Data Flow Abstractions and Adaptations through Updatable Process Views

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in large process model collections. To support users having different perspectives on these processes and related data, a PAIS should enable personalized views on process models. Existing PAISs, however, do not provide mechanisms for creating such process views or even changing them. Especially, changing process models is a frequent use case in PAISs due to evolving needs or unplanned situations. While process views have been used as abstractions for visualizing process models, no work exists on how to change process models based on related views. This paper extends our approach for abstracting and changing process models based on updatable process views with a focus on the data perspective. In the context, of a view change we ensure up-to-dateness and consistency of all process views related to the same process model. To define process abstractions well-defined view creation operations can be applied. Further, updates on process views (including the data perspective) are correctly propagated to the underlying process model. Then, all other views related to this process model are migrated to the new version of the process model. Overall, our view framework enables domain experts to not only evolve the behavior of large processes based on appropriate model abstractions, but also the data perspective

PQL - A Descriptive Language for Querying, Abstracting and Changing Process Models

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in large process repositories comprising large and complex process models. To enable context-specific perspectives on these process models and related data, a PAIS should provide techniques for the flexible creation and change of process model abstractions. However, existing approaches focus on the formal model transformations required in this context rather than on techniques for querying, abstracting and changing the process models in process repositories. This paper presents a domain-specific language for querying process models, describing abstractions on them, and defining process model changes in a generic way. Due to the generic approach taken, the definition of process model abstractions and changes on any graph-based process notation becomes possible. Overall, the presented language provides a key component for process model repositories

A Flexible Approach for Abstracting and Personalizing Large Business Process Models

In process-aware information systems (PAISs), usually, different user groups have distinguished perspectives on the business processes supported and on related business data. Hence, personalized views and proper abstractions on these business processes are needed. However, existing PAISs do not provide adequate mechanisms for creating and visualizing process views and process model abstractions. Usually, process models are displayed to users in exactly the same way as originally modeled. This paper presents a flexible approach for creating personalized views based on parameterizable operations. Respective view creation operations can be flexibly composed to either hide non-relevant process information or to abstract it. Depending on the parameterization of the selected view creation operations, one obtains process views with more or less relaxed properties, e.g., regarding the degree of information loss or the soundness of the resulting model abstractions. Altogether, the realized view concept allows for a more flexible abstraction and visualization of large business process models satisfying the needs of different user groups

Gesture-based Process Modeling Using Multi-Touch Devices

Contemporary business process modeling tools provide menu-based user in-terfaces for defining and visualizing process models. Such menu-based in-teractions have been optimized for applications running on desktop comput-ers, but are limited regarding their use on multi-touch devices. At the same time, the widespread use of mobile devices in daily business life as well as their multi-touch capabilities offer promising perspectives for intuitively de-fining and changing business process models. Additionally, multi-touch ta-bles will foster collaborative business process modeling based on natural as well as intuitive gestures and interactions. This paper presents the results of an experiment that investigated the way users define and change business process models using multi-touch devices. Based on experiment results, a core gesture set is designed enabling the easy definition and change of busi-ness process models with multi-touch devices. Finally, a proof-of-concept implementation of this core gesture set is presented. Overall, gesture-based process modeling and multi-touch devices will foster new ways of (collabo-rative) business process modeling

Enabling Personalized Process Schedules with Time-aware Process Views

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) to model, enact, monitor, and evolve their business processes. Although the proper handling of temporal constraints (e.g., deadlines and minimum time lags between activities) is crucial for many application domains, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding the support of the temporal perspective of a business process. In previous work, we introduced characteristic time patterns for specifying the temporal perspective of PAISs. However, time-aware process schemas might be complex and hard to understand for end-users. To enable their proper visualization, therefore, this paper introduces an approach for transforming time-aware process schemas into enhanced Gantt charts. Based on this, a method for creating personalized process schedules using process views is suggested. Overall, the presented approach enables users to easily understand and monitor time-aware processes in PAISs

Abstraction, Visualization, and Evolution of Process Models

The increasing adoption of process orientation in companies and organizations has resulted in large process model collections. Each process model of such a collection may comprise dozens or hundreds of elements and captures various perspectives of a business process, i.e., organizational, functional, control, resource, or data perspective. Domain experts having only limited process modeling knowledge, however, hardly comprehend such large and complex process models. Therefore, they demand for a customized (i.e., personalized) view on business processes enabling them to optimize and evolve process models effectively. This thesis contributes the proView framework to systematically create and update process views (i.e., abstractions) on process models and business processes respectively. More precisely, process views abstract large process models by hiding or combining process information. As a result, they provide an abstracted, but personalized representation of process information to domain experts. In particular, updates of a process view are supported, which are then propagated to the related process model as well as associated process views. Thereby, up-to-dateness and consistency of all process views defined on any process model can be always ensured. Finally, proView preserves the behaviour and correctness of a process model. Process abstractions realized by views are still not sufficient to assist domain experts in comprehending and evolving process models. Thus, additional process visualizations are introduced that provide text-based, form-based, and hierarchical representations of process models. Particularly, these process visualizations allow for view-based process abstractions and updates as well. Finally, process interaction concepts are introduced enabling domain experts to create and evolve process models on touch-enabled devices. This facilitates the documentation of process models in workshops or while interviewing process participants at their workplace. Altogether, proView enables domain experts to interact with large and complex process models as well as to evolve them over time, based on process model abstractions, additional process visualizations, and process interaction concepts. The framework is implemented in a proof-ofconcept prototype and validated through experiments and case studies

Process Change Patterns: Recent Research, Use Cases, Research Directions

In previous work, we introduced change patterns to foster a systematic comparison of process-aware information systems with respect to change support. This paper revisits change patterns and shows how our research activities have evolved. Further, it presents characteristic use cases and gives insights into current research directions

Collaborative Process Modeling with Tablets and Touch Tables — A Controlled Experiment

Collaborative process modeling involves business analysts and subject matter experts in order to properly capture and document process knowledge. In this context, appropriate tool support is required to motivate these user groups to actively participate in collaborative process modeling. This paper presents a collaborative process modeling tool that enables the experts to create, visualize and evolve process models based on multi-touch devices (e.g., tablets and touch tables). In particular, users may edit process models on their tablets and share the created or changed process models with other team members on a common touch table. For this purpose, a sophisticated and intuitive interaction concept is provided. Furthermore, results of a controlled experiment, evaluating the influence the use of tablets has on collaborative process modeling based on touch tables, are presented. Altogether the experimental results emphasize the high potential of multi-touch tools for collaborative process modeling

Hand Gesture-based Process Modeling for Updatable Processes

The increasing popularity of process models leads to the need of alternative interaction methods to view and manipulate process models. One big research field are the gesturebased manipulation methods. Although there are already works in this research area, they utilize only two dimensions for gesture recognition. The objective of this work is to introduce a system that manipulates process models using a three dimensional hand gesture input interface utilizing the RGB-D camera of the Microsoft Kinect. With this, an input interface can be created that is more natural and, thus, is easier to learn and use than its two dimensional counterpart. This work therefore discusses how gestures are recognized as well as technical implementation aspects (e.g., how process models are painted, accessed and manipulated). Furthermore, it explains the problems arising from the use of the Kinect as a hand tracking system and shows which steps have been taken to solve these problems

How Social Distance of Process Designers Affects the Process of Process Modeling: Insights From a Controlled Experiment

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) by enterprises has resulted in large process model collections. Usually, process models are created either by in-house domain experts or external consultants. Thereby, high model quality is crucial, i.e., process models should be syntactically correct and sound, and also reflect the real business processes properly. While numerous guidelines exist for creating correct and sound process models, there is only little work dealing with cognitive aspects affecting process modeling. This paper addresses this gap and presents a controlled experiment using construal level theory. We investigate the influence the social distance of a process designer to the modeled domain has on the creation of process models. In particular, we are able to show significant differences between high and low social distance in respect to model quality and granularity. The results may help enterprises to compose adequate teams for creating or optimizing business process models