Business engineering building blocks

In order to utilize the contemporary advanced technology, business processes need sound software support. With respect to this, one frequent cause of software project failure is the mismatch between the business requirements and the actual functionality of the delivered software application. To solve this problem, it is necessary to build software stemming out from a business process model. Aiming at aligning business process modeling and software design in a component-based way, the proposed research investigates the identification of generic business engineering building blocks and their use for building ICT applications which effectively support business processes

Visual analytics for soundness verification of process models

Soundness validation of process models is a complex task for process modelers due to all the factors that must be taken into account. Although there are tools to verify this property, they do not provide users with easy information on where soundness starts breaking and under which conditions. Providing insights such as states in which problems occur, involved activities, or paths leading to those states, is crucial for process modelers to better understand why the model is not sound. In this paper we address the problem of validating the soundness property of a process model by using a novel visual approach and a new tool called PSVis (Petri net Soundness Visualization) supporting this approach. The PSVis tool aims to guide expert users through the process models in order to get insights into the problems that cause the process to be unsoun

Workflow completion patterns

The most common correctness requirement for a (business) workflow is the completion requirement, imposing that, in some form, every case-instance of the workflow reaches its final state. In this paper, we define three workflow completion patterns, called the mandatory, optional and possible completion. These patterns are formalized in terms of the temporal logic CTL*, to remove ambiguities, allow for easy comparison, and have direct applicability. In contrast to the existing methods, we do not look at the control flow in isolation but include some data information as well. In this way the analysis remains tractable but gains precision. Together with our previous work on data-flow (anti-)patterns, this paper is a significant step towards a unifying framework for complete workflow verification, using the well-developed, stable, adaptable, and effective model-checking approach

An integer programming based approach for diagnosing workflows

Workflow analysis is indispensable to capture modeling errors in workflow designs. While in the past several analysis approaches for workflows have been defined, these approaches do not give precise feedback, making it hard for a designer to pinpoint the exact cause of modeling errors. In this paper we introduce a novel approach for analyzing and diagnosing workflows based on integer programming (IP). Each workflow model is translated into a set of IP constraints. Faulty control flow connectors can be easily detected using the approach by relaxing the corresponding constraints. We show that this approach is correct, and illustrate it with realistic examples where the CPLEX tool is used to solve the IP formulations. Moreover, the approach is flexible and can be extended to handle a variety of new constraints, as well as to support new workflow patterns. Its features complement those of existing approaches

Analyzing control-flow and data-flow in workflow processes in a unified way

Workflow correctness properties are usually defined based on one workflow perspective only, e.g. the control-flow or the data-flow. In this paper we consider workflow correctness criteria looking at the control flow extended with the read/write/destroy information for data items. We formalize some common control-flow errors, and we introduce behavioral anti-patterns related to the handling of data. In addition to extending, refining, and classifying existing methods, our paper provides a unifying framework for complete workflow verification, using the well-known, stable, adaptable, and effective model-checking approach

On the relevance of design knowledge for design-oriented business and information systems engineering : supplemental considerations and further application examples

This contribution represents a supplement to the article "On the Relevance of Design Knowledge for Design-Oriented Business and Information Systems Engineering — Conceptual Foundations, Application Example, and Implications" in the special issue on Science of Business and Information Systems Engineering of the journal Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) in 2010. It contains further application examples concerning the introduced reference framework for systemizing design knowledge. Besides the comprehensive documentation of design knowledge concerning eventdriven process chains (EPC) with the dedicated literary sources and an evaluation of the evidence of the provided statements, in this report the framework is furthermore applied for the documentation of design knowledge about the Process Grammar Approach, another technique for process design presented by Lee et al. in MIS Quarterly in 2008. Subsequently the results are discussed.Der vorliegende Beitrag dient als Anhang zum Artikel "On the Relevance of Design Knowledge for Design-Oriented Business and Information Systems Engineering — Conceptual Foundations, Application Example, and Implications", der in der Zeitschrift Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) zum Schwerpunktheft "Science of Business and Information Systems Engineering" im Jahr 2010 erschienen ist. Er ergänzt das dort aufgeführte Beispiel zur Anwendung des Bezugsrahmens zur Dokumentation von Gestaltungswissen. Der Bezugsrahmen wurde verwendet, um Gestaltungswissen zur Modellierungstechnik "Ereignisgesteuerte Prozesskette" (EPK) zu systematisieren, zu explizieren und hinsichtlich seiner Evidenz zu bewerten. Die dort gegebene Übersicht wird im vorliegenden Beitrag ergänzt. Darüber hinaus findet sich in diesem IWi-Heft ein weiteres Anwendungsbeispiel, das aufgrund von Platzrestriktionen im Journalartikel nicht präsentiert werden konnte. Der Bezugsrahmen dient hier der Systematisierung und Dokumentation von Gestaltungswissen zur Technik des Process Grammar Approach, der von Lee et al. 2008 im Journal MIS Quarterly präsentiert wurde. Weiterhin werden die erhobenen Ergebnisse im vorliegenden Beitrag diskutiert