On the Formal Semantics of Change Patterns in Process-Aware Information Systems

Abstract. Due to a turbulent market enterprises should be able to adapt their business processes in a quick and flexible way. This requires adaptive process-aware information systems (PAISs) which are able to support changes at different levels and of different process aspects. As for process modeling languages, a multitude of approaches, paradigms, and systems for realizing adaptive processes have emerged. This variety makes it difficult for PAIS engineers to choose the adequate technology. Therefore we introduced a set of commonly used process change patterns which facilitate the comparison between different approaches and tools. In this paper, we provide the formal semantics of these change patterns to ground pattern implementation and pattern-based analysis of PAISs on a solid basis. As challenge, we want to describe the formal seman-tics of change patterns independent of a certain process meta model. Altogether, our formalization will enable unambiguous and systematic comparison of adaptive PAISs.

Towards Patterns for Defining and Changing Data Collection Instruments in Mobile Healthcare Scenarios

Especially in healthcare scenarios and clinical trials, a large amount of data needs to be collected in a rather short time. In this context, smart mobile devices can be a feasible instrument to foster data collection scenarios. To enable domain experts to create and maintain mobile data collection applications themselves, the QuestionSys framework relies on a model-driven approach to digitize paper-based questionnaires. This digital transformation is based on manual as well as automated tasks. The manual tasks applied by the domain experts can be eased by the use of change patterns. They describe features to easily add or delete the elements of a questionnaire. This work summarizes crucial change patterns and shows how they can be applied in practice. We believe that the patterns constitute an important means to implement sophisticated mobile data collection applications by domain experts themselves

How Advanced Change Patterns Impact the Process of Process Modeling

Process model quality has been an area of considerable research efforts. In this context, correctness-by-construction as enabled by change patterns provides promising perspectives. While the process of process modeling (PPM) based on change primitives has been thoroughly investigated, only little is known about the PPM based on change patterns. In particular, it is unclear what set of change patterns should be provided and how the available change pattern set impacts the PPM. To obtain a better understanding of the latter as well as the (subjective) perceptions of process modelers, the arising challenges, and the pros and cons of different change pattern sets we conduct a controlled experiment. Our results indicate that process modelers face similar challenges irrespective of the used change pattern set (core pattern set versus extended pattern set, which adds two advanced change patterns to the core patterns set). An extended change pattern set, however, is perceived as more difficult to use, yielding a higher mental effort. Moreover, our results indicate that more advanced patterns were only used to a limited extent and frequently applied incorrectly, thus, lowering the potential benefits of an extended pattern set

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

Guaranteeing Soundness of Configurable Process Variants in Provop

Usually, for a particular business process a multitude of variants exists. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a reference process model to specific requirements building the process context. While some progress has been achieved regarding the configuration of process variants, there exists only little work on how to accomplish this in a sound and efficient manner, especially when considering the large number of process variants that exist in practice as well as the many syntactical and semantical constraints they have to obey. In this paper we discuss advanced concepts for the context- and constraint-based configuration of process variants, and show how they can be utilized to ensure soundness of the configured process variants. Enhancing process-aware information systems with the capability to easily configure sound process models, belonging to the same process family and fitting to the given application context, will enable a new quality in engineering process-aware information systems

Towards Gesture-based Process Modeling on Multi-Touch Devices

Contemporary tools for business process modeling use menu-based interfaces for visualizing process models and interacting with them. However, pure menu-based interactions have been optimized for applications running on desktop computers and are limited regarding their use on multi-touch devices. At the same time, the increasing distribution of mobile devices in business life as well as their multi-touch capabilities offer promising perspectives for intuitively defining and adapting business process models. Additionally, multi-touch tables could improve collaborative business process modeling based on natural gestures and interactions. In this paper we present the results of an experiment in which we investigate the way users model business processes with multi-touch devices. Furthermore, a core gesture set is suggested enabling the easy definition and adaption of business process models on these devices. Overall, gesture-based process modeling and multi-touch devices allow for new ways of (collaborative) business process modeling

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

Configuration and Management of Process Variants

This chapter deals with advanced concepts for the configuration and management of business process variants. Typically, for a particular business process, different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a master process (e.g., a reference process) to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary business process management tools do not adequately support the modeling and management of such process variants. Either the variants have to be specified in separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods can result in high model redundancies, which make model adaptations a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this chapter we discuss advanced concepts of our Provop approach, which provides a flexible and powerful solution for managing business process variants along their lifecycle. Such variant support will foster more systematic process configuration as well as process maintenance

Representing Block-structured Process Models as Order Matrices: Basic Concepts, Formal Properties, Algorithms

In various cases we need to transform a process model into a matrix representation for further analysis. In this paper, we introduce the notion of Order Matrix, which enables unique representation of block-structured process models. We present algorithms for transforming a block-structured process model into a corresponding order matrix and vice verse. We then prove that such order matrix constitutes a unique representation of a block-structured process model; i.e., if we transform a process model into an order matrix, and then transform this matrix back into a process model, the two process models are trace equivalent; i.e., they show same behavior. Finally, we analyze algebraic properties of order matrices