in case of exceptions. Flexibility is also needed to accommodate the need for evolving business processes and to cope with business process variability. Furthermore, PAISs are increasingly used to support less structured processes which can often be characterized as knowledge intensive. Processes of this category are neither fully predictable nor repetitive, and therefore cannot be fully prespecified at build-time. The (partial) unpredictability of these processes also demands a certain amount of looseness. This chapter deals with the flexibility needs of both prespecified and loosely specified processes and elicitates requirements for flexible process support in a PAIS. In addition, the chapter discusses PAIS features needed to accommodate flexibility needs in practice like, for example, traceability, business compliance, and user support.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

Flexibility Support for Prespecified Processes

Frontmatter
Chapter 4. Process Modeling and Flexibility-by-Design
Abstract
This chapter deals with process models whose behavior can be prespecified at build-time and their run-time support in a PAIS. Usually, such a prespecified process model defines all activities to be executed, their control flow and data flow dependencies, organizational entities performing the activities, the data objects manipulated by them, and the application services invoked during their execution. The chapter gives insights into the modeling, execution, and verification of prespecified process models, and therefore serves as foundation of the subsequent chapters of this book. In particular, it introduces control flow patterns as major building blocks for creating process models and discusses how flexibility-by-design can be achieved using these patterns. Furthermore, the chapter explores the verification of process models and the assurance of their correct executability before deploying them to the PAIS run-time environment. Finally, it elaborates on the enactment of process instances and the coordination of corresponding activities at run-time as specified in the process model.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 5. Process Configuration Support
Abstract
In practice, process models are often reused in a different application context, resulting in a large number of related process model variants. Typically, these process variants pursue the same or similar business objectives and share several commonalities. However, they can also exhibit some variable attributes, depending on how they are used in different application environments. This chapter presents concepts for the configuration and management of business process variants. It introduces different approaches for capturing variability in business process models and for deriving process variants through configuration of these models. The latter is supported through a number of techniques that can be used by domain experts.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 6. Exception Handling
Abstract
Due to exceptional or special situations occurring in the real world, a business process cannot be always executed as desired. This chapter deals with anticipated exceptions occurring during the execution of prespecified process models. These range from activity failures to deadline expirations to unavailable resources. For coping with such anticipated exceptions, exception handlers are typically provided by process designers at build-time. These handlers are automatically invoked by the process-aware information system (PAIS) during run-time when corresponding exceptions occur. This chapter describes selected exception handing patterns frequently applied in PAISs to deal with anticipated exceptions. Moreover, the chapter gives insights into the semantic rollback of process instances, which is especially important when handling semantic activity failures during run-time.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 7. Ad hoc Changes of Process Instances
Abstract
Generally, it is not possible to anticipate all real-world exceptions and to capture their handling in a prespecified process model at build-time. Hence, authorized users should be allowed to situationally adapt single process instances during run-time to cope with unanticipated exceptions; e.g., by inserting, deleting, or moving activities. Providing PAIS support for such ad hoc deviations from a prespecified process model, however, must not shift the responsibility for ensuring PAIS robustness to end-users. Instead, the PAIS must provide comprehensive support for the correct, secure, and robust handling of run-time exceptions through ad hoc process instance changes. This chapter presents a taxonomy for ad hoc changes, discusses how the behavior of a process instance can be situationally adapted, and presents adaptation patterns that may be applied for this purpose. Moreover, it is shown how PAIS robustness can be ensured when dynamically adapting process instances, and how end-users can be assisted in defining ad hoc changes.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 8. Monitoring and Mining Flexible Processes
Abstract
Accountability and traceability are important requirements any flexible PAIS needs to fulfill. This chapter describes how execution and change logs can be used to restore the structure and state of a process instance for any given point in time. The information recorded in event and change logs, however, can not only be exploited to ensure accountability and traceability, but used for analysis purposes as well. This chapter discusses different process mining techniques for analyzing flexible business processes. In particular, it presents techniques for the mining of execution logs and change logs. Finally, advanced techniques for analyzing process variant collections in the absence of a change log are introduced.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 9. Process Evolution and Instance Migration
Abstract
Business processes evolve over time due to changes in their legal, technical, or business context, or as a result of organizational learning. As a consequence, prespecified process models and their technical implementation in a PAIS need to be adapted accordingly. Moreover, prespecified process models often have to be changed to cope with design errors, technical problems, or poor model quality. This chapter presents techniques to tackle these challenges and to change implemented business processes at a technical level. First, it deals with process model evolution, i.e., the evolution of prespecified process models over time to accommodate changes of real-world processes. In this context, techniques are introduced for dealing with already running process instances and their on-the-fly migration to the changed process model, without violating any correctness and soundness properties. Second, this chapter introduces process model refactorings to foster internal process model quality and to ensure maintainability of the PAIS over time.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 10. Business Process Compliance
Abstract
In the previous chapters, the proper executability of a prespecified process model has been based on syntactical constraints, correctness of its data flow schema, and behavioral soundness. However, business processes are also subject to semantic constraints that stem from regulations, laws, and guidelines—also known as compliance rules. Process-aware information systems have to ensure that respective compliance rules are obeyed in order to guarantee semantically correct and error-free execution as well as changes of their business processes. This chapter discusses how such compliance rules can be defined and how they can be ensured in the different phases of the process life cycle.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

Flexibility Support for Loosely Specified Processes

Frontmatter
Chapter 11. Concretizing Loosely Specified Processes
Abstract
In many application domains prespecifying the entire process model is not possible. While parts of the process model are known at build-time, others are uncertain and can only be specified during run-time. To better deal with such uncertainty, decisions regarding the exact specification of selected parts of the process have to be deferred to run-time. Since decision deferral can be realized in many different ways, this chapter first introduces a taxonomy for it. It then introduces different decision deferral patterns like Late Selection, Late Modeling and Composition, Iterative Refinement, and Ad hoc Composition. Finally, examples of concrete implementations of the different patterns are presented.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 12. Constraint-Based Process Models
Abstract
This chapter introduces constraint-based approaches to process modeling and execution which enable loosely specified processes. While prespecified process models define how things have to be done (i.e., in what order and under what conditions activities shall be executed), constraint-based process models focus on what should be done by describing the activities that may be performed and the constraints prohibiting undesired execution behavior. In this chapter we address the modeling, verification, and execution of constraint-based process models. Moreover, we discuss how these models can be adapted and evolved over time. We further present techniques for assisting end-users during process execution. Finally, constraint-based process models and prespecified ones are systematically compared, and ways to integrate both approaches are discussed.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

User- and Data-Driven Processes

Frontmatter
Chapter 13. User- and Data-Driven Processes
Abstract
In practice, many business processes are rather unstructured, knowledge-intensive, and driven by user decisions and data. Typically, these processes cannot be straightjacketed into a set of activities with prespecified precedence relations; i.e., the primary driver for the progress of the process is not the event related to activity completion, but the availability of certain values for data objects. When implementing such user- and data-driven processes in a PAIS, a tight integration of processes, data, and users therefore becomes necessary. This chapter presents case handling as an example of such a process support paradigm. Following this, the fundamental characteristics of user- and data-driven processes are elaborated in detail. In particular, it is shown that object-awareness is required; i.e., a PAIS should manage data by means of object types that comprise object attributes and relations to other object types. Picking up this metaphor, pioneering work targeting at a tight integration of processes and data is evaluated. Besides case handling, this includes Proclets, business artifacts, data-driven process coordination, and product-based workflows.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 14. A Framework for Object-Aware Processes
Abstract
For large and complex scenarios, the proper coordination of concurrent executions of user- and data-driven processes is crucial. In this context, object-aware processes provide a high degree of abstraction by enabling two levels of process granularity: object behavior and object interactions. Furthermore, object-aware process management supports data-driven process execution, flexible choice of activity granularities, and integrated access to business processes and business data. This chapter introduces the PHILharmonicFlows framework, which enables object-aware process management in the large scale. In particular, the framework allows for a tight integration of processes, functions, data, and users.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

Technologies Enabling Flexibility Support in Process-Aware Information Systems

Frontmatter
Chapter 15. AristaFlow BPM Suite
Abstract
In dynamic environments, it becomes necessary to quickly implement new business processes, to allow for ad hoc deviations from prespecified processes, and to enable controlled process evolution over time. These fundamental features should be provided by any PAISs without affecting the correctness and soundness of the processes it implements. This chapter presents the AristaFlow BPM Suite—an adaptive PAIS that addresses these challenges. It has originated from the ADEPT research projects. Its overall vision is to provide next generation process management technology for the flexible support of dynamic processes along the process lifecycle. Due to its generic services and application programming interfaces, the AristaFlow BPM Suite can be applied to a variety of applications from different domains.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 16. Alaska Simulator Toolset
Abstract
This chapter introduces Alaska Simulator Toolset (AST), an open source tool suite for systematically exploring and investigating the decision deferral patterns introduced in Chap.​ 11. By providing integrated support for Late Binding, Late Modeling and Composition, and Iterative Refinement, AST fosters systematic testing of factors that impact the suitability of these approaches. Thus, AST promotes research in the context of loosely specified processes and hence supports the selection of the right degree of preplanning. The chapter introduces the concepts underlying AST, presents its architecture, and discusses its use.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Chapter 17. Existing Tool Support for Flexible Processes
Abstract
This chapter refers to the tool section on our book web site. The latter provides an evolving source of information on existing tools enabling flexible process support in process-aware information systems. The book’s web site covers the tools presented in these chapters as well as others not described here.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber

Summary, References, and Appendices

Frontmatter
Chapter 18. Epilogue
Abstract
This chapter concludes this book by summarizing its major contributions and discussing several open research challenges.
Manfred Reichert, Barbara Weber
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems
verfasst von
Manfred Reichert
Barbara Weber
Copyright-Jahr
2012
Verlag
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-642-30409-5
Print ISBN
978-3-642-30408-8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30409-5

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