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2012 | Buch

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Business Process Management

Concepts, Languages, Architectures

verfasst von: Mathias Weske

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

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

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Über dieses Buch

Business process management is usually treated from two different perspectives: business administration and computer science. While business administration professionals tend to consider information technology as a subordinate aspect in business process management for experts to handle, by contrast computer science professionals often consider business goals and organizational regulations as terms that do not deserve much thought but require the appropriate level of abstraction.

Matthias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management. To this end, he details the complete business process lifecycle from the modeling phase to process enactment and improvement, taking into account all different stakeholders involved. After starting with a presentation of general foundations and abstraction models, he explains concepts like process orchestrations and choreographies, as well as process properties and data dependencies. Finally, he presents both traditional and advanced business process management architectures, covering, for example, workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures, and data-driven approaches. In addition, he shows how standards like WfMC, SOAP, WSDL, and BPEL fit into the picture.

This textbook is ideally suited for classes on business process management, information systems architecture, and workflow management. This 2nd edition contains major updates on BPMN Version 2 process orchestration and process choreographies, and the chapter on BPM methodologies has been completely rewritten. The accompanying website www.bpm-book.com contains further information and additional teaching material.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Foundation

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

The introductory chapter starts by scoping the area of business process management and by discussing the stakeholders involved in typical business process management projects. Key concepts are introduced and illustrated by concrete examples. The business process lifecycle is used to classify and relate challenges around business process management. Chapter 1 concludes with an overview of the rest of the textbook.

Mathias Weske

2. Evolution of Enterprise Systems Architectures

Abstract

The evolution of enterprise systems architectures is addressed in Chapter 2. After presenting traditional architectures, enterprise application integration concepts and service oriented architectures are introduced. The main goal of this chapter is to identify the role of business process management systems in the context of enterprise architectures. Workflow management systems are introduced and their relationships to service oriented architectures are highlighted. Chapter 2 concludes with a business process management landscape that relates the concepts with each other and provides a layered architecture that organizes them.

Mathias Weske

Business Process Modelling

Frontmatter

3. Business Process Modelling Foundation

Abstract

The foundation of business process modeling is introduced in Chapter 3. After providing the basic terminology, this chapter introduces a framework consisting of the modeling dimensions, including functions, behaviour, data, and organization. Process instances are described based on their states and transitions between them. Events that represent state transitions are used to characterize process instances. The chapter completes by introducing an architecture of a process execution environment that uses events to relate the subsystems of the environment with each other.

Mathias Weske

4. Process Orchestrations

Abstract

The process orchestrations chapter is the centre of gravity of the book. After introducing control flow patterns independently from specific notations, the most important process modeling notations are introduced, starting with Petri nets. Event-driven process chains are presented as a means to informally characterize simple business processes. Workflow nets are introduced as a specific variant of Petri nets that enable formal analysis of business processes. Yet Another Workflow Language is discussed and its execution semantics is described. Finally, the industry standard Business Process Model and Notation is discussed. All important concepts of the BPMN in Version 2 are described and illustrated by examples.

Mathias Weske

5. Process Choreographies

Abstract

Process choreographies are addressed in Chapter 5. After motivating the need for process interactions and process choreographies as means to specify these interactions, development phases during choreography design are introduced. The design and implementation of process choreographies is presented, introducing consistency notions that guide the correct implementation of process choreographies. After introducing service interaction patterns and Let’s Dance as concrete notations for specifying choreographies, the respective diagram types provided by the BPMN are addressed. In particular, conversation diagrams and process choreography diagrams of the BPMN are presented and illustrated by a rich set of examples.

Mathias Weske

6. Properties of Business Processes

Abstract

Properties of business processes are investigated in Chapter 6. After investigating the role of data in business processes, the discussion is extended to data objects that contain behaviour. In particular, the relationships between object lifecycles and business processes are investigated, introducing the notion of object lifecycle conformance. In the second part of that chapter, soundness criteria are discussed, ranging from classical soundness to advanced concepts like relaxed soundness and lazy soundness. An overview of the relationships between the soundness criteria complete this chapter.

Mathias Weske

Architectures and Methodologies

Frontmatter

7. Business Process Management Architectures

Abstract

BPM architectures are in the centre of Chapter 7, starting from the WfMC Architecture and proceeding towards service oriented architectures and architectures for flexible workflow management. In particular, an architecture that allows to dynamically modify running workflow instances based on an object-oriented approach is introduced. Web services and their composition are sketched, describing the core concepts of the XML-based service composition language WS-BPEL. Advanced service composition based on semantic concepts are sketched, and case handling is introduced as a technique for flexible process enactment based on data dependencies rather than process structures.

Mathias Weske

8. Business Process Management Methodology

Abstract

The methodologies chapter completes this book. It starts by looking into the dependencies between business processes, based on their supplier/consumer relationships, formalized as process landscapes. These dependencies are instrumental not only for business processes of several partners that interact with each other, but also for business processes that are performed within a given organization. The methodology introduced can be used to better understand these dependencies and thereby improving the business processes.

Mathias Weske

Backmatter

Titel: Business Process Management
verfasst von: Mathias Weske
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-642-28616-2
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28615-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28616-2