Although business process management (‘BPM’) is a popular concept, it has not yet been properly theoretically grounded. This leads to problems in identifying both generic and case specific critical success factors of BPM programs. The paper proposes an underlying theoretical framework with the utilization of three theories: contingency, dynamic capabilities and task technology fit. The main premise is that primarily the fit between the business environment and business processes is needed. Then both continuous improvement and the proper fit between business process tasks and information systems must exist. The underlying theory is used to identify critical success factors on a case study from the banking sector.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1611789_code1485980.pdf?abstractid=1611789&mirid=5&type=2

The Critical Success Factors of Business Process Management

https://mail.tku.edu.tw/myday/teaching/992/sms/s/992sms_t1_paper_20110514_the_critical_success_factors_of_business_process_management%20.pdf

The critical success factors of business process management

Transactional Information Systems is the long-awaited, comprehensive work from leading scientists in the transaction processing field. Weikum and Vossen begin with a broad look at the role of transactional technology in today's economic and scientific endeavors, then delve into critical issues faced by all practitioners, presenting today's most effective techniques for controlling concurrent access by multiple clients, recovering from system failures, and coordinating distributed transactions.


The authors emphasize formal models that are easily applied across fields, that promise to remain valid as current technologies evolve, and that lend themselves to generalization and extension in the development of new classes of network-centric, functionally rich applications. This book's purpose and achievement is the presentation of the foundations of transactional systems as well as the practical aspects of the field what will help you meet today's challenges.

* Provides the most advanced coverage of the topic available anywhere--along with the database background required for you to make full use of this material.
* Explores transaction processing both generically as a broadly applicable set of information technology practices and specifically as a group of techniques for meeting the goals of your enterprise.
* Contains information essential to developers of Web-based e-Commerce functionality--and a wide range of more "traditional" applications.
* Details the algorithms underlying core transaction processing functionality.

Table of Contents

PART ONE - BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
Chapter 1 What Is It All About?
Chapter 2 Computational Models
PART TWO - CONCURRENCY CONTROL
Chapter 3 Concurrency Control: Notions of Correctness for the Page Model
Chapter 4 Concurrency Control Algorithms
Chapter 5 Multiversion Concurrency Control
Chapter 6 Concurrency Control on Objects: Notions of Correctness
Chapter 7 Concurrency Control Algorithms on Objects
Chapter 8 Concurrency Control on Relational Databases
Chapter 9 Concurrency Control on Search Structures
Chapter 10 Implementation and Pragmatic Issues
PART THREE - RECOVERY
Chapter 11 Transaction Recovery 
Chapter 12 Crash Recovery: Notion of Correctness
Chapter 13 Page Model Crash Recovery Algorithms
Chapter 14 Object Model Crash Recovery
Chapter 15 Special Issues of Recovery
Chapter 16 Media Recovery
Chapter 17 Application Recovery
PART FOUR - COORDINATION OF DISTRIBUTED TRANSACTIONS
Chapter 18 Distributed Concurrency Control
Chapter 19 Distributed Transaction Recovery
PART FIVE - APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 20 What Is Next?

Transactional Information Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and the Practice of Concurrency Control and Recovery

How three specifications support creating robust service compositions.

The next step in Web services

Scientific research relies as much on the dissemination and exchange of data sets as on the publication of conclusions Accurately tracking the lineage (origin and subsequent processing history) of scientific data sets is thus imperative for the complete documentation of scientific work Researchers are effectively prevented from determining, preserving, or providing the lineage of the computational data products they use and create, however, because of the lack of a definitive model for lineage retrieval and a poor fit between current data management tools and scientific software Based on a comprehensive survey of lineage research and previous prototypes, we present a metamodel to help identify and assess the basic components of systems that provide lineage retrieval for scientific data products

http://ucsbsocialcomputing.pbworks.com/f/bose+&+frew.pdf

Lineage retrieval for scientific data processing: a survey

Fault tolerance is a key requirement in process support systems (PSS), a class of distributed computing middleware encompassing applications such as workflow management systems and process centered software engineering environments. A PSS controls the flow of work between programs and users in networked environments based on a "metaprogram" (the process). The resulting applications are characterized by a high degree of distribution and a high degree of heterogeneity (properties that make fault tolerance both highly desirable and difficult to achieve). We present a solution for implementing more reliable processes by using exception handling, as it is used in programming languages, and atomicity, as it is known from the transaction concept in database management systems. We describe the mechanism incorporating both transactions and exceptions and present a validation technique allowing to assess the correctness of process specifications.

/pdf/exception-handling-in-workflow-management-systems-50xm2f4smf.pdf

Exception handling in workflow management systems

The Internet and the proliferation of inexpensive computing power in the form of clusters of workstations or PCs provide the basic hardware infrastructure for business-to-business electronic commerce in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Unfortunately, the corresponding software infrastructure is still missing. In this paper, we show a way to develop appropriate tools for electronic commerce by describing the approach we have taken in the WISE (Workflow-based Internet SErvices) project. The goals of WISE are to develop and deploy the software infrastructure that is necessary to support business-to-business electronic commerce in the form of virtual enterprises. The idea is to combine the tools and services of different companies as building blocks of a higher-level system in which a process acts as the blueprint for control and data flow within the virtual enterprise. From this idea, the final goal is to build the basic support for an Internet trading community where enterprises can join their services to provide value-added processes.

WISE: business to business e-commerce

Exceptions are one of the most pervasive problems in process support systems. In installations expected to handle a large number of processes, having exceptions is bound to be a normal occurrence. Any programming tool intended for large, complex applications has to face this problem. However, current process support systems, despite their orientation towards complex, distributed, and heterogeneous applications, provide almost no support for exception handling. This paper shows how flexible mechanisms for failure handling are incorporated into the OPERA process support system using a combination of programming language concepts and transaction processing techniques. The resulting mechanisms allow the construction of fault-tolerant workflow processes in a transparent and flexible way while ensuring reusability of workflow components.

Flexible exception handling in the OPERA process support system

Purpose – This paper aims to describe how process reengineering, combined with the use of modern process‐oriented information technology, can lead to substantial improvements in terms of overall process quality.Design/methodology/approach – A real‐life case study from the financial industry is used to show how process management can take place in a competitive business area. Four processes (each with a different characteristic) are used to explain the approaches implemented.Findings – Through the combination of process restructuring and the application of modern IT, processes can be improved significantly. First of all, cycle times of the restructured business processes have been reduced. Second, reliability of processes has been improved. Third, process‐related performance has become more visible, which in turn is a good basis for further enhanced performance.Originality/value – This experience report illustrates that the concept of process reengineering is applicable, and that the potential of many proc...

The fruits of Business Process Management: an experience report from a Swiss bank

A Process Support System provides the tools and mechanisms necessary to define, implement and control processes, i.e., complex sequences of program invocations and data exchanges. Due to the generality of the notion of process and the high demand for the functionality they provide, process support systems are starting to be used in a variety of application areas, from business re-engineering to experiment management. In particular, recent results have shown the advantages of using such systems in scientific applications and the work reported in this paper is to be interpreted as one more step in that direction. The paper describes Geo-Opera, a process support system tailored to spatial modeling and GIS engineering. Geo-Opera facilitates the task of coordinating and managing the development and execution of large, computer-based geographic models. It provides a flexible environment for experiment management, incorporating many characteristics of workflow management systems as well as a simple but expressive process modeling language, exception handling, and data and metadata indexing and querying capabilities.

Claus Hagen

Papers

Exception handling in workflow management systems

WISE: business to business e-commerce

Flexible exception handling in the OPERA process support system

The fruits of Business Process Management: an experience report from a Swiss bank

Geo-Opera: Workflow Concepts for Spatial Processes