Business Process Management

Several authors propose their own technique based on Petri Nets to model workflow processes. Most of them recognise the adaptability problem inherent to workflows, viz. the frequently and/or radically changing character due to changing business process rules, but suggest totally different solutions. Because the proposed techniques are fundamentally different, eleven of these techniques are briefly discussed and compared. Next, we survey approaches to reuse in the workflow field and we classify them in a framework derived from the information systems literature.

This contribution describes a rule-based method for modeling business processes and workflows. Business rules are defined as statements about guidelines and restrictions with respect to states and processes in an organization. After introducing an extended Event-Condition-Action (ECA) notation, an approach for the refinement of business rules is developed in order to achieve a consistent decomposition of the business processes. Thus, ECA rules serve as an integration layer between different process modeling and (workflow) specification languages. Finally, we propose an architecture of a rule-oriented repository supporting the modeling and refinement process.

Process modeling becomes more and more an important task not only for the purpose of software engineering, but also for many other purposes besides the development of software. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate the quality of process models from different viewpoints. This is even more important as the increasing number of different end users, different purposes and the availability of different modeling techniques and modeling tools leads to a higher complexity of information models. In this paper the Guidelines of Modeling (GoM)¹, a framework to structure factors for the evaluation of process models, is presented. Exemplary, Guidelines of Modeling for workflow management and simulation are presented. Moreover, six general techniques for adjusting models to the perspectives of different types of user and purposes will be explained.

This chapter describes a novel knowledge-based methodology and computer toolset for helping business process designers and participants better manage exceptions (unexpected deviations from a normal sequence of events caused by design errors, resource failures, requirement changes etc.) that can occur during the enactment of a process. This approach is based on an on-line repository exploiting a generic and reusable body of knowledge, which describes what kinds of exceptions can occur in collaborative work processes, how these exceptions can be detected, and how they can be resolved. This work builds upon previous efforts from the MIT Process Handbook project and from research on conflict management in collaborative design.

This paper introduces a new notional and notational tool — “organized activity” (OA) and its theory (TOA) — to the BP/BPM community. Most of this “introduction” is accomplished via an example — the “Pulsar” — which is: (a) an “organized activity” claimed to be useful to business, but also other activities; (b) new; (c) easy to understand; (d) suitable to computer support; (e) richly illustrative of OA ideas, in its “computerized” and non-computerized versions.

A significant terminal part of the paper is devoted to a comparison of OA/TOA to Petri nets — for two reasons: (a) OA/TOA grew out of Petri nets; (b) many readers of this paper are familiar with Petri nets, and rely on them professionally.

In this chapter we present a framework for evaluating generic process design patterns. This framework is developed and tested for call center organizations as one specific application domain at first but will be modified for other domains in the future. As starting point we briefly examine available contributions from organizational theory and operations research which are applicable for evaluating generic process design patterns. Based on this we will identify the most relevant process patterns in our application domain and work out relevant performance criteria. In the second part of the chapter the evaluation framework will be tested within an experimental study. Thereby we compare different process partitioning strategies as typical design patterns in call centers. Our analysis will provide insight to the question under which circumstances a specific design pattern is preferable towards another.

This contribution addresses the relevance of Petri nets to the management of business processes in a general way. It is organized in three steps: (a) sorting out business processes are suitable to being represented by means of Petri nets; (b) setting up a comprehensive list of the typical questions a management-oriented model should help answer; (c) suggesting ways to answer questions in (b) for business processes sorted out in (a) by means of Petri net-based methods. In particular, we discuss how to obtain such answers by grafting algorithms of applied mathematics onto Petri net models. As a demonstration, a specific business problem—decision-making over alternative plan executions characterized by fuzzy properties—is worked out.

The major aim of this chapter is to describe an approach towards the development of techniques and tools to support the construction, validation and the verification of Petri net models of information systems and business processes. To this end, the behavior of the models is defined by partially ordered causal runs, represented by process nets. We discuss how these runs are constructed and visualized for validation purposes, and how they are analyzed. Moreover, we demonstrate how different dynamic properties can be formulated and checked by searching respective patterns in process nets.

Building and analyzing models of business processes has gained increased importance for any activity that requires a close examination of the business processes involved, e.g., Business Process Reengineering efforts. In this chapter we introduce a Petri net based approach to support such activities. Business processes are modeled using standard place/transition nets enhanced with some notions needed to integrate all aspects of business processes that are relevant with respect to analysis purposes, e.g., the notion of time and costs. The Petri net models of business processes are simulated by generating partially ordered runs. We will show how these runs can then be used for performance analysis of important key indicators such as throughput time.

All introduced concepts are summarized in a 3-step approach that supports users to base their decision between possible alternatives for the design of a business process on facts.

Formal analysis techniques can deliver important support during business process redesign efforts. This chapter points out the (potential) contribution of these formal analysis techniques by giving an outline on the subject first. Next, a specific, newly developed formal technique is discussed.

Workflow management systems facilitate the everyday operation of business processes by taking care of the logistic control of work. In contrast to traditional information systems, they attempt to support frequent changes of the workflows at hand. Therefore, the need for analysis methods to verify the correctness of workflows is becoming more prominent. In this chapter we present a method based on Petri nets. This analysis method exploits the structure of the Petri net to find potential errors in the design of the workflow. Moreover, the analysis method allows for the compositional verification of workflows.

Workflow processes are represented as Petri nets with special entry and exit places and labeled transitions. The transition labels represent actions. We give a semantics for such nets in terms of transition systems. This allows us to describe and verify properties like termination: the guaranteed option to terminate successfully. We describe the composition of complex WF nets from simpler ones by means of certain operators. The simple operators preserve termination, giving correctness by design. Only the advanced communication operators are potentially dangerous. A strategy for verification of other properties is described.

Organizations that are geared for success within today’s business environments must be capable of rapid and continuous change. This business reality is boosting the popularity of various types of workflow systems. However, current workflow systems are not yet capable of facing the ever-changing nature of their business environment. Part of the answer to the challenge, in our view, lies in change understanding, communication, implementation, and analysis. In this chapter, we present an overview of our work on modeling dynamic change within workflow systems. This work was recently completed by the introduction of \( \mathcal{M}\mathcal{L}--\mathcal{D}\mathcal{E}\mathcal{W}\mathcal{S} \), a Modeling Language to support Dynamic Evolution within workflow Systems. We firmly believe the thesis put forth in this chapter that a change is a process that can be modeled, enacted, analyzed, simulated and monitored as any process.

Automatic analysis techniques for business processes are crucial for today’s workflow applications. Since business processes are rapidly changing, only fully automatic techniques can detect processes which might cause deadlocks or congestion.

Analyzing a complete workflow application, however, is much too complex to be performed fully automatically. Therefore, techniques for analyzing single processes in isolation and corresponding soundness criteria have been proposed. Though these techniques may detect errors such as deadlocks or congestion, problems arising from an incorrect interoperation with other processes are completely ignored. The situation becomes even worse for cross-organizational workflow applications, where some processes are not even available for analysis due to confidentiality reasons.

We propose a technique which allows to detect but a few errors of workflow applications which arise from incorrect inter-operation of workflows. To this end, the dynamics of the inter-operation of different workflows must be specified by the help of sequence diagrams. Then, each single workflow can be checked for local soundness with respect to this specification. If each single workflow is locally sound, a composition theorem guarantees global soundness of the complete workflow application. This way, each organization can check its own workflows without knowing the workflows of other organizations—still global soundness is guaranteed.

Business systems have to adapt to changing requirements coming from their environment. The rate is continuously increasing and leads to massive use of computer based systems. To specify the systems in a way that allows for adaptability and exibility adequate techniques are necessary.

The disadvantages using traditional modeling techniques are partially overcome by Business Process Petri nets (BPP-nets) which are informally introduced in this contribution. The key concepts are an object oriented structure of the net models, allowing to partition the model according to an application and also to follow a process centered approach. Workflows within the system can be modeled in separate objects and thus allow the dynamic adaptation of the system if the environment requires a behavioral change.

Petri nets are seen as a suitable process modeling language since they lead to graphical process descriptions that can be understood by different people, since formal process analysis can be performed, and enaction of processes can be done on the basis of a process model described by Petri nets. We have developed a Petri net based process modeling language and applied it to various practical projects. From the experiences we have derived new concepts and techniques in order to enhance our approach. In this paper we mainly discuss two aspects (1) modeling semi-structured process parts and (2) gathering the relevant information to be put into process models.

Why did ten modelers spend over a year mapping and charting business processes, and why did the workflow project still fail? Questions like this form the mortar that builds the nightmares of business managers into a brick wall that blocks successful innovations. In this chapter we discuss an approach that has demonstrated to innovate processes successfully by avoiding known pitfalls and risks. We focus on the practical questions, such as:

Available evidence suggests that not the modeling techniques as such are to blame, but the way of working that modelers employ in practice. On the experience gathered in workflow projects, carried out in the financial and government sectors, we have built a framework for business process innovations that puts modeling in perspective and has shown to achieve results for the business.

The introduction of new information systems has many organizational, economic, and social effects. It is generally accepted that the implementation of workflow systems (WFSs) cannot be seen just as a technological activity. However, although WFSs has been an important technology for almost a decade, there is still a lack of empirical data regarding its effects. Therefore, the field is open to speculation. For example: while one community believes that WFSs will disburden office workers from simple routine tasks, another community argues that WFSs would lead to monotonous ‘chain production’. What are the main findings of the qualitative study? Through the use of WFSs the quality of output of business processes increased: documents became more uniform since processes were under closer control. The implementation of WFS led to modifications in the processes; however, business process reengineering was not carried out in any of the cases analyzed. Additionally the study revealed that overall job satisfaction was influenced positively. Interestingly, for the lower management WFSs led to a disempowerment. From an economic point of view it may be interesting that the use of WFSs led to a significant reduction in cycle time and an increase in productivity. Overall it can be said that the positive effects of WFSs outbalanced the negative effects.

The implementation of the integrated standard software SAP R/3 has been fully or partially completed in many Swiss companies. Many of these companies are now initiating follow-up projects with the aim of expanding their use of SAP R/3. One possible area that is frequently mentioned in this context is the use of workflow management systems (WfMS). The Information Engineering Research Group of the Institute of Information Systems, University of Bern, therefore conducted an empirical study among Swiss R/3 users at the end of 1997, with the aim of obtaining a better assessment of the importance and current status of workflow management, particularly on the basis of SAP R/3. This survey endeavors to summarize the findings obtained with SAP Business Workflow (SAP BWF) to date, in order to provide some ideas for application scenarios and information about potential advantages and disadvantages.

To remain competitive organizations must be able to move fast and adapt quickly to change. To achieve this they are required to reconfigure their key business processes as changing market conditions dictate.

This chapter discusses a methodology to link enterprise models to wrapped legacy system modules or off-the-shelf (ERP) components. Moreover, it reveals how such mappings can be retrofitted to address business change requirements.

A general and globally accepted formal theory for workflow management is still not in sight. Since workflow management is said to be very application- driven, the question arises, whether a formal theory is necessary and possible at all. This article identifies the major domains of workflow management and discusses the necessity of formal theory and pragmatic approaches, respectively.

In this article a general business process architecture is presented, which is based on the Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS) and which is composed of the four levels of process engineering, process planning and control, workflow control and application systems. The ARIS-House of Business Engineering encompasses the whole life-cycle range: from business process design to information technology deployment, leading to a completely new process-oriented software concept. At the same time, the architecture bridges the gap between business process modeling and workflow-driven applications, from Business Process Reengineering to Continuous Process Improvement.