CAiSE Radar 2016

The CAiSE Radar is an experimental format, established for CAiSE 2016, to make CAiSE workshops livelier, exciting, stimulate discussions, and attract additional active participants by establishing an environment where not only well established and validated research is reported but research in infancy, new ideas, and potentially interesting research projects can be presented and discussed. So similarly to a radar, the idea is to enable researchers to look into the future of the field and identify upcoming trends early. The aim of such effort is on one hand to contribute to the building of research communities and promote the integration of young researchers into the community, and on the other hand to provide opportunities to discuss ideas early and to receive additional opinions on planned research

Ontology modeling for generation of clinical pathways

Purpose: Increasing costs of health care, fuelled by demand for high quality, cost-effective healthcare has drove hospitals to streamline their patient care delivery systems. One such systematic approach is the adaptation of Clinical Pathways (CP) as a tool to increase the quality of healthcare delivery. However, most organizations still rely on are paper-based pathway guidelines or specifications, which have limitations in process management and as a result can influence patient safety outcomes. In this paper, we present a method for generating clinical pathways based on organizational semiotics by capturing knowledge from syntactic, semantic and pragmatic to social level. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed modeling approach to generation of CPs adopts organizational semiotics and enables the generation of semantically rich representation of CP knowledge. Semantic Analysis Method (SAM) is applied to explicitly represent the semantics of the concepts, their relationships and patterns of behavior in terms of an ontology chart. Norm Analysis Method (NAM) is adopted to identify and formally specify patterns of behavior and rules that govern the actions identified on the ontology chart. Information collected during semantic and norm analysis is integrated to guide the generation of CPs using best practice represented in BPMN thus enabling the automation of CP. Findings: This research confirms the necessity of taking into consideration social aspects in designing information systems and automating CP. The complexity of healthcare processes can be best tackled by analyzing stakeholders, which we treat as social agents, their goals and patterns of action within the agent network. Originality/value: The current modeling methods describe CPs from a structural aspect comprising activities, properties and interrelationships. However, these methods lack a mechanism to describe possible patterns of human behavior and the conditions under which the behavior will occur. To overcome this weakness, a semiotic approach to generation of clinical pathway is introduced. The CP generated from SAM together with norms will enrich the knowledge representation of the domain through ontology modeling, which allows the recognition of human responsibilities and obligations and more importantly, the ultimate power of decision making in exceptional circumstances

Reinforcement Learning-supported AB Testing of Business Process Improvements: An Industry Perspective

In order to better facilitate the need for continuous business process improvement, the application of DevOps principles has been proposed. In particular, the AB-BPM methodology applies AB testing and reinforcement learning to increase the speed and quality of improvement efforts. In this paper, we provide an industry perspective on this approach, assessing requirements, risks, opportunities, and more aspects of the AB-BPM methodology and supporting tools. Our qualitative analysis combines grounded theory with a Delphi study, including semi-structured interviews and multiple follow-up surveys with a panel of ten business process management experts. The main findings indicate a need for human control during reinforcement learning-driven experiments, the importance of aligning the methodology culturally and organizationally with the respective setting, and the necessity of an integrated process execution platform

Bridging the gap between textual and formal business process representations

Tesi en modalitat de compendi de publicacionsIn the era of digital transformation, an increasing number of organizations are start ing to think in terms of business processes. Processes are at the very heart of each business, and must be understood and carried out by a wide range of actors, from both technical and non-technical backgrounds alike. When embracing digital transformation practices, there is a need for all involved parties to be aware of the underlying business processes in an organization. However, the representational complexity and biases of the state-of-the-art modeling notations pose a challenge in understandability. On the other hand, plain language representations, accessible by nature and easily understood by everyone, are often frowned upon by technical specialists due to their ambiguity. The aim of this thesis is precisely to bridge this gap: Between the world of the techni cal, formal languages and the world of simpler, accessible natural languages. Structured as an article compendium, in this thesis we present four main contributions to address specific problems in the intersection between the fields of natural language processing and business process management.A l’era de la transformació digital, cada vegada més organitzacions comencen a pensar en termes de processos de negoci. Els processos són el nucli principal de tota empresa i, com a tals, han de ser fàcilment comprensibles per un ampli ventall de rols, tant perfils tècnics com no-tècnics. Quan s’adopta la transformació digital, és necessari que totes les parts involucrades estiguin ben informades sobre els protocols implantats com a part del procés de digitalització. Tot i això, la complexitat i biaixos de representació dels llenguatges de modelització que actualment conformen l’estat de l’art sovint en dificulten la seva com prensió. D’altra banda, les representacions basades en documentació usant llenguatge natural, accessibles per naturalesa i fàcilment comprensibles per tothom, moltes vegades són vistes com un problema pels perfils més tècnics a causa de la presència d’ambigüitats en els textos. L’objectiu d’aquesta tesi és precisament el de superar aquesta distància: La distància entre el món dels llenguatges tècnics i formals amb el dels llenguatges naturals, més accessibles i senzills. Amb una estructura de compendi d’articles, en aquesta tesi presentem quatre grans línies de recerca per adreçar problemes específics en aquesta intersecció entre les tecnologies d’anàlisi de llenguatge natural i la gestió dels processos de negoci.Postprint (published version

The GOALS approach: business and software modeling traceability by means of human-computer interaction: enterprise modeling language and method

The management of an enterprise relies on the continuous organization and development of its business and software systems. A process that requires merging the ideas of the enterprise’ systems managers, targeting the specification of business requirements and the conception and implementation of a supporting information system. This process finds obstacles in the identification and communication of requirements, and also in their transformation in software artefacts, leading to difficulties or loss of traceability between business and software models. Existing methods, languages and techniques are still not sufficiently standardized to ensure that when a business improvement is introduced, the supportive software solution will be implemented within budget and time. Methods are still too closed to the concepts of their original scientific domains, conceiving solutions which are not representative of the business and software conceptual relation and of the complexity concealed in an improvement effort, namely concerning usability and user experience. Moreover, the lack of a common modeling language and method for the conception of holistic and traceable software solutions, also refrains the performance of the enterprise development process. The GOALS Approach presents a solution to surpass these barriers by means of the specification of an enterprise modeling language that relates the business and software conceptual structures using a shared set of concepts, a notation, process, method and techniques, that allow the design of the software as a result of the business organization, ensuring traceability by means of the permanent representation of the business structure in the software structure

Towards an Interdisciplinary Development of IoT-Enhanced Business Processes

IoT-enhanced Business Processes make use of sensors and actuators to carry out the process tasks and achieve a specific goal. One of the most important difficulties in the development of IoT-enhanced BPs is the interdisciplinarity that is demanded by this type of project. Defining an interdisciplinary tool-supported development approach that facilitates the collaboration of different professionals, with a special focus on three main facets: business process requirements, interoperability between IoT devices and BPs, and low-level data processing. The study followed a Design Science Research methodology for information systems that consists of a 6-step process: (1) problem identification and motivation; (2) define the objectives for a solution; (3) design and development; (4) demonstration; (5) evaluation; and (6) communication. The paper presents an interdisciplinary development process to support the creation of IoT-enhanced BPs by applying the Separation of Concerns principle. A collaborative development environment is built to provide each professional with the tools required to accomplish her/his development responsibilities. The approach is successfully validated through a case-study evaluation. The evaluation allows to conclude that the proposed development process and the supporting development environment are effective to face the interdisciplinary nature of IoT-enhanced BPs