Approaches to Compute Workflow Complexity

During the last 20 years, complexity has been an interesting topic that has been investigated in many fields of science, such as biology, neurology, software engineering, chemistry, psychology, and economy. A survey of the various approaches to understand complexity has lead sometimes to a measurable quantity with a rigorous but narrow definition and other times as merely an ad hoc label. In this paper we investigate the complexity concept to avoid a vague use of the term `complexity\u27 in workflow designs. We present several complexity metrics that have been used for a number of years in adjacent fields of science and explain how they can be adapted and use to evaluate the complexity of workflows

Productivity equation and the m distributions of information processing in workflows

This research investigates an equation of productivity for workflows regarding its robustness towards the definition of workflows as probabilistic distributions. The equation was formulated across its derivations through a theoretical framework about information theory, probabilities and complex adaptive systems. By defining the productivity equation for organism-object interactions, workflows mathematical derivations can be predicted and monitored without strict empirical methods and allows workflow flexibility for organism-object environments.Comment: 6 pages, 0 figure

Framework de avaliação da complexidade e facilidade de compreensão de modelos BPMN

A modelação dos processos de negócios é cada vez mais utilizada para definir e descrever os processos de negócio das organizações. Esta metodologia é utilizada pelos stakeholders dos processos. Esta deve-se ao facto destes modelos serem uma ponte entre os seus utilizadores e os seus modeladores. Uma vez que esta modelação pode envolver várias pessoas, é natural que possam ocorrer problemas na construção e interpretação de modelos de processos de negócios. Estes problemas podem resultar quer da complexidade essencial da linguagem de modelação (p.e. Business Process Modelling Notation - BPMN), quer da complexidade acidental dos modelos produzidos. Uma maneira de perceber os defeitos existentes nos modelos, consiste na avaliação da complexidade e a consequente da facilidade na compreensão destes. Atualmente existem estudos sobre a qualidade dos modelos, referentes à complexidade e correção destes, mas estes estudos baseiam-se unicamente nos modelos, não recorrendo a dados externos (p.e. interpretação de voluntários) para perceber a sua compreensão. O foco deste trabalho é avaliar a complexidade e a facilidade de compreensão dos modelos BPMN. Para proceder à avaliação será utilizada como ponto de partida a abordagem Goal-Question-Metric. Esta abordagem será utilizada para determinar os objetivos da avaliação e as questões que permitam responder aos objetivos, que por sua vez serão respondidas com a implementação de métricas, podendo estas serem novas ou já existentes. As métricas serão ainda alvo de uma validação teórica segundo as propriedades de Weyuker. A recolha de dados através das métricas, será realizada de duas maneiras complementares, o primeiro caso consiste em recolher informações estatísticas dos modelo, no segundo caso foram recolhidos de dados relativos à compreensão dos leitores, com auxílio do dispositivo eye-tracker. Este dispositivo permite recolher dados de determinadas reações faciais das pessoas, tais como, o movimento dos olhos, a dilatação das pupilas e a taxa de pestanejos num determinado intervalo de tempo. A recolha de dados permitiu iniciar a análise da compreensão dos modelos ao nível dos seus elementos do modelo. De modo a proceder esta recolha de dados e análise, foi implementado um framework, que permitirá continuar a recolher mai

Managing Service Dependencies in Service Compositions

In the Internet of Services (IoS) providers and consumers of services engage in business interactions on service marketplaces. Provisioning and consumption of services are regulated by service level agreements (SLA), which are negotiated between providers and consumers. Trading composite services requires the providers to manage the SLAs that are negotiated with the providers of atomic services and the consumers of the composition. The management of SLAs involves the negotiation and renegotiation of SLAs as well as their monitoring during service provisioning. The complexity of this task arises due to the fact that dependencies exist between the different services in a composition. Dependencies between services occur because the complex task of a composition is distributed between atomic services. Thus, the successful provisioning of the composite service depends on its atomic building blocks. At the same time, atomic services depend on other atomic services, e.g. because of data or resource requirements, or time relationships. These dependencies need to be considered for the management of composite service SLAs. This thesis aims at developing a management approach for dependencies between services in service compositions to support SLA management. Information about service dependencies is not explicitly available. Instead it is implicitly contained in the workflow description of a composite service, the negotiated SLAs of the composite service, and as application domain knowledge of experts, which makes the handling of this information more complex. Thus, the dependency management approach needs to capture this dependency information in an explicit way. The dependency information is then used to support SLA management in three ways. First of all dependency information is used during SLA negotiation the to ensure that the different SLAs enable the successful collaboration of the services to achieve the composite service goal. Secondly, during SLA renegotiation dependency information is used to determine which effects the renegotiation has on other SLAs. Finally, dependency information is used during SLA monitoring to determine the effects of detected violations on other services. Based on a literature study and two use cases from the logistics and healthcare domains different types of dependencies were analyzed and classified. The results from this analysis were used as a basis for the development of an approach to analyze and represent dependency information according to the different dependency properties. Furthermore, a lifecycle and architecture for managing dependency information was developed. In an iterative approach the different artifacts were implemented, tested based on two use cases, and refined according to the test results Finally, the prototype was evaluated with regard to detailed test cases and performance measurements were executed. The resulting dependency management approach has four main contributions. Firstly, it represents a holistic approach for managing service dependencies with regard to composite SLA management. It extends existing work by supporting the handling of dependencies between atomic services as well as atomic and composite services at design time and during service provisioning. Secondly, a semi-automatic approach to capturing dependency information is provided. It helps to achieve a higher degree of automation as compared to other approaches. Thirdly, a metamodel for representing dependency information for SLA management is shown. Dependency information is kept separately from SLA information to achieve a better separation of concerns. This facilitates the utilization of the dependency management functionality with different SLA management approaches. Fourthly, a dependency management architecture is presented. The design of the architecture ensures that the components can be integrated with different SLA management approaches. The test case based evaluation of the dependency management approach showed its feasibility and correct functioning in two different application domains. Furthermore, the performance evaluation showed that the automated dependency management tasks are executed within the range of milliseconds for both use cases. The dependency management approach is suited to support the different SLA management tasks. It supports the work of composite service providers by facilitating the SLA management of complex service compositions

Model-Driven Management of Internal Controls for Business Process Compliance

The thesis tackles the problem of high effort for achieving business process compliance to regulations in the area of Enterprise Risk Management. Common to these regulations are requirements on the presence of effective internal controls in companies. The level of automation with regard to translating compliance requirements into a set of internal controls and assuring the effectiveness of these controls during execution of business processes is raised thorugh a novel model-driven approach

The measurement of information flow efficiency in supply chain management

Characteristics such as speed of reaction, order accuracy, operational flexibility and sustained quality have become fundamental in successful business today. The success of aligning a supply chain to attain these characteristics depends largely on the use of efficient communication and information technology. Communication between supply chain members requires that relevant information is transferred from its point of inception to the next point(s) of use. The transfer of information entails an efficient flow of information between systems, between systems and humans and between humans, which is directly associated with the effective interoperability between the various entities handling the relevant information. Accordingly, the realisation of interoperability will mean a faster information flow and, thus, an effective decision-making process. This research, therefore, will propose indicators and metrics for the assessment of the information flow efficiency of a business and, in particular, of a supply chain, examine the existing techniques of information flow measurement, and identify inherent weaknesses. New information flow efficiency metrics are developed and categorised into different indicators, which are based on the quality of the information as it is applied in finance, information technology and the principles of business performance measurements. This research will illustrate that these quality characteristics drive an effective and efficient information flow which, in turn, enables them to be used both as indicators and as associated metrics of information flow efficiency. Explorative analysis and statistical cluster analysis identified the most important indicators and associated metrics based on the results of a survey instrument designed specifically for this purpose. Scales were developed to facilitate the numeric assessment of the metrics and indicators. In order to prove the ability of the new indicators and associated metrics to differentiate between different levels of information flow efficiency, the new metrics were applied in sample organisations and the responses evaluated. This research lays an important foundation in terms of the ability to assess information flow efficiency which is, in turn, necessary in order to gain a better understanding of the performance of supply chains in a time where real-time information flow and electronic integration are becoming strategic business success factors.Business ManagementD. Com. (Business Management

Approaches to Compute Workflow Complexity

Abstract — During the last 20 years, complexity has been an interesting topic that has been investigated in many fields of science, such as biology, neurology, software engineering, chemistry, psychology, and economy. A survey of the various approaches to understand complexity has lead sometimes to a measurable quantity with a rigorous but narrow definition and other times as merely an ad hoc label. In this paper we investigate the complexity concept to avoid a vague use of the term ‘complexity ’ in workflow designs. We present several complexity metrics that have been used for a number of years in adjacent fields of science and explain how they can be adapted and use to evaluate the complexity of workflows.