Modeling IoT-aware Business Processes - A State of the Art Report

This research report presents an analysis of the state of the art of modeling Internet of Things (IoT)-aware business processes. IOT links the physical world to the digital world. Traditionally, we would find information about events and processes in the physical world in the digital world entered by humans and humans using this information to control the physical world. In the IoT paradigm, the physical world is equipped with sensors and actuators to create a direct link with the digital world. Business processes are used to coordinate a complex environment including multiple actors for a common goal, typically in the context of administrative work. In the past few years, we have seen research efforts on the possibilities to model IoT- aware business processes, extending process coordination to real world entities directly. This set of research efforts is relatively small when compared to the overall research effort into the IoT and much of the work is still in the early research stage. To create a basis for a bridge between IoT and BPM, the goal of this report is to collect and analyze the state of the art of existing frameworks for modeling IoT-aware business processes.Comment: 42 page

Applying the business process and practice alignment meta-model: Daily practices and process modelling

Background: Business Process Modelling (BPM) is one of the most important phases of information system design. Business Process (BP) meta-models allow capturing informational and behavioural aspects of business processes. Unfortunately, standard BP meta-modelling approaches focus just on process description, providing different BP models. It is not possible to compare and identify related daily practices in order to improve BP models. This lack of information implies that further research in BP meta-models is needed to reflect the evolution/change in BP. Considering this limitation, this paper introduces a new BP meta-model designed by Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model (BPPAMeta-model). Our intention is to present a meta-model that addresses features related to the alignment between daily work practices and BP descriptions. Objectives: This paper intends to present a meta-model which is going to integrate daily work information into coherent and sound process definitions. Methods/Approach: The methodology employed in the research follows a design-science approach. Results: The results of the case study are related to the application of the proposed meta-model to align the specification of a BP model with work practices models. Conclusions: This meta-model can be used within the BPPAM methodology to specify or improve business processes models based on work practice descriptions

Business process and practice alignment meta-model

Business Process Modelling (BPM) is one of the most important phases of information system design. Business Process meta-models allow capturing informational and behavioural aspects of business processes. Unfortunately, standard business process meta-modelling approaches, such as the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) Meta-model, Quality-Oriented Business Process Meta-Model (QOBPM) and Transactional Meta-Model for Business Process (TMBP) focus just on process description, providing different business process models. According to these meta-modelling approaches, it is not possible to compare and identify related daily practices in order to improve business process models. This lack of information recognizes that further research in Business Process (BP) meta-model is needed to reflect the evolution/change on software processes. Considering this limitation in BP meta-modelling, this paper presents a comparative study of the most recognized business process meta-models approaches and introduces a new BP meta-model designed by Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model (BPPAMeta-model). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and propose a business process meta-model that addresses features related to the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Comparison of Simple Graphical Process Models

Comparing the structure of graphical process models can reveal a number of process variations. Since most contemporary norms for process modelling rely on directed connectivity of objects in the model, connections between objects form sequences which can be translated into performing scenarios. Whereas sequences can be tested for completeness in performing process activities using simulation methods, the similarity or difference in static characteristics of sequences in different model variants are difficult to explore. The goal of the paper is to test the application of a method for comparison of graphical models by analyzing and comparing static characteristics of process models. Consequently, a metamodel for process models is developed followed by a comparison procedure conducted using a graphical model comparison algorithm

Modelling and Analysis Using GROOVE

In this paper we present case studies that describe how the graph transformation tool GROOVE has been used to model problems from a wide variety of domains. These case studies highlight the wide applicability of GROOVE in particular, and of graph transformation in general. They also give concrete templates for using GROOVE in practice. Furthermore, we use the case studies to analyse the main strong and weak points of GROOVE

A Meta Model Based Extension of BPMN 2.0 for Mobile Context Sensitive Business Processes and Applications

Smart devices like smartphones or tablets have become ubiquitous, which affected many daily work activities like maintaining contacts via a mobile CRM anywhere, anytime. Thus, business processes can now be executed independently of an employee’s location. In addition, mobile devices have the possibility to measure physical quantities through sensors, like location or acceleration. Moreover, the connection to wireless networks made it possible to query context information like customer history. These context information can be used to adapt mobile business processes and the mobile application that support them. But in order to use this advantage, mobile sensor data has to be reflected in the business process model. As current languages for process aware information systems, such as BPMN, do not support the influence of mobile context information, we propose an extension of the BPMN that will enable the modeling of mobile context sensitive business processes

BPMNt : a proposal for flexible process tailoring representation in BPMN /

Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a de-facto standard for business process modeling, which focuses on the representation of the process behavior. However, it can also succeed in representing the behavior of software processes, since they are a type of business process. Although BPMN has been extensively used for modeling processes in different domains, its standard specification does not have any mechanism to support users in activities related to process adaptation (tailoring). Moreover, researches extending BPMN are based on complex consolidated models, which hamper the analysis and maintenance of individual variant process models and are not appropriate for application domains in which process variations are difficult to predict, such as in software development processes. Thus, our objective was to provide a BPMN-compliant extension and associated mechanisms for specifying flexible process tailoring on models produced with this language while ensuring the correctness of adapted process models and explicitly capturing change traces. We have focused our research on the domains of Software Process Engineering (SPE) and Business Process Management (BPM). At last, we evaluated the applicability of the proposal for representing realistic tailoring scenarios in both domains.BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) é um padrão para modelagem de processos de negócio, que tem seu foco na representação do comportamento de processos. No entanto, ele pode também ser usado para representar o comportamento de processos de software, já que eles são um tipo de processo de negócio. Embora BPMN tem sido extensivamente usado para modelar processos em diferentes domínios, sua especificação padrão não possui nenhum mecanismo para apoiar usuários em atividades relacionadas à adaptação de processos. Pesquisas que estendem o padrão são baseadas em modelos complexos, que dificultam a análise e manutenção de modelos variantes, e não são apropriadas para domínios de aplicação onde variações de processo são difíceis de predizer, como em processos de desenvolvimento de software. Assim, nosso objetivo foi fornecer uma extensão para BPMN, chamada BPMNt, e mecanismos de suporte para especificar, de modo flexível, adaptações em processos modelados com esta linguagem. BPMNt deve também garantir a corretude de modelos adaptados e explicitamente capturar rastros de mudanças realizadas. Essa pesquisa teve como foco os domínios de Engenharia de Processos de Software e Gerenciamento de Processos de Negócio. Por fim, nós avaliamos a aplicabilidade da proposta para representar cenários de adaptação reais em ambos os domínios