Root Cause Analysis in Business Processes

Conceptual modeling is an important tool for understanding and revealing weaknesses of business processes. Yet, the current practice in reengineering projects often considers simply the as-is control flow and uses the respective model barely as a reference for brain-storming about improvement opportunities. This approach heavily relies on the intuition of the participants and misses a clear description of steps to identify root causes of problems. In contrast to that, this paper introduces a systematic methodology to detect and document the quality dimension of a business process. It builds on the definition of softgoals for each process activity, of correlations between softgoals, and metrics to measure the occurrence of quality issues. In this regard our contribution is a foundation of root-cause analysis in business process modeling, and a conceptual integration of goal-based and activity-based approaches to capturing processes

Abschlussbericht des Verbundprojekts Tools4BPEL

Unternehmensübergreifende Geschäftsprozesse werden zunehmend nach dem Paradigma der Services organisiert. Dabei stellen sich Fragen nach der Komponierbarkeit, Fehlerbehandlung, sowie der Rücksetzbarkeit (Kompensation) im Fehlerfall. In diesem Vorhaben werden Methoden und Werkzeuge zum Umgang mit solchen Fragen entwickelt und am Beispiel der Geschäftsprozess-Modellierungssprache BPEL und im Modellierungswerkzeug der Firma MEGA international erprobt. Es wurde zum einen der Übersetzer BPEL2oWFN entwickelt, der anhand einer Petrinetzsemantik für BPEL einen BPEL-Prozess in ein (offenes) Petrinetz transformiert. Zum anderen wurden Korrektheitskriterien (wie Bedienbarkeit und Verhaltenskompatibilität) für Services erarbeitet, Algorithmen zu ihrer Überprüfung entworfen und in Fiona implementiert. Die Algorithmen sind Petrinetz-basiert. Damit spielen Übersetzung und Analyse eng zusammen und ein vorhandener BPEL-Prozess kann auf bspw. Bedienbarkeit hin untersucht werden. In diesem Vorhaben wurden die Modellierungssprache BPEL4Chor, Choreographie-Erweiterungen für BPMN entwickelt, sowie die Transformation von BPMN nach BPEL angepasst, um den Weg von BPMN nach BPEL4Chor zu unterstützen. Weiterhin wurden Konzepte entwickelt, wie sich partner-übergreifende Fehlerbehandlung, Rücksetzbarkeit, sowie die Autonomie der Partner mittels BPEL4Chor darstellen lassen. BPEL4Chor kann als Standardsprache zur Spezifikation von Protokollen, die zwischen mehreren Partnern ablaufen, verwendet werden. Durch seine enge Verbindung mit BPEL kann BPEL4Chor sehr gut als Startpunkt für eine Webservice-Lösung verwendet werden

Decomposed process discovery and conformance checking

Decomposed process discovery and decomposed conformance checking are the corresponding variants of the two monolithic fundamental problems in process mining (van der Aalst 2011): automated process discovery, which considers the problem of discovering a process model from an event log (Leemans 2009), and conformance checking, which addresses the problem of analyzing the adequacy of a process model with respect to observed behavior (Munoz-Gama 2009), respectively. The term decomposed in the two definitions is mainly describing the way the two problems are tackled operationally, to face their computational complexity by splitting the initial problem into smaller problems, that can be solved individually and often more efficiently.Postprint (author's final draft

Requirements of Process Modeling Languages – Results from an Empirical Investigation

The majority of large and mid-sized companies are active in BusinessProcess Management (BPM). Documenting business processesis a key task of BPM, but the variety of process modelinglanguages makes it difficult to determine ‘the best’ one. Basically,the suitability of a process modeling language depends on thecompanies’ requirements. In this paper we adopt a bird’s eye viewon the issue: By an empirical investigation of 130 publiccompanies from all over the world and any sector, we gather thecommon requirements of process modeling languages and usethem to assess the most popular ones (i.e., BPMN, UML ActivityDiagrams, Event-driven Process Chains). Our results show thatthese languages are (1) equally expressive and (2) presumablyequally understandable concerning the common core notion of‘business process’; thus, they can be used interchangeably.However, the BPMN is the most complex process modelinglanguage

25 Desafíos de la Modelación de Procesos Semánticos

Process modeling has become an essential part of many organizations for documenting, analyzing and redesigning their business operations and to support them with suitable information systems. In order to serve this purpose, it is important for process models to be well grounded in for- mal and precise semantics. While behavioural semantics of process models are well understood, there is a considerable gap of research into the semantic aspects of their text labels and natural lan- guage descriptions. The aim of this paper is to make this research gap more transparent. To this end, we clarify the role of textual content in process models and the challenges that are associated with the interpretation, analysis, and improvement of their natural language parts. More specifically, we discuss particular use cases of semantic process modeling to identify 25 challenges. For each cha- llenge, we identify prior research and discuss directions for addressing themEl modelado de procesos se ha convertido en una parte esencial de muchas organizaciones para documentar, analizar, y rediseñar sus operaciones de negocios y apoyarlos con información apropiada. Para cumplir este fin, es importante para estos que estén completos dentro de una semántica formal y precisa. Mientras la semántica del comportamiento del modelado de procesos se entiende bien, hay una considerable laguna en la investigación entre los aspectos semánticos de sus rótulos textuales, y las descripciones en lenguaje natural. El objetivo de este artículo es hacer esta laguna en la investigación más transparente. Con este fin, clarificamos el papel del contenido textual en los modelos de proceso, y los retos relacionados con la interpretación, el análisis, y desarrollo de sus partes en lenguaje natural. De forma más específica, debatimos los casos particulares del uso del modelado de procesos semánticos para identificar 25 retos. Para cada reto, identificamos antes de la investigación y debatimos las direcciones para dirigirnos a ellos

Alignment-based trace clustering

A novel method to cluster event log traces is presented in this paper. In contrast to the approaches in the literature, the clustering approach of this paper assumes an additional input: a process model that describes the current process. The core idea of the algorithm is to use model traces as centroids of the clusters detected, computed from a generalization of the notion of alignment. This way, model explanations of observed behavior are the driving force to compute the clusters, instead of current model agnostic approaches, e.g., which group log traces merely on their vector-space similarity. We believe alignment-based trace clustering provides results more useful for stakeholders. Moreover, in case of log incompleteness, noisy logs or concept drift, they can be more robust for dealing with highly deviating traces. The technique of this paper can be combined with any clustering technique to provide model explanations to the clusters computed. The proposed technique relies on encoding the individual alignment problems into the (pseudo-)Boolean domain, and has been implemented in our tool DarkSider that uses an open-source solver.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Towards using BPM Patterns in Requirements Elicitation

In an increasingly changing environment, different organizations are trying to improve their agility and efficiency by improving their business processes; thus, business process management has been gaining momentum for the last decade. The first step in business process management is the modeling of business processes. Business Process Modeling (BPM), in itself, is very important because it captures business requirements, allows for better understanding of a business and its processes, facilitates communication between business analysts and IT people, and pinpoints deficiencies in processes. It also serves as a basis for automation of these processes. But business process modeling comes with its own challenges since it is a time-consuming, complicated, and error-prone task. As a result, producing a high quality, precise business process model is not easy. BPM patterns, which are general reusable solutions to commonly occurring problems in business process modeling, have been proposed to address these challenges. In this research, we conducted an exploratory study about requirements engineering practices in a large organization. This study identified key challenges in requirements engineering and showed how business process modeling is currently being conducted. Then, we created a survey of the different BPM pattern catalogs existing in the literature. Finally, we presented one of the BPM pattern catalogs in a clear format along with examples of each pattern. The ultimate objective is to allow business analysts to effectively use BPM patterns while creating precise BP models.1 yea