Existence dependency-based domain modeling for improving stateless process enactment.

In a process-enabled service oriented architecture, a process engine typically stores the state of the process instances during enactment. As an alternative, stateless process enactment entails that process state is derived from the state of business objects, which are organized in a domain model. The business objects are referred to in pre- and post-conditions of activities, which determine when the activity is enabled and completed, respectively. Despite the fact that the latter approach has multiple benefits compared with the former, the repeated state (re)calculations deteriorate performance and the formulation of clear conditions is not self-evident if typical domain modeling techniques (e.g. UML or ER) are adopted. In this paper we show that by adopting a specific domain modeling technique, which is based on the notion of existence dependency between the business objects, the performance and comprehensibility issues can proficiently be dealt with. We illustrate the technique using a real-world case from the insurance domain and analyze the emerging duality between process modeling and domain modeling.

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

On Handling Business Process Anomalies through Artifact-based Modeling

Control flow-based process modeling notations, like BPMN, are good at dening the normal execution flow and the management of foreseen exceptions. When unforeseen situations occur, one cannot detect if the execution is still acceptable with respect to the process definition. In contrast, artifact-centric process modeling notations, like the Guard-Stage-Milestone (GSM), are better suited for this kind of scenarios: they define a process in terms of acceptable states and do not enforce any specific execution flow. This improves flexibility, but hampers the clarity of the defined models. The goal of this paper is to show how an extension of GSM, i.e., E-GSM, can be used to detect deviations from the execution path as modeled in BPMN, while keeping the process execution alive

A data-flow language for business process models

On the basis of the artifact-centric approach to business process modeling, this paper proposes a notation named ACTA that provides two equivalent forms of representation: in one, all the life cycles of the artifacts involved in the business under consideration are shown in a single model, while in the other they are defined in separate models. The latter may be easier to understand when the model is large but requires synchronization points between life cycles: two kinds of mechanisms, i.e., driven transitions and driven tasks are analyzed in this paper. The major feature of ACTA is its nature of data flow language: the activation of tasks depends on the presence of suitable input entities rather than on the precedence relationships between tasks as it takes place in the conventional activity-centric approach. The advantage is the ease with which a number of situations that are difficult to handle with the activity-centric approach can be managed. Such situations encompass the selection of homogeneous entities to be processed in batches and the many-to-many mapping between entities of different types, such as requisition orders and procurement orders

Artifact-driven Process Monitoring: Dynamically Binding Real-world Objects to Running Processes

Monitoring inter-organizational business processes requires explicit knowledge about when activities start and complete. This is a challenge because no single system controls the process, activities might not be directly recorded, and the overall course of execution might only be determined at runtime. In this paper, we address these problems by integrating process monitoring with sensor data from real-world objects. We formalize our approach using the E-GSM artifact-centric language. Since the association between real-world objects and process instances is often only determined at runtime, our approach also caters for dynamic binding and unbinding at runtime

A Two-tier Data-centric Framework for Flexible Business Process Management

Business process management provides a means of coordinating interactions between workers and organizations in a structured way. However, the dynamic nature of the modern business environment requires these processes are subject to an increasingly wide range of variations. Therefore, flexible approaches are needed to deal with these variations in order to maintain viable business. In this paper, we propose a two-tier data-centric framework to achieve process flexibility. Our approach is based on Business Entity, a new process modeling paradigm widely recognized in recent years. We design a process design business entity (PD entity) to include business process definitions as a part of its information, and process execution business entities (PE entities) provide the context for defining the behavior of activities in the processes. The business processes, as the PD entity data, can be modified on-the-fly and evolve naturally as the PD entity progresses through its lifecycle. We illustrate this framework with an example from the travel service industry. It shows that this framework is able to improve process flexibility, empower business users with capability of making timely process changes, and reduces the burden of managing process evolution

Using the guard-stage-milestone notation for monitoring BPMN-based processes

Business processes are usually designed by means of imperative languages to model the acceptable execution of the activities performed within a system or an organization. At the same time, declarative languages are better suited to check the conformance of the states and transitions of the modeled process with respect to its actual execution. To avoid defining models twice from scratch to cope with both the process enactment and its monitoring, this paper proposes an approach for translating BPMN process models to E-GSM ones: an extension of the Guard-Stage-Milestone artifact-centric notation. The paper also shows how a monitoring engine based on E-GSM specifications can detect anomalies during the execution of the process and classify them according to different levels of severity, that is, with respect to the impact on the outcome of the process

Business processes in the agile organisation: a socio-technical perspective

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper takes a cross-disciplinary view of the ontology of “business process”: how the concept is treated in the IS research literature and how related concepts (with stronger human behavioural orientation) from organisation and management sciences can potentially inform this IS perspective. In particular, is there room for socio-technical concepts such as technology affordance, derived from the constructivist tradition, in improving our understanding of operational business processes, particularly human-centric business processes? The paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of business processes in organisational agility that distinguishes between the process-as-designed and the process-as-practiced. How this practice aspect of business processes also leads to the improvisation of various information technology enablers, is explored using a socio-technical lens. The posited theoretical framework is illustrated and validated with data drawn from an interpretive empirical case study of a large IT services company. The research suggests that processes within the organisation evolve both by top-down design and by the bottom-up routinisation of practice and that the tension between these is driven by the need for flexibility