Showing papers on "Process modeling published in 2008"

Compliance aware business process design

Abstract: Historically, business process design has been driven by business objectives, specifically process improvement. However this cannot come at the price of control objectives which stem from various legislative, standard and business partnership sources. Ensuring the compliance to regulations and industrial standards is an increasingly important issue in the design of business processes. In this paper, we advocate that control objectives should be addressed at an early stage, i.e., design time, so as to minimize the problems of runtime compliance checking and consequent violations and penalties. To this aim, we propose supporting mechanisms for business process designers. This paper specifically presents a support method which allows the process designer to quantitatively measure the compliance degree of a given process model against a set of control objectives. This will allow process designers to comparatively assess the compliance degree of their design as well as be better informed on the cost of non-compliance.

How Much Language Is Enough? Theoretical and Practical Use of the Business Process Modeling Notation

Abstract: The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is an increasingly important industry standard for the graphical representation of business processes. BPMN offers a wide range of modeling constructs, significantly more than other popular languages. However, not all of these constructs are equally important in practice as business analysts frequently use arbitrary subsets of BPMN. In this paper we investigate what these subsets are, and how they differ between academic, consulting, and general use of the language. We analyzed 120 BPMN diagrams using mathematical and statistical techniques. Our findings indicate that BPMN is used in groups of several, well-defined construct clusters, but less than 20% of its vocabulary is regularly used and some constructs did not occur in any of the models we analyzed. While the average model contains just 9 different BPMN constructs, models of this complexity have typically just 4-5 constructs in common, which means that only a small agreed subset of BPMN has emerged. Our findings have implications for the entire ecosystems of analysts and modelers in that they provide guidance on how to reduce language complexity, which should increase the ease and speed of process modeling.

Service-Oriented Modeling: Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture

Abstract: Answers to your most pressing SOA development questions How do we start with service modeling? How do we analyze services for better reusability? Who should be involved? How do we create the best architecture model for our organization? This must-read for all enterprise leaders gives you all the answers and tools needed to develop a sound service-oriented architecture in your organization. Praise for Service-Oriented Modeling Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture "Michael Bell has done it again with a book that will be remembered as a key facilitator of the global shift to Service-Oriented Architecture. . . . With this book, Michael Bell provides that foundation and more-an essential bible for the next generation of enterprise IT." -Eric Pulier, Executive Chairman, SOA Software "Michael Bell's insightful book provides common language and techniques for business and technology organizations to take advantage of the SOA paradigm. By focusing modeling techniques on the business problem, Bell provides a way for professionals to work throughout the life cycle to create reusable and enduring services." -Mike Zbranak, CIO, Chase Card Services "This book will become an imperative business and technology service-oriented modeling recipe for any manager, architect, modeler, analyst, and developer in today's software development industry." -Jeff Schneider, CEO, MomentumSI "'Innovative' and 'groundbreaking' are words that best describe Michael Bell's Service-Oriented Modeling. It depicts a true service modeling approach that elegantly closes a clear and critical service modeling gap in the SOA industry. This holistic book ties these concepts together using real-world examples across a service life cycle that transitions services from ideas and concepts into production assets that deliver business value. A must-read for business and technical SOA practitioners." -Eric A. Marks, CEO, AgilePath Corporation "As hot as SOA is today, many business and technology professionals still find it challenging to mind the gap between their disparate methodologies and objectives. Herein Michael Bell speaks clearly to both camps in straightforward language, outlining disciplines each can use to communicate effectively and advance the realization of corporate aims. This book is a bible for all who seek to drive business/technology into the future." -Mark Edward Goodrich, Director, Investing Product Management, Reuters Media "This book takes senior IT architects and systems designers into the depths of modeling for SOA, with a fresh new perspective on tools, terminology, and how to turn the theory into practice. His full life-cycle approach balances process, control, and accountability to align all the participants in the delivery pipeline-clearing the road for successful SOA business solutions." -Phil Gilligan, Chief Technology Officer, EBS

Measuring Similarity between Business Process Models

Abstract: Quality aspects become increasingly important when business process modeling is used in a large-scale enterprise setting. In order to facilitate a storage without redundancy and an efficient retrieval of relevant process models in model databases it is required to develop a theoretical understanding of how a degree of behavioral similarity can be defined. In this paper we address this challenge in a novel way. We use causal footprintsas an abstract representation of the behavior captured by a process model, since they allow us to compare models defined in both formal modeling languages like Petri nets and informal ones like EPCs. Based on the causal footprint derived from two models we calculate their similarity based on the established vector space model from information retrieval. We validate this concept with an experiment using the SAP Reference Model and an implementation in the ProM framework.

Metrics for Process Models: Empirical Foundations of Verification, Error Prediction, and Guidelines for Correctness

Abstract: Business process modeling plays an important role in the management of business processes. As valuable design artifacts, business process models are subject to quality considerations. The absence of formal errors such as deadlocks is of paramount importance for the subsequent implementation of the process. In his book Jan Mendlingdevelops a framework for the detection of formal errors in business process models and the prediction of error probability based on quality attributes of these models (metrics).He presents aprecise description of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs), their control-flow semantics and a suitable correctness criterion called EPC soundness.

Business Process Analysis and Optimization: Beyond Reengineering

Abstract: There is an abundance of business process modeling techniques that capture and address different aspects of a business process. A limited number of these process models allow further quantitative analysis, and only a few enable structured process improvement. This paper reviews and classifies the main techniques for business process modeling with regard to their analysis and optimization capabilities. Three primary groups are identified, and a selection of representative business process modeling techniques is classified based on these. Similar classification is also presented for the analysis and optimization approaches for business processes that were identified in relevant literature. The main contribution of the paper is that it identifies which types of business process models are suitable for analysis and optimization, and also highlights the lack of such approaches. This paper offers a state-of-the-art review in the areas of business process modeling, analysis, and optimization-underlining that the latter two have not received enough coverage and support in the literature.

The impact of business process orientation on financial and non‐financial performance

Abstract: Purpose – Extensive literature on business process management suggests that organizations could enhance their overall performance by adopting a process view of business. However, there is a lack of empirical research in this field. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of the process view and process maturity levels in a transition economy and to test the impact of process orientation maturity level on organizational performance.Design/methodology/approach – Empirical investigation combined an exploratory‐confirmatory approach using factor analysis and structural equation modeling.Findings – The investigation confirms the impact of business process orientation on organizational performance in a transition economy. The link is even stronger than in the original investigation. The results show that business process orientation leads to better non‐financial performance and indirectly to better financial performance.Practical implications – The research confirms that business process o...

Constraint-based workflow management systems : shifting control to users

Abstract: Many organizations use information technology to support various aspects of their business processes: the operational aspect, collaboration between employees, etc Workow management systems aim at supporting the operational aspect of complex business processes by using process models to automate the ordering of activities (ie, ow of work) The term `support' here relates to the ability of workow management systems to control the execution of business processes Contemporary workow management systems lack exibility, ie, the system controls in detail how employees should execute business processes While work- ow management systems deal well with predictable business processes, they are not able to handle unforeseen situations, which occur often in real-life business processes Although employees mostly have the knowledge and experience that enables them to deal with exceptional situations, they are not able to apply the right action because the system enforces the standard procedure of work This often has various undesired consequences: work is done `outside' the system, work cannot be done in the appropriate way, dissatisfaction of employees, resistance towards the system, etc As a result, workow management systems cannot be used properly if it is necessary that employees control the execution of business processes This thesis proposes a new approach to workow management systems that can facilitate contemporary business processes in a better way by enabling a better balance between exibility and support As opposed to traditional approaches which use procedural process models to explicitly (ie, step-by-step) specify the execution procedure, the proposed approach aims at the specification of business processes using constraints, ie, processes are modeled by rules that should be followed while executing business processes Constraint-based models implicitly specify the execution procedure by means of constraints: any execution that does not violate constraints is possible In addition to proposing a constrainbased approach, a concrete language for specification of constraints is given and the proof-of-concept prototype declare is described On the one hand, constraint-based management systems are exible, which allows employees to deal with specific (e/g/ unpredicted) situations in the most adequate way On the other hand, constraint-based management systems can support employees when it comes to aspects of business processes that are too complex for humans to handle There are several ways in which constraintbased management systems can provide both exibility and support

Pattern-Based Translation of BPMN Process Models to BPEL Web Services

Abstract: The Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is a graph-oriented language in which control and action nodes can be connected almost arbitrarily. It is primarily targeted at domain analysts and is supported by many modelling tools, but in its current form, it lacks the semantic precision required to capture fully executable business processes. The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) on the other hand is a mainly block-structured language, targeted at software developers and supported by several execution platforms. In the current setting, translating BPMN models into BPEL code is a necessary step towards standards-based business process development environments. This translation is challenging since BPMN and BPEL represent two fundamentally different classes of languages. Existing BPMN-to-BPEL translations rely on the identification of block-structured patterns in BPMN models that are mapped into block-structured BPEL constructs. This paper advances the state of the art in BPMN-to-BPEL translation by defining methods for identifying not only perfectly block-structured fragments in BPMN models, but also quasi-structured fragments that can be turned into perfectly structured ones and flow-based acyclic fragments that can be mapped into a combination of block-structured constructs and control links. Beyond its direct relevance in the context of BPMN and BPEL, this paper addresses issues that arise generally when translating between graph-oriented and block-structured flow definition languages.

Constructing customized process views

Abstract: To enable effective cross-organizational collaborations, process providers have to offer external views on their internal processes to their partners. A process view hides details of an internal process that are secret to or irrelevant for the partners. This paper describes a formal two-step approach for constructing customized process views on structured process models. First, a non-customized process view is constructed from an internal structured process model by aggregating internal activities the provider wishes to hide. Second, a customized process view is constructed by hiding and omitting activities from the non-customized view that are not requested by the process consumer. The feasibility of the approach is shown by means of a case study.

Modularity in Process Models: Review and Effects

Abstract: The use of subprocesses in large process models is an important step in modeling practice to handle complexity. While there are several advantages attributed to such a modular design, including ease of reuse, scalability, and enhanced understanding, the lack of precise guidelines turns out to be a major impediment for applying modularity in a systematic way. In this paper we approach this area of research from a critical perspective. Our first contribution is a review of existing approaches to process model modularity. This review shows that aside from some limited insights, a systematic and grounded approach to finding the optimal modularization of a process model is missing. Therefore, we turned to modular process models from practice to study their merits. In particular, we set up an experiment involving professional process modelers and tested the effect of modularization on understanding. Our second contribution, stemming from this experiment, is that modularity appears to pay off. We discuss some of the limitations of our research and implications for future design-oriented approaches.

Process mining techniques: an application to stroke care.

Abstract: In a competitive health-care market, hospitals have to focus on ways to streamline their processes in order to deliver high quality care while at the same time reducing costs. To accomplish this goal, hospital managers need a thorough understanding of the actual processes. Diffusion of Information and Communication Technology tools within hospitals, such as electronic clinical charts, computerized guidelines and, more generally, decision support systems, make huge collections of data available, not only for data analysis, but also for process analysis. Process mining can be used to extract process related information (e.g., process models) from data, i.e., process mining describes a family of a-posteriori analysis techniques exploiting the information recorded in the event logs. This process information can be used to understand and redesign processes to become efficient high quality processes. In this paper, we apply process mining on two datasets for stroke patients and present the most interesting results. Above all, the paper demonstrates the applicability of process mining in the health-care domain.

On the Duality of Information-Centric and Activity-Centric Models of Business Processes

Abstract: Most of the work in modeling business processes is activity-centric. Recently, an information-centric approach to business process modeling has emerged, where a business process is modeled as the interacting life cycles of information entities. The benefits of this approach are documented in a number of case studies. The goal of this paper is to formalize the information-centric approach and derive the relationships between the two approaches. We do this by formally defining the notion of a business entity from first principles and using this definition to derive an algorithm that generates an information-centric process model from an activity-centric model. We illustrate the two models using a real-world business process and provide an analysis of the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two modeling approaches.

Decision framework for chemical process design including different stages of environmental, health, and safety assessment

Abstract: In recent years, many chemical companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. In this context and with focus on early phases, we present a novel design framework that comprises four stages of process modeling and multiobjective evaluation considering monetary and nonmonetary aspects. Each stage is characterized by the available information as a basis for process modeling and assessment. Appropriate modeling approaches, and evaluation indicators for economy, life-cycle environmental impacts, environment, health, and safety (EHS) hazard, and technical aspects are selected for each defined stage. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the design of a methyl methacrylate (MMA) process: considering 17 synthesis routes, the framework is mimicked step-by-step, to select the route with the best multiobjective performances, and to produce an optimized process flowsheet. As a validation of the framework, evaluation profile of six routes over all stages are compared, and crucial points are identified that should be estimated considerably well in early stages of the framework. © 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2008

On Measuring Process Model Similarity Based on High-Level Change Operations

Abstract: For various applications there is the need to compare the similarity between two process models. For example, given the as-is and to-be models of a particular business process, we would like to know how much they differ from each other and how we can efficiently transform the as-is to the to-be model; or given a running process instance and its original process schema, we might be interested in the deviations between them (e.g. due to ad-hoc changes at instance level). Respective considerations can be useful, for example, to minimize the efforts for propagating the schema changes to other process instances as well. All these scenarios require a method to measure the similarity or distance between two process models based on the efforts for transforming the one into the other. In this paper, we provide an approach using digital logic to evaluate the distance and similarity between two process models based on high-level change operations (e.g. to add, delete or move activities). In this way, we can not only guarantee that model transformation results in a sound process model, but also ensure that related efforts are minimized.

Process Modelling, Identification, and Control

Abstract: Mathematical Modelling of Processes.- Analysis of Process Models.- Dynamical Behaviour of Processes.- Discrete-Time Process Models.- Process Identification.- The Control Problem and Design of Simple Controllers.- Optimal Process Control.- Predictive Control.- Adaptive Control.

Quantifying process equivalence based on observed behavior

Abstract: In various application domains there is a desire to compare process models, e.g., to relate an organization-specific process model to a reference model, to find a web service matching some desired service description, or to compare some normative process model with a process model discovered using process mining techniques. Although many researchers have worked on different notions of equivalence (e.g., trace equivalence, bisimulation, branching bisimulation, etc.), most of the existing notions are not very useful in this context. First of all, most equivalence notions result in a binary answer (i.e., two processes are equivalent or not). This is not very helpful because, in real-life applications, one needs to differentiate between slightly different models and completely different models. Second, not all parts of a process model are equally important. There may be parts of the process model that are rarely activated (i.e., ''process veins'') while other parts are executed for most process instances (i.e., the ''process arteries''). Clearly, differences in some veins of a process are less important than differences in the main arteries of a process. To address the problem, this paper proposes a completely new way of comparing process models. Rather than directly comparing two models, the process models are compared with respect to some typical behavior. This way, we are able to avoid the two problems just mentioned. The approach has been implemented and has been used in the context of genetic process mining. Although the results are presented in the context of Petri nets, the approach can be applied to any process modeling language with executable semantics.

Enterprise Architecture A to Z: Frameworks, Business Process Modeling, SOA, and Infrastructure Technology

Abstract: Evaluating the role of Enterprise Architecture planning and Service Oriented modeling, this text presents an assessment of storage technologies and networking as well as addresses regulatory and security issues.

Influence Factors of Understanding Business Process Models

Abstract: The increasing utilization of business process models both in business analysis and information systems development raises several issues regarding quality measures. In this context, this paper discusses understandability as a particular quality aspect and its connection with personal, model, and content related factors. We use an online survey to explore the ability of the model reader to draw correct conclusions from a set of process models. For the first group of the participants we used models with abstract activity labels (e.g. A, B, C) while the second group received the same models with illustrative labels such as “check credit limit”. The results suggest that all three categories indeed have an impact on the understandability.

A Survey on the Flexibility Requirements Related to Business Processes and Modeling Artifacts

Abstract: In competitive and evolving environments only organizations which can manage complexity and can respond to rapid change in an informed manner can gain a competitive advantage During the early 90's, workflow technologies offered a transversal integration capacity to the enterprise applications. Today, to "integrate " enterprise applications -and the activities they support- into business processes is not sufficient. The architecture of this integration should also be flexible. Enterprise requirements highlight flexible and adaptive processes whose execution can evolve (i) according to situations that cannot always be prescribed, and/or (ii) according to business changes (organizational, process improvement, strategic ...). More recent works highlight requirements in term of flexible and adaptive workflows, whose execution can evolve according to situations that cannot always be prescribed. This paper presents the state of the art for flexible business process management systems and criteria for comparing them.

Non-functional requirements in business process modeling

Abstract: Business process modeling entails the capture of a set of tasks that invariably model the functional behavior of a system. Another aspect of business process modeling involves the accurate capture of operational behavior and the associated process constraints. Whether the process is automated or manual, such operational constraints and behavior exist. This may include a variety of properties including performance expectations, policy constraints, and security controls. These characteristics later manifest as the non-functional requirements of an intended system, and often such information is generally identified at some point after the business process modeling exercise. The non-functional characteristics of the business are arguably more difficult to capture in business process modeling, since the focus of such methods is the modeling of functional behavior. We propose how two new artifacts may be applied to model the constraints associated with a business process. This is the operating condition to denote a business process constraint and the control case to define controlling criteria to mitigate risk associated with an operational condition. Modeling constraints in this way provides an opportunity to capture these characteristics of business process early in the systems development life-cycle. This contributes to a model that provides a more complete representation of the overall business process. The methods will assist in mitigating risk and facilitate the early discovery of non-functional requirements during systems development.

On a Quest for Good Process Models: The Cross-Connectivity Metric

Abstract: Business process modeling is an important corporate activity, but the understanding of what constitutes good process models is rather limited. In this paper, we turn to the cognitive dimensions framework and identify the understanding of the structural relationship between any pair of model elements as a hard mental operation. Based on the weakest-link metaphor, we introduce the cross-connectivity metric that measures the strength of the links between process model elements. The definition of this new metric builds on the hypothesis that process models are easier understood and contain less errors if they have a high cross-connectivity. We undertake a thorough empirical evaluation to test this hypothesis and present our findings. The good performance of this novel metric underlines the importance of cognitive research for advancing the field of process model measurement.

Applying Patterns during Business Process Modeling

Abstract: Although the business process community has put a major emphasis on patterns, notably the famous workflow patterns, only limited support for using patterns in today's business process modeling tools can be found. While the basic workflow patterns for control flow are available in almost every business process modeling tool, there is no support for the user in correctly applying these simple patterns leading to many incorrectly modeled business processes. Only limited support for pattern compounds can be found in some tools, there is no active support for selecting patterns that are applicable in some user-determined context, tools do not give feedback to the user if applying a pattern can lead to a modeling error, nor do they trace the sequence of applied patterns during the editing process. In this paper, we describe an extension of a business process modeling tool with patterns to provide these capabilities. We distinguish three scenarios of pattern application and discuss a set of pattern compounds that are based on the basic workflow patterns for control flow. We present an approach where business users receive help in understanding the context and consequences of applying a pattern.

A Survey of Formal Verification for Business Process Modeling

Abstract: Information systems have to respond well to the changing business environment. Thus, they must have architecture which withstands the change. To design such systems, business process modeling is effective, however, the models include often abstractness and arbitrariness. Therefore, there have been efforts that validate rigorousness of the models. They have defined semantics of the models and applied various logics and formal methods to verification of the rigorousness. This paper focuses on formal verification of the models and surveys the efforts. We also discuss the prospect of the solutions. The establishment of the verification will be surely helpful toward solving the problems on business process reengineering, business process management, service-oriented architecture, and so on.

Analyzing interacting WS-BPEL processes using flexible model generation

Abstract: We address the problem of analyzing the interaction between WS-BPEL processes. We present a technology chain that starts out with a WS-BPEL process and translates it into a Petri net model. On the model we decide controllability of the process (the existence of a partner process, such that both can interact properly) and compute its operating guideline (a characterization of all properly interacting partner processes). To manage processes of realistic size, we present a concept of a flexible model generation which allows the generation of compact Petri net models. A case study demonstrates the value of this technology chain.

Oryx --- An Open Modeling Platform for the BPM Community

Abstract: In the academic business process management community, tooling plays an increasingly important role [8,6]. There are good reasons for this fact. Firstly, theoretical concepts benefit from exploration using prototypical implementation of the concepts. By experimentation based on real-world business processes, concepts can be evaluated and refined. Secondly, the practical applicability of the research work can be demonstrated, which is important to raise awareness of academic BPM research to practitioners.

Computational design of synthetic gene circuits with composable parts

Abstract: Motivation: In principle, novel genetic circuits can be engineered using standard parts with well-understood functionalities. However, no model based on the simple composition of these parts has become a standard, mainly because it is difficult to define signal exchanges between biological units as unambiguously as in electrical engineering. Corresponding concepts and computational tools for easy circuit design in biology are missing. Results: Taking inspiration from (and slightly modifying) ideas in the ‘MIT Registry of Standard Biological Parts’, we developed a method for the design of genetic circuits with composable parts. Gene expression requires four kinds of signal carriers: RNA polymerases, ribosomes, transcription factors and environmental ‘messages’ (inducers or corepressors). The flux of each of these types of molecules is a quantifiable biological signal exchanged between parts. Here, each part is modeled independently by the ordinary differential equations (ODE) formalism and integrated into the software ProMoT (Process Modeling Tool). In this way, we realized a ‘drag and drop’ tool, where genetic circuits are built just by placing biological parts on a canvas and by connecting them through ‘wires’ that enable flow of signal carriers, as it happens in electrical engineering. Our simulations of well-known synthetic circuits agree well with published computational and experimental results. Availability: The code is available on request from the authors. Contact: mario.marchisio@bsse.ethz.ch Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.