A meta-model based approach to the description of resources and skills

The management of intra- and inter-organizational business processes is a significant issue that influences company’s success. Many business processes are not fully automated and require human interaction. Therefore, responsibilities for tasks have to be assigned by workflow management systems. Common resource models allow the selection of resources according to their roles, thus neglecting competences and skills. In this article we present an extensible resource meta-model that allows the modeling of resources including their competences, skills and knowledge. Furthermore we propose the usage of these criteria to enable a more flexible assignment of resources to tasks. In particular our approach fosters the alignment of business process modeling and human resource planning. This combination facilitates several opportunities on both sides and offers potential for enhanced scheduling of adequate resources in comparison to pure role based decisions

Balanced Resource Allocation

Resource management is a key issue in execution of business processes and tasks. While control flow structure is given by underlying business process models, assignment of process activities to resources is a runtime task that includes optimization questions. Thus reasoning about system optimization is based on precise specification of resources and tasks. However, resource models previously employed in business process management lacked preciseness to enable sound analysis and optimization. In this article a modeling method that contains necessary information will be utilized and formalized in order to pose and solve optimization questions. Furthermore assignment of human resources is combined with further education, thus an optimized resource assignment will foster balanced further education. In consequence performance peaks of single resources will be alleviated and risk of failure can be diminished

Negotiation of software requirements in an asynchronous collaborative environment

The effect of task structure and negotiation sequence on collaborative software requirements negotiation is investigated. This work began with an extensive literature review that focused on current research in collaborative software engineering and, in particular, on the negotiation of software requirements and the requisite collaboration for the development of such requirements. A formal detailed experiment was then conducted to evaluate the effects of negotiation sequence and task structure in an asynchronous group meeting environment. The experiment tested the impact of these structures on groups negotiating the requirements for an emergency response information system. The results reported here show that these structures can have a positive impact on solution quality but a negative impact on process satisfaction, although following a negotiation sequence and task structure can help asynchronous groups come to agreement faster. Details of the experimental procedures, statistical analysis, and discussion of the results of the experiment are also presented, as are suggestions for improving this work and a plan for future research

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

Modellierung, Integration und Analyse von Ressourcen in Geschäftsprozessen

Geschäftsprozess- und Ressourcenmodelle können bislang nur eingeschränkt zur Untersuchung des Ressourceneinsatzes genutzt werden, da relevante Eigenschaften nicht adäquat abgebildet werden. Aus diesem Grund wird in dieser Arbeit die Resource Modeling Language (RML) konzipiert und durch Ressourcen-Netze in die Geschäftsprozessmodellierung integriert. Zur Modellierung und Analyse wird das Werkzeug RAvEN konzipiert. Die Analyse des Ressourceneinsatzes erfolgt durch Simulationsexperimente

Modellierung, Integration und Analyse von Ressourcen in Geschäftsprozessen

Geschäftsprozess- und Ressourcenmodelle können bislang nur eingeschränkt zur Untersuchung des Ressourceneinsatzes genutzt werden, da relevante Eigenschaften nicht adäquat abgebildet werden. Aus diesem Grund wird in dieser Arbeit die Resource Modeling Language (RML) konzipiert und durch Ressourcen-Netze in die Geschäftsprozessmodellierung integriert. Zur Modellierung und Analyse wird das Werkzeug RAvEN konzipiert. Die Analyse des Ressourceneinsatzes erfolgt durch Simulationsexperimente

Modelling and Measuring Collaborative Software Engineering

Collaborative Software Engineering (CSE) supports the fine-grained real-time development of software by teams of developers located anywhere on the Internet. In this paper we describe Caise, our CSE environment, and explore the ways in which such environments can benefit developers. We consider the roles of heuristic evaluation, log analysis and visualisation in quantifying the benefits of CSE