Change Support in Process-Aware Information Systems - A Pattern-Based Analysis

In today's dynamic business world the economic success of an enterprise increasingly depends on its ability to react to changes in its environment in a quick and flexible way. Process-aware information systems (PAIS) offer promising perspectives in this respect and are increasingly employed for operationally supporting business processes. To provide effective business process support, flexible PAIS are needed which do not freeze existing business processes, but allow for loosely specified processes, which can be detailed during run-time. In addition, PAIS should enable authorized users to flexibly deviate from the predefined processes if required (e.g., by allowing them to dynamically add, delete, or move process activities) and to evolve business processes over time. At the same time PAIS must ensure consistency and robustness. The emergence of different process support paradigms and the lack of methods for comparing existing change approaches have made it difficult for PAIS engineers to choose the adequate technology. In this paper we suggest a set of changes patterns and change support features to foster the systematic comparison of existing process management technology with respect to process change support. Based on these change patterns and features, we provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of selected systems from both academia and industry. The identified change patterns and change support features facilitate the comparison of change support frameworks, and consequently will support PAIS engineers in selecting the right technology for realizing flexible PAIS. In addition, this work can be used as a reference for implementing more flexible PAIS

Innovation in the service economy: novelty in solutions

Recent studies show that firms in the knowledge economy develop new services as well as new products, thus providing solutions, experiences and creating value with, as well as for, their customers (Prahalad & Ramaswarmy, 2004). The paper briefly reviews literatures on multiple forms of innovation, including innovation in services. Characteristics of firms undertaking innovation in services are identified and implications for the management of innovation and propositions for future research are developed

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Model of regional management instruments in economy based on innovation and communication

The following paper has been inspired by the main challenges that have been created for the regional development by the process of globalisation. The paper presents an attempt at creating a new model and instruments for regional development management in which regional character of knowledge creation, territorial interdependencies, sustainable development and both democratic and individual decision making processes have been taken into consideration. The problem of emerging notion of regional management and its relation to the knowledge management in the process of regional development has been discussed. The paper presents the concept of regional knowledge creation process as the essential method of description of a region's development and competitiveness. The model of management of an autopoiesis system as an essential method of description of development and knowledge creation in a local community has been presented. The process of knowledge development in a region is assisted by ICT, including the Internet portal and corporate knowledge base. The technique of analyse field and space of choice and its role in the regional process of knowledge creation as the tool serving the process of describing and diagnosing the ability of knowledge creation as well as individual and regional strategies. The description of development changes in a region have been presented in the categories of critical points focusing on the zones of degradation and development. The results obtained with the help of the proposed model of regional development can serve to develop the international standards of risk and critical points of regional management. The fact of using the knowledge management principles for the interpretation of regional processes changes considerably the role of regional development agencies. The introduction of the Internet portal and critical points analysis provides a new way of presenting the knowledge about a region. The solution proposed in the presented paper based on the corporate knowledge data bases creates contextual character of relations and connections between different measured parameters and therefore it unceasingly creates new knowledge in compliance with the spiral upward movement. The introduced indicators analysis serves to describe state of individual components (people, organisations, natural ecosystems) of the region in question, and first of all it determines their development abilities and adaptability to their environment. The territorial structure creates a complex spatial system of interrelations in which local community relates to its environment in the intensive process of communication that determines how the external components are used in the process of regional development. Such instruments as the regional Internet portal, regional communitces of practice, regional staff of knowledge management and leaders of local development become the most important tools of assistance in local development processes. The presented paper provides a coherent model of regional management which is in compliance with "regional standards" assuring predictable character of changes in the region and leading to stable economic development of the whole region.

Embedding Requirements within the Model Driven Architecture

The Model Driven Architecture (MDA) brings benefits to software development, among them the potential for connecting software models with the business domain. This paper focuses on the upstream or Computation Independent Model (CIM) phase of the MDA. Our contention is that, whilst there are many models and notations available within the CIM Phase, those that are currently popular and supported by the Object Management Group (OMG), may not be the most useful notations for business analysts nor sufficient to fully support software requirements and specification. Therefore, with specific emphasis on the value of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) for business analysts, this paper provides an example of a typical CIM approach before describing an approach which incorporates specific requirements techniques. A framework extension to the MDA is then introduced; which embeds requirements and specification within the CIM, thus further enhancing the utility of MDA by providing a more complete method for business analysis

Change Mining in Adaptive Process Management Systems

The wide-spread adoption of process-aware information systems has resulted in a bulk of computerized information about real-world processes. This data can be utilized for process performance analysis as well as for process improvement. In this context process mining offers promising perspectives. So far, existing mining techniques have been applied to operational processes, i.e., knowledge is extracted from execution logs (process discovery), or execution logs are compared with some a-priori process model (conformance checking). However, execution logs only constitute one kind of data gathered during process enactment. In particular, adaptive processes provide additional information about process changes (e.g., ad-hoc changes of single process instances) which can be used to enable organizational learning. In this paper we present an approach for mining change logs in adaptive process management systems. The change process discovered through process mining provides an aggregated overview of all changes that happened so far. This, in turn, can serve as basis for all kinds of process improvement actions, e.g., it may trigger process redesign or better control mechanisms

Refinement of SDBC Business Process Models Using ISDL

Aiming at aligning business process modeling and software specification, the SDBC approach considers a multi-viewpoint modeling where static, dynamic, and data business process aspect models have to be mapped adequately to corresponding static, dynamic, and data software specification aspect models. Next to that, the approach considers also a business process modeling viewpoint which concerns real-life communication and coordination issues, such as meanings, intentions, negotiations, commitments, and obligations. Hence, in order to adequately align communication and dynamic aspect models, SDBC should use at least two modeling techniques. However, the transformation between two techniques unnecessarily complicates the modeling process. Next to that, different techniques use different modeling formalisms whose reflection sometimes causes limitations. For this reason, we explore in the current paper the value which the (modeling) language ISDL could bring to SDBC in the alignment of communication and behavioral (dynamic) business process aspect models; ISDL can usefully refine dynamic process models. Thus, it is feasible to expect that ISDL can complement the SDBC approach, allowing refinement of dynamic business process aspect models, by adding communication and coordination actions. Furthermore, SDBC could benefit from ISDL-related methods assessing whether a realized refinement conforms to the original process model. Our studies in the paper are supported by an illustrative example