Supporting Business and IT through Updatable Process Views: The proView Demonstrator

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) has resulted in large process model collections. To support business and IT users having different perspectives on processes, a PAIS should provide personalized views on process models. Especially, changing process models is frequent use case due to evolving processes or unplanned situations. This demonstration presents the proView framework for changing large process models through updating process views, while ensuring up-to-dateness and consistency of all related process views. More precisely, update operations can be applied to a process view and are correctly propagated to the underlying process model. Further, all views related to this process model are then correctly migrated to its new version. Overall, the proView framework enables users to evolve process models over time based on appropriate model abstractions

Towards Configurable Process Visualizations with Proviado

Visualizing complex business processes is an important task of process-aware information systems (PAIS). Current PAIS, however, fail in providing adequate mechanisms for visualizing and monitoring business processes. In particular, PAIS do not support personalized or adaptable process drawings, which is particularly important for large processes. In the Proviado project we are developing a comprehensive framework for this purpose. It allows for flexible process visualization along three dimensions: process views, process notations, and process representation forms. In this paper we summarize selected concepts and features of the Proviado demonstrator

Parameterizable Views for Process Visualization

In large organizations different users or user groups usually have distinguished perspectives over business processes and related data. Personalized views on the managed processes are therefore needed. Existing BPM tools, however, do not provide adequate mechanisms for building and visualizing such views. Very often processes are displayed to users in the same way as drawn by the process designer. To tackle this inflexibility this paper presents an advanced approach for creating personalized process views based on well-defined, parameterizable view operations. Respective operations can be flexibly composed in order to reduce or aggregate process information in the desired way. Depending on the chosen parameterization of the applied view operations, in addition, different "quality levels" with more or less relaxed properties can be obtained for the resulting process views (e.g., regarding the correctness of the created process view scheme). This allows us to consider the specific needs of the different applications utilizing process views (e.g., process monitoring tools or process editors). Altogether, the realized view concept contributes to better deal with complex, long-running business processes with hundreds up to thousands of activities

Visualizing Large Business Process Models: Challenges, Techniques, Applications

Large process models may comprise hundreds or thousands of process elements, like activities, gateways, and data objects. Presenting such process models to users and enabling them to interact with these models constitute crucial tasks of any process-aware information systems (PAISs). Existing PAISs, however, neither provide adequate techniques for visualizing and abstracting process models nor for interacting with them. In particular, PAISs do not provide tailored process visualizations as needed in complex application environments. This paper presents examples of large process models and discusses some of the challenges to be tackled when visualizing and abstracting respective models. Further, it presents a comprehensive framework that allows for personalized process model visualizations, which can be tailored to the specific needs of the different user groups. First, process model complexity can be reduced by abstracting the models, i.e., by eliminating or aggregating process elements not relevant in the given visualization context. Second, the appearance of process elements can be customized independent of the process modeling language used. Third, different visualization formats (e.g., process diagrams, process forms, and process trees) are supported. Finally, it will be discussed how tailored visualizations of process models may serve as basis for changing and evolving process models at a high level of abstraction

Using Concurrent Task Trees for Stakeholder-centered Modeling and Visualization of Business Processes

The different stakeholders in Business Process Management have to deal with various process models in order to understand the business processes being relevant for them. Especially inexperienced stakeholders often have difficulties in comprehending large and complex process models. In this paper a stakeholder-centered approach for modeling, changing and visualizing business processes is introduced. It is based on the Concurrent Task Tree (CTT), which constitutes a task modeling language widely applied in the field of end-user development. In particular, CTT considers stakeholder needs in modeling the behaviour of user interfaces. In the context of our work we apply CTT for modeling, changing and visualizing business processes. To evaluate whether CTT is appropriate for stakeholder-centered process modeling we compare it with imperative process modeling, and introduce a mapping between CTT process models and imperative process models expressed in terms of the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Finally, we provide an advanced stakeholder-centered visualization concept based on CTT

Access Control for Monitoring System-Spanning Business Processes in Proviado

Integrated process support is highly desirable in environments where data related to a particular (business) process are scattered over distributed, heterogeneous information systems (IS). A process monitoring component is a much-needed module in order to provide an integrated view on all these process data. Regarding process data integration, access control (AC) issues are very important but also quite complex to be addressed. A major problem arises from the fact that the involved IS are usually based on heterogeneous AC components. For several reasons, the only feasible way to tackle the problem of AC at the process monitoring level is to define access rights for the process monitoring component, hence getting rid of the burden to map access rights from the IS level. This paper discusses requirements for AC in process monitoring, which we derived from our case studies in the automotive domain. It then presents alternative approaches for AC: the view-based and the object-based approach. The latter is retained, and a core AC model is proposed for the definition of access rights that meet the derived requirements. AC mechanisms provided within the core model are key ingredients for the definition of model extensions

A Survey on Economic-driven Evaluations of Information Technology

The economic-driven evaluation of information technology (IT) has become an important instrument in the management of IT projects. Numerous approaches have been developed to quantify the costs of an IT investment and its assumed profit, to evaluate its impact on business process performance, and to analyze the role of IT regarding the achievement of enterprise objectives. This paper discusses approaches for evaluating IT from an economic-driven perspective. Our comparison is based on a framework distinguishing between classification criteria and evaluation criteria. The former allow for the categorization of evaluation approaches based on their similarities and differences. The latter, by contrast, represent attributes that allow to evaluate the discussed approaches. Finally, we give an example of a typical economic-driven IT evaluation

Enabling Personalized Visualization of Large Business Processes through Parameterizable Views

Process-aware information systems (PAISs) need to support personalized views on business processes since different user groups have distinguished perspectives on these processes and related data. Existing PAISs, however, do not provide mechanisms for creating and visualizing such process views. Typically, processes are displayed to users in exactly the same way as originally modeled. This paper presents a flexible approach for creating personalized process views based on parameterizable operations. Respective view-building operations can be flexibly composed in order to hide process information or abstract from it in the desired way. Depending on the chosen parameterization of the operations applied, we obtain process views with more or less relaxed properties (e.g., regarding the degree of information loss or soundness). Altogether, the realized view concept enables a more flexible visualization of large business processes satisfying the needs of different user groups

Applikationsübergreifendes Monitoring von Geschäftsprozessen

Um die Bearbeitung von Geschäftsprozessen kontrollieren und optimieren zu können, ist ein Monitoring ihrer Ausführung erforderlich. Hierfür gibt es zwar leistungsfähige Werkzeuge, es ist aber aufwendig, diese an die Prozess-Ausführungskomponenten anzubinden. Deshalb wird untersucht, wie eine generische und wiederverwendbare Anbindung realisiert werden kann, falls die Applikation durch ein Workflow-Management-System (WfMS) gesteuert wird. Dies ermöglicht ein bereichs- und applikationsübergreifendes Monitoring mit geringem Aufwand für die einzelnen Anwendungsprojekte

Object-aware Business Processes: Properties, Requirements, Existing Approaches

Despite the increasing maturity of process management technology not all business processes are adequately supported by it. In particular, support for unstructured and knowledge-intensive processes is missing, especially since they cannot be straight-jacketed into predefined activities. A common characteristic of these processes is the role of busi-ness objects and data as drivers for process modeling and enactment. This paper elicits fundamental requirements for effectively supporting such object-aware processes; i.e., their modeling, execution and monitoring. Based on these requirements, we evaluate imperative, declarative, and data-driven process support approaches and investigate how well they support object-aware processes. We consider a tight integration of process and data as major step towards further maturation of process management technology