Hybrid process modelling within business process management projects

Business Process Management (BPM) is still an important research topic amongst both academics and businesses. The recent recession has forced businesses to focus on cost control and efficiency in order to better cope with the economic downturn. Many companies in this situation turn to BPM software as a means of improving their efficiency and costs by reducing aspects of the business such as process lead-times and material costs. In order to identify areas of the business and its processes which require changing the business will most likely adopt a method of modelling their business processes. Because of the large number of available techniques decision makers usually struggle to decide the best approach. Recent literature has also pointed out that prevalent modelling techniques are designed to serve one specific purpose and may not be capable of modelling the whole picture. The key relationship between the information systems and the human behaviour is one example of where existing techniques are biased towards opposite ends of the scale. This paper proposes the use of a hybrid modelling notation composed of multiple existing notations in order to bridge this. The hybrid notation was applied to a BPM project at a company in the construction industry and a case study conducted with its users

Course direction support information system

Mestrado de dupla diplomação com a UTFPR - Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáMany organizations today are investing their time and resources in ways to improve process execution and also to make the best use of their resources. In the ambit of the course directors, many processes are carried out, many referring to various areas of expertise and knowledge, ranging from scientific committee organization to dissemination of course proposals and projects. Aiming to help improve the work of the directors a system that gathered some basic functionalities, such as attendance tests and time attendance, along with the process mapping was developed. Some of these processes were mapped from the general regulation of the IPB Master in Information Systems. This system was built by joining a BPM engine, selected by a survey made with some BPM tools, and a conventional WEB application (DB and Website), where the website communicates with the engine through a REST API. The result was a portal where professors can interact and perform some functions related to dissertation proposals and projects, can perform some activities related to the function of scientific committee like approve or not some proposals or projects, and, if is the director, can perform some searches and use verification functions exclusive to the director.Atualmente, muitas organizações estão investindo seu tempo e recursos para melhorar a execução do processo e também fazer o melhor uso de seus recursos. Dentro dos diretores do curso, muitos processos são realizados, muitos referentes a várias áreas de especialização e conhecimento, desde a organização do comitê científico até a divulgação de propostas e projetos de cursos. Para ajudar a melhorar o trabalho dos diretores, foi desenvolvido um sistema que reunia algumas funcionalidades básicas, como testes de presença e presença de tempo, juntamente com o mapeamento de processos. Alguns desses processos foram mapeados a partir dos regulamentos gerais do Mestrado em Sistemas de Informação do IPB. Esse sistema foi construído ao integrar um mecanismo BPM em um aplicativo WEB convencional (banco de dados e site), onde o site se comunica com o mecanismo por meio de uma API REST. O resultado foi um portal no qual os Professores podem interagir e desempenhar algumas funções relacionadas a propostas e projetos de dissertação, realizar algumas atividades relacionadas ao papel do comitê científico como escolher juris ou avaliar propostas e, se for o diretor, executar funções de pesquisa e verificação exclusivas de diretor de curso

Effort Estimation of Business Process Modeling through Clustering Techniques

A critical activity in project planning, especially in business process modeling (BPM) projects, is effort estimation. It involves several dimensions such as business domain complexity, team and technology characteristics, turning estimation into a difficult and inaccurate task. In order to reduce this difficulty, background knowledge about past projects is typically applied; however, it is too costly to be carried out manually. On the other hand, Data Mining enables the automatic extraction of new nontrivial and useful knowledge from existing data. This paper presents a new approach for BPM project effort estimation using data mining through clustering technique. This approach was successfully applied to real dat

Process redesign as a key strategy for service innovation: a case in a consulting company

Pesquisa no âmbito da inovação de serviço através da análise e posterior redesenho de um processo-chave de uma empresa de consultoria de internacionalização, de forma a oferecer serviços com maior valor agregado, atendendo às necessidades dos clientes e aumentando a eficiência operacional interna da empresa.Research in the scope of service innovation through the analysis and subsequent redesign of a key process of an internationalization consulting company, in order to offer services with greater added value, meeting the needs of customers and increasing the company's internal operational efficiency

A BPM Lifecycle Plug-in for Modeling Methods Agility

Business Process Management literature has proposed several BPM lifecycles on a level of abstraction that is modeling method -agnostic, i.e. they consider the modeling language and tool support an underlying invariant or technological concern. While remaining on the same abstraction layer, we highlight a method agility requirement observed in commercial BPM consulting projects - concretely, it manifests as change requests for the modeling language or tool, from one lifecycle iteration to the next, leading to situations of model value co-creation as customer demands are assimilated in the modeling method. Based on a conceptualization of such situations, a lifecycle plug-in is proposed in the form of a methodology and associated tool support, allowing for responsive evolution of the adopted modeling method with impact on several lifecycle phases. Historical examples from the evolution of a BPM product are provided to illustrate and classify the demands that motivate the existence of this lifecycle plug-in

A model‐based solution for process modeling in practice environments: PLM4BS

Today's world economic situation is ruled by issues such as reducing cost, improving quality, maximizing profit, and improving and optimizing processes at organizations. In this context, business process management can be an essential strategy, but it is not usually consolidated at software organizations because software process properties involve a complex business process management application on software lifecycle. Consequently, software organizations often focus on Software Process Modeling (SPM), and each involved role performs process execution and orchestration independently and manually. This fact makes software processes maintenance, monitoring, and measurement become difficult tasks. This paper proposes a model‐based approach for SPM taking into account concepts related to process execution, orchestration, and monitoring. It is framed into a model‐driven engineering‐based and toolbased framework: Process Lifecycle Management for Business Software (PLM4BS). We present a SPM metamodel and its concrete syntax (through Unified Modeling Language profiles) that lays the foundation for extending PLM4BS. Its underlying metamodel allows managing processes automatically. Furthermore, PLM4BS improves current state‐of‐the‐art proposals in 6 dimensions: expressiveness, understandability, granularity, measurability, orchestrability, and business variables and rules. Also, PLM4BS has been evaluated in a multiple‐case study, in which the 6 mentioned dimensions were already validated.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016‐76956‐C3‐2‐RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015‐71938‐RED

Detecting Functional Requirements Inconsistencies within Multi-teams Projects Framed into a Model-based Web Methodology

One of the most essential processes within the software project life cycle is the REP (Requirements Engineering Process) because it allows specifying the software product requirements. This specification should be as consistent as possible because it allows estimating in a suitable manner the effort required to obtain the final product. REP is complex in itself, but this complexity is greatly increased in big, distributed and heterogeneous projects with multiple analyst teams and high integration between functional modules. This paper presents an approach for the systematic conciliation of functional requirements in big projects dealing with a web model-based approach and how this approach may be implemented in the context of the NDT (Navigational Development Techniques): a web methodology. This paper also describes the empirical evaluation in the CALIPSOneo project by analyzing the improvements obtained with our approach.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Proposal for an approach to evaluate continuity in service supply chains: Case of the Moroccan electricity supply chain

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to analyse and evaluate continuity in Service Supply Chain (SSC), through a case study. This approach is based on the data-driven quality strategy "Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control" (DMAIC) which is used to drive Six Sigma projects, and on the characteristics of Smart Supply Chain. It combines Business process management (BPM), Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR), and the Root cause analysis tree diagram. The chosen case study is the electricity SCC, especially the business process 'management of electricity for residential buildings' of the Moroccan electricity SSC. The paper shows that the suggested approach identifies the discontinuity causes for the studied SSC, improves the business process behavior and manages its control by providing a dashboard that encompasses KPIs for periodically controlling of the SSC "to-be" state