Mismatch patterns in similar business processes

To unify similar business processes, such as processes of similar business units or similar organizations, the similarities and differences between these business processes must be detected and the differences must be resolved. This paper presents a collection of patterns that describe frequently occurring mismatches between similar business processes. These patterns are helpful in the mismatch detection step. We discovered them in practice by comparing processes that we obtained from different business units in two organizations. The patterns help when merging processes in case of a merger between organizations. They also help when merging processes to construct a standardized process that allows organizations that adhere to the standard to interact successfully

Relying on heterogeneous data sources to detect business process change in process models

Due to changing customer needs, regulations, protocols, and technologies, an organi zation’s business processes must regularly change and improve. The Business Process Management (BPM) discipline guides organizations to perform these changes through the BPM life-cycle, in which business processes are modeled, analyzed, redesigned, and implemented. However, sometimes these changes bypass the BPM life-cycle, happening directly at the implementations’ operational level. Consequently, the respective process models need to be updated. Business process event logs can be analyzed to identify which models need updates, but not all implementations generate event logs. One possible approach to help detect business process changes is monitoring external sys tems, participants, documents, and other items used or produced by a business process. These items are observable entities, which are components required for a business pro cess execution. Monitoring change in these entities turns them into heterogeneous data sources, named as such because their data cannot easily be merged with event logs. We show that these entities can be used to create a framework for assisting in updating out dated process models, though it demands a method for identifying these entities. It also requires the mapping between entities and process models, allowing process analysts to quickly identify outdated models when the linked entities have suffered changes. In this thesis, we assess the feasibility of creating this framework. We evaluated and compared different frameworks of organizational change, business process analysis, and redesign with an investigation of the changes required to update 25 real process models. This comparison guided us to define a taxonomy of observable entities related to business process change, which we applied to manually classify 1329 process elements originating from 88 process models. The classification frequency of the process models was 57% on average. The classification was also used to train automated classifiers using machine learning. The best automated classifiers achieved F1-scores of up to 95.4%. Our method of semi-automated manual classification of process elements with process analysts is the primary method for identifying observable entities as required by our sug gested framework. In addition, we defined a set of recommendations to help build the mapping between entities and process models and ensure it stays consistent, as well as instructions on how to use the framework to identify outdated process models

Architectural Alignment of Access Control Requirements Extracted from Business Processes

Business processes and information systems evolve constantly and affect each other in non-trivial ways. Aligning security requirements between both is a challenging task. This work presents an automated approach to extract access control requirements from business processes with the purpose of transforming them into a) access permissions for role-based access control and b) architectural data flow constraints to identify violations of access control in enterprise application architectures

A transformation of business process models into software-executable models using MDA

Traditional software development projects for process-oriented organizations are time consuming and do not always guarantee the fulfillment of the functional requirements of the client organization, and thus the quality of the resulting software product. To reduce the time spent for developing software and improve its quality, we adopt the inclusion of automation in some parts of the software development process. Thus, in this paper, we propose a model transformation approach to derive an executable model for the business processes of a given organization. We execute a mapping between processes (described with a business process execution language) and software components. We also propose a supporting software architecture based on an Enterprise Service Bus and on Java Business Integration, and we use an already defined methodology to execute the model transformation project.FEDER, FC

Approaches for the Advancement of Business Processes in a Company that Deals with Graphic Production

The aim of the research in this paper is the determination of the existing business processes in a company that deals with graphic activity with the possibility of their improvement by applying the TQM (Total Quality Management) methodology, which is closely linked to the financial performance of the company and the satisfaction of all interested sides. In the survey we did there are several main reasons that cause problems in the printing facility and the request of the top management for improving the processes and involvement of competent persons in them is of great importance for the printing company to become world-class. During the research, which was an integral part of the TQM methodology several management methods were applied: check list, Pareto diagram, Ishikawa access and benchmarking strategy. Analysis of the current state allowed making of suggestions for improvement through the application of TQM methodology. The methodology of the TQM philosophy is continuous improvement of all processes in the organization through small changes in short periods of time including all organizational members regardless of their hierarchical level without making large capital investments

A Configuration Taxonomy of Business Process Orientation

Organizations strive to develop a variety of capabilities to improve and measure business processes. Researchers have used various maturity models to investigate the development of a business process orientation (BPO), and most have argued that such a development comes in stages. Current literature underestimates the interrelationships between BPO capabilities and fails to consider multidimensional or non-linear paths to maturity. To refine the features of maturity models, this study relies on configuration theory to uncover different archetypes for BPO development and quantitatively evaluate them by examining performance differences among archetypes based on a large-scale international dataset. The resulting empirical taxonomy with seven BPO archetypes establishes important performance differences between organizations at a similar maturity level. Besides strengthening the theoretical foundations of BPO and making maturity assessments more multifaceted, the results help organizations give their managerial efforts a focus by enabling comparison with peers in the same archetype and showing various paths for BPO improvement

Exploring Maintainability Assurance Research for Service- and Microservice-Based Systems: Directions and Differences

To ensure sustainable software maintenance and evolution, a diverse set of activities and concepts like metrics, change impact analysis, or antipattern detection can be used. Special maintainability assurance techniques have been proposed for service- and microservice-based systems, but it is difficult to get a comprehensive overview of this publication landscape. We therefore conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to collect and categorize maintainability assurance approaches for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices. Our search strategy led to the selection of 223 primary studies from 2007 to 2018 which we categorized with a threefold taxonomy: a) architectural (SOA, microservices, both), b) methodical (method or contribution of the study), and c) thematic (maintainability assurance subfield). We discuss the distribution among these categories and present different research directions as well as exemplary studies per thematic category. The primary finding of our SLR is that, while very few approaches have been suggested for microservices so far (24 of 223, ?11%), we identified several thematic categories where existing SOA techniques could be adapted for the maintainability assurance of microservices

Investigating business process elements: a journey from the field of Business Process Management to ontological analysis, and back

Business process modelling languages (BPMLs) typically enable the representation of business processes via the creation of process models, which are constructed using the elements and graphical symbols of the BPML itself. Despite the wide literature on business process modelling languages, on the comparison between graphical components of different languages, on the development and enrichment of new and existing notations, and the numerous definitions of what a business process is, the BPM community still lacks a robust (ontological) characterisation of the elements involved in business process models and, even more importantly, of the very notion of business process. While some efforts have been done towards this direction, the majority of works in this area focuses on the analysis of the behavioural (control flow) aspects of process models only, thus neglecting other central modelling elements, such as those denoting process participants (e.g., data objects, actors), relationships among activities, goals, values, and so on. The overall purpose of this PhD thesis is to provide a systematic study of the elements that constitute a business process, based on ontological analysis, and to apply these results back to the Business Process Management field. The major contributions that were achieved in pursuing our overall purpose are: (i) a first comprehensive and systematic investigation of what constitutes a business process meta-model in literature, and a definition of what we call a literature-based business process meta-model starting from the different business process meta-models proposed in the literature; (ii) the ontological analysis of four business process elements (event, participant, relationship among activities, and goal), which were identified as missing or problematic in the literature and in the literature-based meta-model; (iii) the revision of the literature-based business process meta-model that incorporates the analysis of the four investigated business process elements - event, participant, relationship among activities and goal; and (iv) the definition and evaluation of a notation that enriches the relationships between activities by including the notions of occurrence dependences and rationales

Exogenous Shocks and Business Process Management : A Scholars' Perspective on Challenges and Opportunities

Business process management (BPM) drives corporate success through effective and efficient processes. In recent decades, knowledge has been accumulated regarding the identification, discovery, analysis, design, implementation, and monitoring of business processes. This includes methods and tools for tackling various kinds of process change such as continuous process improvement, process reengineering, process innovation, and process drift. However, exogenous shocks, which lead to unintentional and radical process change, have been neglected in BPM research although they severely affect an organization’s context, strategy, and business processes. This research note conceptualizes the interplay of exogenous shocks and BPM in terms of the effects that such shocks can have on organizations’ overall process performance over time. On this foundation, related challenges and opportunities for BPM via several rounds of idea generation and consolidation within a diverse team of BPM scholars are identified. The paper discusses findings in light of extant literature from BPM and related disciplines, as well as present avenues for future (BPM) research to invigorate the academic discourse on the topic

Intelligent Business Processes in CRM - Exemplified by Complaint Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is becoming a critical source of competitive advantage for businesses today. However, many CRM business processes are deficient and inflexible. For example, many customers are dissatisfied with complaint management. Still, companies seldom systematically adapt the complaint management process. In theory, operational and analytical CRM form a closed loop: analytical CRM uses business intelligence (BI) tools to analyze operational data and the knowledge gained is used for continual optimization of operations. One special approach in establishing this loop is to continually support decision points in operational processes with knowledge from BI. In this way, the use of BI becomes an integral part of business processes, which are then referred to as intelligent business processes. However, in CRM not much is known about this approach. Based on an extensive review of the literature, the study explores the state of theory and practice in the field of intelligent business processes in CRM, with special attention to complaint management because of its considerable importance and application potential. In particular, the conceptual framework of intelligent business processes in CRM is depicted and two implementation options are identified: embedded intelligence and business rules. Focusing on complaint management, evidence on intelligent business processes is systematically documented, weak points are identified, and a research agenda for the shift to more intelligent processes is presented