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2009 | Buch

A Collaboration and Productiveness Analysis of the BPM Community Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Business Process Management

7th International Conference, BPM 2009, Ulm, Germany, September 8-10, 2009. Proceedings

herausgegeben von: Umeshwar Dayal, Johann Eder, Jana Koehler, Hajo A. Reijers

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Buchreihe : Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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

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Über dieses Buch

The BPM (Business Process Management) Conference series has the ambition to be the premier forum for researchersin the area of process-awareinformation systems.It has a recordfor attracting contributions in innovative researchofthe highest quality related to all aspects of business process management including theory, frameworks, methods, techniques, architectures, and empirical ?ndings. BPM 2009 was the 7th instantiation of this series. It took place in Ulm, G- many, September 8–10, 2009, organized by the Institute of Databases and Inf- mation Systems of the University of Ulm. This volume contains 17 contributed research papers and two contributed industrial papers selected from 116 s- missions from 31 countries. The thorough reviewing process—each paper was reviewed by three to ?ve Program Committee members—was extremely c- petitive as the acceptance rate of 16% indicates. In addition to the contributed papers, these proceedings contain two papers and an outline documenting the invited keynote talks. Furthermore, a report is included on the collaboration structure in BPM research derived from an analysis of papers accepted for all past BPM conferences. In conjunction with the main conference, nine international workshops took place the day before the conference. These workshops fostered the exchange of fresh ideas and experiences between active BPM researchers, and stimulated discussions on new and emerging issues in line with the conference topics. The proceedings with the papers of all workshops will be published in a separate volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Editorial

A Collaboration and Productiveness Analysis of the BPM Community
Abstract
The main scientific event for academics working in the field of Business Process Management is the International BPM Conference. In this paper, social network analysis techniques are used to unveil the co-authorship networks that can be derived from the papers presented at this conference. Links between two researchers are established by their co-authorship of a paper at one of the conference editions throughout the years 2003-2008. Beyond the relations between individual authors, aggregated analyses are presented of the interactions between the institutes that the authors are affiliated with as well as their country of residence. Additionally, the output of individual authors is measured. All analyses are carried out for the individual conference years and at cumulative levels. In this way, this paper identifies the hotbeds of BPM research and maps the progressive collaboration patterns within the BPM community.
Hajo A. Reijers, Minseok Song, Heidi Romero, Umeshwar Dayal, Johann Eder, Jana Koehler

Invited Talks

BPM 3.0
Abstract
Business Process Management (BPM) is an established management discipline. Since today’s organizations expect every employee to think and act like an entrepreneur, i.e., like a manager, BPM is also increasingly becoming part of everyday operations. But merely adopting a process-based approach across the enterprise is not enough to enable BPM at every level. What is needed is a combination of organizational forms and technologies that support distributed BPM initiatives while simultaneously consolidating them company-wide. Every employee must be empowered to model and optimize their own processes. At the same time, the entire BPM community needs a platform that brings together all the individual initiatives. This is the only way to leverage the full potential of process-oriented management. In the following article, the authors describe the trends in BPM development that are turning users into process managers and supporting the creation of a BPM community.
August-Wilhelm Scheer, Joerg Klueckmann
Change in Control
Abstract
Change is a popular word since Barack Obama so successfully used it in his campaign to become president of the US. Change almost became a synonym for “yes, we can”. Change, and things will improve. Suddenly change is sexy. We don’t seem to suffer from resistance to change anymore. People now LIKE to change?
Control usually is considered to almost be opposite to change. Control is not sexy. It is associated with accountants, budget restrictions, penalties, rules. It is considered to be counterproductive. You need it for compliance, but how easy would it be to change without control?
BPM is stuck in the middle. It used to be positioned as a technology that improves efficiency, effectiveness and quality. Cheaper, faster and better. But suddenly BPM is all about Agility. BPM for change. BPM is sexy too! At the same time, BPM is considered to be a tool for compliance, risk management and a means to guarantuee SLA’s, KPI’s, etc. Control!
So how can this be? BPM does not bring agility by itself. Nothing is more agile than processes that are not under control of any system. BPM is only called agile, because it gives more flexibility than built-in process control in legacy applications. At least, that is what we all believe (or say we believe). We call this the flexibility paradox. Process automation adds control, takes away flexibility and at the same time brings agility.
John Hoogland
Scientific Workflows: Business as Usual?
Abstract
Business workflow management and business process modeling are mature research areas, whose roots go far back to the early days of office automation systems. Scientific workflow management, on the other hand, is a much more recent phenomenon, triggered by (i) a shift towards data-intensive and computational methods in the natural sciences, and (ii) the resulting need for tools that can simplify and automate recurring computational tasks. In this paper, we provide an introduction and overview of scientific workflows, highlighting features and important concepts commonly found in scientific workflow applications. We illustrate these using simple workflow examples from a bioinformatics domain. We then discuss similarities and, more importantly, differences between scientific workflows and business workflows. While some concepts and solutions developed in one domain may be readily applicable to the other, there remain sufficiently many differences that warrant a new research effort at the intersection of scientific and business workflows. We close by proposing a number of research opportunities for cross-fertilization between the scientific workflow and business workflow communities.
Bertram Ludäscher, Mathias Weske, Timothy McPhillips, Shawn Bowers

Modeling I

Graph Matching Algorithms for Business Process Model Similarity Search
Abstract
We investigate the problem of ranking all process models in a repository according to their similarity with respect to a given process model. We focus specifically on the application of graph matching algorithms to this similarity search problem. Since the corresponding graph matching problem is NP-complete, we seek to find a compromise between computational complexity and quality of the computed ranking. Using a repository of 100 process models, we evaluate four graph matching algorithms, ranging from a greedy one to a relatively exhaustive one. The results show that the mean average precision obtained by a fast greedy algorithm is close to that obtained with the most exhaustive algorithm.
Remco Dijkman, Marlon Dumas, Luciano García-Bañuelos
Controllability in Temporal Conceptual Workflow Schemata
Abstract
Workflow technology has emerged as one of the leading technologies in modelling, redesigning, and executing business processes. Currently available workflow management systems (WfMS) and research prototypes offer a very limited support for the definition, detection, and management of temporal constraints over business processes. In this paper, we propose a new advanced workflow conceptual model for expressing time constraints in business processes and, in particular, we introduce and discuss the concept of controllability for workflow schemata and its evaluation at process design time. Controllability refers to the capability of executing a workflow for any possible duration of tasks. Since in several situations durations of tasks cannot be decided by WfMSs, even tough the minimum and the maximum durations for each task are known, checking controllability is stronger than verifying the consistency of the workflow temporal constraints.
Carlo Combi, Roberto Posenato
Towards Algorithmic Generation of Business Processes: From Business Step Dependencies to Process Algebra Expressions
Abstract
Recently, a lot of work has been done on formalization of business process specification, in particular, using Petri nets and process algebra. However, these efforts usually do not explicitly address complex business process development, which necessitates the specification, coordination, and synchronization of a large number of business steps. It is imperative that these atomic tasks are associated correctly and monitored for countless dependencies. Moreover, as these business processes grow, they become critically reliant on a large number of split and merge points, which additionally increases modeling complexity. Therefore, one of the central challenges in complex business process modeling is the composition of dependent business steps. We address this challenge and introduce a formally correct method for automated composition of algebraic expressions in complex business process modeling based on acyclic directed graph reductions. We show that our method generates an equivalent algebraic expression from an appropriate acyclic directed graph if the graph is well-formed and series-parallel. Additionally, we encapsulate the reductions in an algorithm that transforms business step dependencies described by users into digraphs, recognizes structural conflicts, identifies Wheatstone bridges, and finally generates algebraic expressions.
Márcio K. Oikawa, João E. Ferreira, Simon Malkowski, Calton Pu

Managing Processes

Extending BPM Environments of Your Choice with Performance Related Decision Support
Abstract
What-if Simulations have been identified as one solution for business performance related decision support. Such support is especially useful in cases where it can be automatically generated out of Business Process Management (BPM) Environments from the existing business process models and performance parameters monitored from the executed business process instances. Currently, some of the available BPM Environments offer basic-level performance prediction capabilities. However, these functionalities are normally too limited to be generally useful for performance related decision support at business process level. In this paper, an approach is presented which allows the non-intrusive integration of sophisticated tooling for what-if simulations, analytic performance prediction tools, process optimizations or a combination of such solutions into already existing BPM environments. The approach abstracts from process modelling techniques which enable automatic decision support spanning processes across numerous BPM Environments. For instance, this enables end-to-end decision support for composite processes modelled with the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) on top of existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) processes modelled with proprietary languages.
Mathias Fritzsche, Michael Picht, Wasif Gilani, Ivor Spence, John Brown, Peter Kilpatrick
Business Process-Based Resource Importance Determination
Abstract
Information security risk management (ISRM) heavily depends on realistic impact values representing the resources’ importance in the overall organizational context. Although a variety of ISRM approaches have been proposed, well-founded methods that provide an answer to the following question are still missing: How can business processes be used to determine resources’ importance in the overall organizational context? We answer this question by measuring the actual importance level of resources based on business processes. Therefore, this paper presents our novel business process-based resource importance determination method which provides ISRM with an efficient and powerful tool for deriving realistic resource importance figures solely from existing business processes. The conducted evaluation has shown that the calculation results of the developed method comply to the results gained in traditional workshop-based assessments.
Stefan Fenz, Andreas Ekelhart, Thomas Neubauer
Case Study and Maturity Model for Business Process Management Implementation
Abstract
This paper presents the implementation of Business Process Management in a large international company. The business case illustrates the main objectives and approach taken with the BPM initiative. It introduces a process management maturity assessment which was developed to assess the implementation of Business Process Management and the achievements. The maturity model is based on nine categories which comprehensively cover all aspects which impact the success of Business Process Management. Some findings of the first assessment cycle are pinpointed to illustrate the benefits and best practice exchange as a result of the assessment.
Michael Rohloff

Process Mining I

Discovering Process Models from Unlabelled Event Logs
Abstract
Existing process mining techniques are able to discover process models from event logs where each event is known to have been produced by a given process instance. In this paper we remove this restriction and address the problem of discovering the process model when the event log is provided as an unlabelled stream of events. Using a probabilistic approach, it is possible to estimate the model by means of an iterative Expectaction–Maximization procedure. The same procedure can be used to find the case id in unlabelled event logs. A series of experiments show how the proposed technique performs under varying conditions and in the presence of certain workflow patterns. Results are presented for a running example based on a technical support process.
Diogo R. Ferreira, Daniel Gillblad
Abstractions in Process Mining: A Taxonomy of Patterns
Abstract
Process mining refers to the extraction of process models from event logs. Real-life processes tend to be less structured and more flexible. Traditional process mining algorithms have problems dealing with such unstructured processes and generate spaghetti-like process models that are hard to comprehend. One reason for such a result can be attributed to constructing process models from raw traces without due pre-processing. In an event log, there can be instances where the system is subjected to similar execution patterns/behavior. Discovery of common patterns of invocation of activities in traces (beyond the immediate succession relation) can help in improving the discovery of process models and can assist in defining the conceptual relationship between the tasks/activities.
In this paper, we characterize and explore the manifestation of commonly used process model constructs in the event log and adopt pattern definitions that capture these manifestations, and propose a means to form abstractions over these patterns. We also propose an iterative method of transformation of traces which can be applied as a pre-processing step for most of today’s process mining techniques. The proposed approaches are shown to identify promising patterns and conceptually-valid abstractions on a real-life log. The patterns discussed in this paper have multiple applications such as trace clustering, fault diagnosis/anomaly detection besides being an enabler for hierarchical process discovery.
R. P. Jagadeesh Chandra Bose, Wil M. P. van der Aalst

Processes and Services

Aggregating Hierarchical Service Level Agreements in Business Value Networks
Abstract
Business scenarios such as Business Value Networks and Extended Enterprises pose new challenges for service choreographies across heterogeneous Virtual Organizations. In such scenarios, services compose together hierarchically in a producer-consumer manner to form service supply-chains of added value. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are defined at various levels in this hierarchy to ensure the expected quality of service for different stakeholders. Automation of service composition directly implies the aggregation of their corresponding SLAs. But so far, the aggregation of SLAs has been treated only as a single layer process which is insufficient to complement the hierarchical aggregation of services. In this paper we elaborate on the requirement of a hierarchical aggregation of SLAs corresponding to service choreographies in Business Value Networks. During the hierarchical aggregation of SLAs, certain SLA information pertaining to different stakeholders is meant to be restricted and can be only partially revealed to a subset of their business partners. We introduce the concept of SLA-Views to protect such privacy concerns. We, then formalize the notion of SLA Choreography and define an aggregation model based on SLA-Views to enable the automation of hierarchical aggregation of Service Level Agreements. The aggregation model has been designed to comply with the WS-Agreement standard.
Irfan ul Haq, Altaf Huqqani, Erich Schikuta
Set Algebra for Service Behavior: Applications and Constructions
Abstract
Compatibility of behavior, i.e. the correct ordering of messages, is one of the core aspects for the interaction between services as parts of an inter-organizational business process. In previous work, we proposed formal representations for service behavior (including Petri nets and service automata) and finite representations of sets thereof (operating guidelines).
In this article, we show how the basic set operations union, intersection, and complement, as well as membership and emptiness tests, can be implemented on finite representations of (typically infinite) sets of services. We motivate the operations by three examples of applications—service substitution, selection of behavior, and navigation in a behavioral registry.
Kathrin Kaschner, Karsten Wolf
A Restructuring Method for WS-BPEL Business Processes Based on Extended Workflow Graphs
Abstract
Much research effort has been spent on the provision of analysis methods for business processes specified by means of Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). Nevertheless, most approaches neglect conditional control flow, though running the risk of erroneous analysis results. In this paper, we present a restructuring approach for WS-BPEL processes, which helps to partly remedy conditional control flow. We therefore use a combination of workflow graphs and Concurrent Static Single Assignment Form. Based on the hybrid format, we are able to identify loops with static quasi-constant loop condition and transform them in such a way, that conditional control flow is replaced by unconditional control flow. Augmenting an existing analysis with the proposed restructuring then enables more precise results, as is shown for a compatibility analysis of WS-BPEL business processes.
Thomas S. Heinze, Wolfram Amme, Simon Moser

Modeling II

The Triconnected Abstraction of Process Models
Abstract
Companies use business process models to represent their working procedures in order to deploy services to markets, to analyze them, and to improve upon them. Competitive markets necessitate complex procedures, which lead to large process specifications with sophisticated structures. Real world process models can often incorporate hundreds of modeling constructs. While a large degree of detail complicates the comprehension of the processes, it is essential to many analysis tasks. This paper presents a technique to abstract, i.e., to simplify process models. Given a detailed model, we introduce abstraction rules which generalize process fragments in order to bring the model to a higher abstraction level. The approach is suited for the abstraction of large process specifications in order to aid model comprehension as well as decomposing problems of process model analysis. The work is based on process structure trees that have recently been introduced to the field of business process management.
Artem Polyvyanyy, Sergey Smirnov, Mathias Weske
Granularity as a Cognitive Factor in the Effectiveness of Business Process Model Reuse
Abstract
Reusing design models is an attractive approach in business process modeling as modeling efficiency and quality of design outcomes may be significantly improved. However, reusing conceptual models is not a cost-free effort, but has to be carefully designed. While factors such as psychological anchoring and task-adequacy in reuse-based modeling tasks have been investigated, information granularity as a cognitive concept has not been at the center of empirical research yet. We hypothesize that business process granularity as a factor in design tasks under reuse has a significant impact on the effectiveness of resulting business process models. We test our hypothesis in a comparative study employing high and low granularities. The reusable processes provided were taken from widely accessible reference models for the telecommunication industry (enhanced Telecom Operations Map). First experimental results show that Recall in tasks involving coarser granularity is lower than in cases of finer granularity. These findings suggest that decision makers in business process management should be considerate with regard to the implementation of reuse mechanisms of different granularities. We realize that due to our small sample size results are not statistically significant, but this preliminary run shows that it is ready for running on a larger scale.
Oliver Holschke, Jannis Rake, Olga Levina
Artifact-Based Transformation of IBM Global Financing
Abstract
IBM Global Financing (IGF) is transforming its business using the Business Artifact Method, an innovative business process modeling technique that identifies key business artifacts and traces their life cycles as they are processed by the business. IGF is a complex, global business operation with many business design challenges. The Business Artifact Method is a fundamental shift in how to conceptualize, design and implement business operations. The Business Artifact Method was extended to solve the problem of designing a global standard for a complex, end-to-end process while supporting local geographic variations. Prior to employing the Business Artifact method, process decomposition, Lean and Six Sigma methods were each employed on different parts of the financing operation. Although they provided critical input to the final operational model, they proved insufficient for designing a complete, integrated, standard operation. The artifact method resulted in a business operations model that was at the right level of granularity for the problem at hand. A fully functional rapid prototype was created early in the engagement, which facilitated an improved understanding of the redesigned operations model. The resulting business operations model is being used as the basis for all aspects of business transformation in IBM Global Financing.
Tian Chao, David Cohn, Adrian Flatgard, Sandy Hahn, Mark Linehan, Prabir Nandi, Anil Nigam, Florian Pinel, John Vergo, Frederick y Wu

Verification and Compliance

Instantaneous Soundness Checking of Industrial Business Process Models
Abstract
We report on a case study on control-flow analysis of business process models. We checked 735 industrial business process models from financial services, telecommunications and other domains. We investigated these models for soundness (absence of deadlock and lack of synchronization) using three different approaches: the business process verification tool Woflan, the Petri net model checker LoLA, and a recently developed technique based on SESE decomposition. We evaluate the various techniques used by these approaches in terms of their ability of accelerating the check. Our results show that industrial business process models can be checked in a few milliseconds, which enables tight integration of modeling with control-flow analysis. We also briefly compare the diagnostic information delivered by the different approaches.
Dirk Fahland, Cédric Favre, Barbara Jobstmann, Jana Koehler, Niels Lohmann, Hagen Völzer, Karsten Wolf
Symbolic Abstraction and Deadlock-Freeness Verification of Inter-enterprise Processes
Abstract
The design of complex inter-enterprise business processes (IEBP) is generally performed in a modular way. Each process is designed separately from the others and then the whole IEBP is obtained by composition. Even if such a modular approach is intuitive and facilitates the design problem, it poses the problem that correct behavior of each business process of the IEBP taken alone does not guarantee a correct behavior of the composed IEBP (i.e. properties are not preserved by composition). Proving correctness of the (unknown) composed process is strongly related to the model checking problem of a system model. Among others, the symbolic observation graph based approach has proven to be very helpful for efficient model checking in general. Since it is heavily based on abstraction techniques and thus hides detailed information about system components that are not relevant for the correctness decision, it is promising to transfer this concept to the problem rised in this paper: How can the symbolic observation graph technique be adapted and employed for process composition? Answering this question is the aim of this paper.
Kais Klai, Samir Tata, Jörg Desel
Effect of Using Automated Auditing Tools on Detecting Compliance Failures in Unmanaged Processes
Abstract
The effect of using automated auditing tools to detect compliance failures in unmanaged business processes is investigated. In the absence of a process execution engine, compliance of an unmanaged business process is tracked by using an auditing tool developed based on business provenance technology or employing auditors. Since budget constraints limit employing auditors to evaluate all process instances, a methodology is devised to use both expert opinion on a limited set of process instances and the results produced by fallible automated audit machines on all process instances. An improvement factor is defined based on the average number of non-compliant process instances detected and it is shown that the improvement depends on the prevalence of non-compliance in the process as well as the sensitivity and the specificity of the audit machine.
Yurdaer Doganata, Francisco Curbera

Process Mining II

Divide-and-Conquer Strategies for Process Mining
Abstract
The goal of Process Mining is to extract process models from logs of a system. Among the possible models to represent a process, Petri nets is an ideal candidate due to its graphical representation, clear semantics and expressive power. The theory of regions can be used to transform a log into a Petri net, but unfortunately the transformation requires algorithms with high complexity. This paper provides techniques to overcome this limitation. Either by using decomposition techniques, or by clustering events in the log and working on projections, the proposed approach can be used to widen the applicability of classical region-based techniques.
Josep Carmona, Jordi Cortadella, Michael Kishinevsky
Discovering Reference Models by Mining Process Variants Using a Heuristic Approach
Abstract
Recently, a new generation of adaptive Process-Aware Information Systems (PAISs) has emerged, which enables structural process changes during runtime. Such flexibility, in turn, leads to a large number of process variants derived from the same model, but differing in structure. Generally, such variants are expensive to configure and maintain. This paper provides a heuristic search algorithm which fosters learning from past process changes by mining process variants. The algorithm discovers a reference model based on which the need for future process configuration and adaptation can be reduced. It additionally provides the flexibility to control the process evolution procedure, i.e., we can control to what degree the discovered reference model differs from the original one. As benefit, we cannot only control the effort for updating the reference model, but also gain the flexibility to perform only the most important adaptations of the current reference model. Our mining algorithm is implemented and evaluated by a simulation using more than 7000 process models. Simulation results indicate strong performance and scalability of our algorithm even when facing large-sized process models.
Chen Li, Manfred Reichert, Andreas Wombacher
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Business Process Management
herausgegeben von
Umeshwar Dayal
Johann Eder
Jana Koehler
Hajo A. Reijers
Copyright-Jahr
2009
Verlag
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-642-03848-8
Print ISBN
978-3-642-03847-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03848-8

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