OptBPPlanner: Automatic Generation of Optimized Business Process Enactment Plans

Unlike imperative models, the specifi cation of business process (BP) properties in a declarative way allows the user to specify what has to be done instead of having to specify how it has to be done, thereby facilitating the human work involved, avoiding failures, and obtaining a better optimization. Frequently, there are several enactment plans related to a specifi c declarative model, each one presenting specifi c values for different objective functions, e.g., overall completion time. As a major contribution of this work, we propose a method for the automatic generation of optimized BP enactment plans from declarative specifi cations. The proposed method is based on a constraint-based approach for planning and scheduling the BP activities. These optimized plans can then be used for different purposes like simulation, time prediction, recommendations, and generation of optimized BP models. Moreover, a tool-supported method, called OptBPPlanner, has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. Furthermore, the proposed method is validated through a range of test models of varying complexity.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009-1371

A Three-Level Process Framework for Contract-Based Dynamic Service Outsourcing

Service outsourcing is the business paradigm, in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers are selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is\ud specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service matchmaking and crossorganizational process enactment and hence has to conform to specific market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intraorganizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization. In this position paper, we present a three-level process specification framework for dynamic contract-based\ud service outsourcing. This framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approached is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We show how the framework can be placed in the context of infrastructures for cross-organizational process support

MAKING BUSINESS SENSE OF AMBIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF SECOND LIFE

Second Life (SL) presents a case of extreme open flexible technology. It provides a generic 3D immersive environment with a range of technological capability including text, voice, build, and mobility. The technology and its providers do not prescribe a particular objective of use or value for users. Hence it is surrounded by ambiguity regarding the process of adoption and its value particularly for business organisations. This study explores the process of making business sense of Second Life and the resulting business value. It does so through examining the case of Mobile Office adoption of SL and the created business value. Applying the cognitive and interpretive concept of enactment as developed by Weick and colleagues, the findings show that SL adoption presents a process of enactment that involves humans and artefacts inside and outside the organisation. This process of enactment results in an emerging chain of innovation. Business value is then created in and through the enactment process. The contribution to theory and practice is then discussed

Existence dependency-based domain modeling for improving stateless process enactment.

In a process-enabled service oriented architecture, a process engine typically stores the state of the process instances during enactment. As an alternative, stateless process enactment entails that process state is derived from the state of business objects, which are organized in a domain model. The business objects are referred to in pre- and post-conditions of activities, which determine when the activity is enabled and completed, respectively. Despite the fact that the latter approach has multiple benefits compared with the former, the repeated state (re)calculations deteriorate performance and the formulation of clear conditions is not self-evident if typical domain modeling techniques (e.g. UML or ER) are adopted. In this paper we show that by adopting a specific domain modeling technique, which is based on the notion of existence dependency between the business objects, the performance and comprehensibility issues can proficiently be dealt with. We illustrate the technique using a real-world case from the insurance domain and analyze the emerging duality between process modeling and domain modeling.

Generating Multi-objective Optimized Business Process Enactment Plans

Declarative business process (BP) models are increasingly used allowing their users to specify what has to be done instead of how. Due to their flexible nature, there are several enactment plans related to a specific declarative model, each one presenting specific values for different objective functions, e.g., completion time or profit. In this work, a method for generating optimized BP enactment plans from declarative specifications is proposed to optimize the performance of a process considering multiple objectives. The plans can be used for different purposes, e.g., providing recommendations. The proposed approach is validated through an empirical evaluation based on a real-world case study.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009-1371

Creating the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans: An Historical and Political Analysis

Drawing on recent historical institutionalist scholarship, this paper explores the debates leading to the enactment of the Canada/Quebec Pension Plans (C/Q.P.P.) in 1965. More specifically, this analysis underlines the respective role of and the interaction between political institutions, business and labor power, and changing ideas about the role of public and private pensions in Canada. As argued, although the ideas that guided the enactment of C/Q.P.P. stressed the key role of private benefits, the enduring weight of Canadian-style federalism mitigated the impact of interest groups, especially business organizations, on the legislative process. Overall, the paper suggests that students of social policy should pay closer attention to the interaction between political institutions, interest group mobilization, and changing ideas about the relationship between public and private benefits.pensions, ideas, institutions, federalism, politics, social policy, business, labor, private benefits, Canada

Optimized Time Management for Declarative Workflows

Declarative process models are increasingly used since they fit better with the nature of flexible process-aware information systems and the requirements of the stakeholders involved. When managing business processes, in addition, support for representing time and reasoning about it becomes crucial. Given a declarative process model, users may choose among different ways to execute it, i.e., there exist numerous possible enactment plans, each one presenting specific values for the given objective functions (e.g., overall completion time). This paper suggests a method for generating optimized enactment plans (e.g., plans minimizing overall completion time) from declarative process models with explicit temporal constraints. The latter covers a number of well-known workflow time patterns. The generated plans can be used for different purposes like providing personal schedules to users, facilitating early detection of critical situations, or predicting execution times for process activities. The proposed approach is applied to a range of test models of varying complexity. Although the optimization of process execution is a highly constrained problem, results indicate that our approach produces a satisfactory number of suitable solutions, i.e., solutions optimal in many cases

Optimized cross-organizational business process monitoring: Design and enactment

Organizations can implement the agility required to survive in the rapidly evolving business landscape by focusing on their core business and engaging in collaborations with other partners. This entails the need for organizations to monitor the behavior of the partners with which they collaborate. The design and enactment of monitoring, in this scenario, must become flexible and adapt as the collaboration evolves. We propose an approach to flexibly design and enact cross-organizational business process monitoring based on Product-Based Workflow Design. Our approach allows organizations to capture monitoring requirements, optimize such requirements, e.g. choosing the monitoring process with lowest cost or highest availability, and enacting the optimal monitoring process through a service-oriented approach. Optimization, in particular, is made efficient by adopting an Ant-colony optimization heuristic. The paper also describes a prototypical implementation of our approach in the ProM framework

Multi-level Service Approach for Flexible Support of Design Processes

Part III: Sustainable ServicesInternational audienceThe need to answer quickly to new market opportunities and the high variability of consumer demands tend industrial companies to review their adopted organisation, so to improve their reactivity and to facilitate the coupling with the business enactment. Therefore, these companies require agility in their information systems to allow business needs scalability and design process flexibility. We propose in this paper, the business activities as a service based on the service paradigm and whereas a design process is made of agile services orchestrations. We discuss the interest to use a service-oriented approach and propose a layered architecture for design process enactment