Discovery and Evaluation of Coordination Patterns for Business Processes in many-to-many Relationships

Today, organisations use process-oriented systems to manage and automate the enactment of their business processes. The cornerstone artifact is the process model, which at design-time is used to describe the steps that need to be fulfilled in order to reach a business goal. At run-time, the process model is executed and process instances are created. The existing modelling approaches are based on three main paradigms: the more traditional activity-centric paradigm, the case handling paradigm and the more recent data-centric paradigm. Process models can be classified into monolithic and interacting process models. Monolithic process models are predominantly created in the activity-centric and case-handling paradigm. In a monolithic process model, all the involved resources and activities are contained in one vast model. In monolithic process models, interactions occur between the different partners involved in a cross-organisational setting which exchange messages with one another. Interacting process models are prevalent in the data-centric paradigm. In interacting process models, interdependent processes interact with one another such that on a meta-level a composite business process is achieved. In both types of models, interactions between interrelated processes need to be properly coordinated such that a common business objective can be reached. Handling the complexity generated by highly interconnected scenarios, involving hundreds of processes, is a challenge in business process management. Process management systems for such collaborations must be capable of handling both synchronous and asynchronous process interactions. In the context of process management systems, different pattern catalogues such as the Service Interaction Pattern or Correlation Pattern have been used for describing fundamental types of interactions that repeatedly arise during business process modelling. Yet, until now, none of the existing pattern catalogues has explicitly tackled the interactions of heterogeneous business processes in a many-to-many relationship setting. Furthermore, the existing pattern catalogues for the interaction-perspective are not paradigm independent, but mainly focus on the activity-centric paradigm. For modelling multiple interacting processes with different dependency constraints, a collection of patterns that explicitly describes interactions among processes in different types of relationships, in a paradigm-independent manner, is required. This thesis proposes a catalogue of patterns, named the Process Coordination Patterns, describing process interactions in a one-to-many and many-to-many relationship setting. In the developed pattern catalogue, the discovered seven patterns are illustrated by abstracting from any specific paradigm. The PCPs may be used as guidance for evaluating the degree to which existing approaches capture more complex process interactions. In this thesis, the proposed pattern catalogue is put into practice by evaluating the degree to which two modelling approaches, based on different paradigms, can support the seven Process Coordination Patterns

Innovation and design change strategies for learning technologies at Warwick : towards a ‘design capabilities’ heuristic for guiding practice and evaluating change.

This report gives a narrative account of an investigation into design and design capability in teaching and learning in a research-intensive university. It begins, in the Introduction, with definitions of key concepts: design, designing, successful design (achieving fit, stick, spread and growth), design change and design capability (although this last term is only really fleshed­out in Reading the Case Studies and the Conclusion). These words are common currency, but rarely used with precision. When clearly defined they provide a lens through which we can attain more clarity and granularity in analysing attempts at enhancing practice. In the second part, on the Origins of the Investigation and Earlier Experiments, we examine the limitations of a techno­centric approach to understanding, predicting and supporting the uptake of technology enhanced learning. It is argued that a design capability approach is needed, in which the ability of all people (including students) to discover, create, adopt, adapt designs that fit, stick, spread and grow is of prime value. In part 3, the design of the investigation is explained, with its focus upon discovering, creating and using design patterns as a key facilitating aspect of design capability. In part 4, this is put to the test, with an attempt at creatively reading the 23 mini case studies produced in interviews with academics. However, design patterns do not emerge easily from the cases, and we see that design and designing in this setting is more diverse and complex than expected. It is argued that a design patterns based approach will be useful, but much more work needs to be done before design patterns can become the lingua franca of teaching and learning design and development. This leads to a more sophisticated view of design capability, presented in the Conclusion. Drawing upon the experiences of the academics interviewed in the case studies, especially experienced and confident senior academics, it is conjectured that we need to increase the intensity with which academics encounter and reflect upon design challenges, designerly approaches, suboptimal and successful designs and design patterns. An integrated combination of Design Thinking and the Higher Education Academy Fellowship framework is recommended as a way of achieving this

Classifying and evaluating architecture design methods

The concept of software architecture has gained a wide popularity and is generally considered to play a fundamental role in coping with the inherent difficulties of the development of large-scale and complex software systems. This document first gives a definition of architectures. Second, a meta-model for architecture design methods is presented. This model is used for classifying and evaluating various architecture design approaches. The document concludes with the description of the identified problems

Time patterns for process-aware information systems

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) due to their promising perspectives for improved business process support. Although the proper handling of temporal constraints is crucial in this context, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding their support of the temporal perspective of a business process. To make PAISs comparable with respect to their ability to deal with temporal constraints and to facilitate the development of a time-aware PAIS, this paper suggests 10 time patterns. All patterns are based on empirical evidence we gathered in case studies. Additionally, they are validated through a systematic literature review. Based on the time patterns, we then provide an in-depth evaluation of selected PAISs and academic approaches. Altogether, the 10 time patterns will not only facilitate the selection of technologies for realizing time- and process-aware information systems but can also be used as reference for implementing time support in PAISs