Navigating in Process Model Collections: A new Approach Inspired by Google Earth

In complex business environments, business processes (e.g., engineering processes in the automobile industry) may comprise hundreds up to thousands of process steps. Though typically captured in a process model (or a collection of process models), these processes are presented to process participants in a rather static manner, e.g., as simple drawings. However, to effectively support process enactment and to link processes with relevant information,enterprises crave for new ways of visualizing processes and for interacting with them. In particular, process models must be provided in an interactive, more dynamic manner, i.e., they must be both "experiencable" and user-adequate from the perspective of the user. In this paper, we introduce a new process navigation concept for querying process model collections. Specically, we pick up an existing navigation concept for complex information spaces, namely Google Earth, and apply it to business processes. Thereby, we distinguish between geographical and semantic zoom functions, introduce different process views and filter mechanisms, and discuss options to manually configure needed process visualizations

Navigating in Complex Business Processes

In order to provide information needed in knowledge-intense business processes, large companies often establish intranet portals, which enable access to their process handbook. Especially, for large business processes comprising hundreds or thousands of process steps, these portals can help to avoid time-consuming access to paper-based process documentation. However, business processes are usually presented in a rather static manner within these portals, e.g., as simple drawings or textual descriptions. Companies therefore require new ways of making large processes and process-related information better explorable for end-users. This paper picks up this issue and presents a formal navigation framework based on linear algebra for navigating in large business processes

A Framework for the Intelligent Delivery and User-Adequate Visualization of Process Information

A continuously increasing amount of data makes it difficult for knowledge-workers to identify the information they need to perform their tasks in the best possible way. Particularly challenging in this context is the alignment of process-related information (e.g., working instructions, best practices) with business processes. In fact, process-related information (process information for short) and business processes are usually handled separately. On one hand, shared drives, databases, and information systems are used to manage process information, on the other, process management technology provides the basis for managing business processes. In practice, enterprises often establish (Intranet) portals to connect both perspectives. However, such portals are not sufficient. Reasons are that process information is usually delivered without considering the current work context and business processes are presented to process participants in a rather static manner. Therefore, enterprises crave for new ways of making process information available. This paper picks up this challenge and presents the niPRO framework. niPRO is based on semantic technology and enables the intelligent delivery and user-adequate visualization of comprehensive process information

Navigating in Process Model Repositories and Enterprise Process Information

Although process-aware information systems have been adopted in enterprises for many years, they still do not properly link the business processes they implement with related enterprise process information (e.g., guidelines, checklists, templates, and e-mails). On one hand, process management technology is used to design, implement, enact, and monitor processes. On the other, enterprise process information is spread over various sources like shared drives, databases, and enterprise information systems. As a consequence, users often manually link process information with particular process objects (e.g., using process portals). What is needed instead, however is an integrated access to both processes and related enterprise process information. This paper establishes such a link by introducing an integrated navigation space for process model collections and related enterprise process information. In particular, this navigation space allows process participants to flexibly navigate within process model collections, single process models, and related process information. In turn, this enables advanced end-user support for process repositories

Navigating in Complex Process Model Collections

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAIS) has led to the emergence of large process model collections. In the automotive and healthcare domains, for example, such collections may comprise hundreds or thousands of process models, each consisting of numerous process elements (e.g., process tasks or data objects). In existing modeling environments, process models are presented to users in a rather static manner; i.e., as image maps not allowing for any context-specific user interactions. As process participants have different needs and thus require specific presentations of available process information, such static approaches are usually not sufficient to assist them in their daily work. For example, a business manager only requires an abstract overview of a process model collection, whereas a knowledge worker (e.g., a requirements engineer) needs detailed information on specific process tasks. In general, a more flexible navigation and visualization approach is needed, which allows process participants to flexibly interact with process model collections in order to navigate from a standard (i.e., default) visualization of a process model collection to a context-specific one. With the Process Navigation and Visualization (ProNaVis) framework, this thesis provides such a flexible navigation approach for large and complex process model collections. Specifically, ProNaVis enables the flexible navigation within process model collections along three navigation dimensions. First, the geographic dimension allows zooming in and out of the process models. Second, the semantic dimension may be utilized to increase or decrease the level of detail. Third, the view dimension allows switching between different visualizations. All three navigation dimensions have been addressed in an isolated fashion in existing navigation approaches so far, but only ProNaVis provides an integrated support for all three dimensions. The concepts developed in this thesis were validated using various methods. First, they were implemented in the process navigation tool Compass, which has been used by several departments of an automotive OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer). Second, ProNaVis concepts were evaluated in two experiments, investigating both navigation and visualization aspects. Third, the developed concepts were successfully applied to process-oriented information logistics (POIL). Experimental as well as empirical results have provided evidence that ProNaVis will enable a much more flexible navigation in process model repositories compared to existing approaches

Process-Oriented Information Logistics: Aligning Process Information with Business Processes

During the last decade, research in the field of business process management (BPM) has focused on the design, modeling, execution, monitoring, and optimization of business processes. What has been neglected, however, is the provision of knowledge workers and decision makers with needed information when performing knowledge-intensive business processes such as product engineering, customer support, or strategic management. Today, knowledge workers and decision makers are confronted with a massive load of data, making it difficult for them to discover the information relevant for performing their tasks. Particularly challenging in this context is the alignment of process-related information (process information for short), such as e-mails, office files, forms, checklists, guidelines, and best practices, with business processes and their tasks. In practice, process information is not only stored in large, distributed and heterogeneous sources, but usually managed separately from business processes. For example, shared drives, databases, enterprise portals, and enterprise information systems are used to store process information. In turn, business processes are managed using advanced process management technology. As a consequence, process information and business processes often need to be manually linked; i.e., process information is hard-wired to business processes, e.g., in enterprise portals associating specific process information with process tasks. This approach often fails due to high maintenance efforts and missing support for the individual demands of knowledge workers and decision makers. In response to this problem, this thesis introduces process-oriented information logistics(POIL) as new paradigm for delivering the right process information, in the right format and quality, at the right place and the right point in time, to the right people. In particular, POIL allows for the process-oriented, context-aware (i.e., personalized) delivery of process information to process participants. The goal is to no longer manually hard-wire process information to business processes, but to automatically identify and deliver relevant process information to knowledge workers and decision makers. The core component of POIL is a semantic information network (SIN), which comprises homogeneous information objects (e.g., e-mails, offce files, guidelines), process objects (e.g., tasks, events, roles), and relationships between them. In particular, a SIN allows discovering objects linked with each other in different ways, e.g., objects addressing the same topic or needed when performing a particular process task. The SIN not only enables an integrated formal representation of process information and business processes, but also allows determining the relevance of process information for a given work context based on novel techniques and algorithms. Note that this becomes crucial in order to achieve the aforementioned overall goal of this thesis

ZEUS : Zoomable Explorative User Interface for Searching and Object Presentation

In this paper we describe a first version of ZEUS, a web application that combines browsing, searching and object presentation. With the zooming and panning based navigation concept of ZEUS and a hierarchical organization of the information space we try to solve the problems of information overload. It has to be evaluated if categorization, zooming and a full text search can minimize that the user gets lost in hyperspace. The concept of ZEUS is based on some thesis about human cognition, navigation and exploration which we hope to prove with evaluation and user testing of our application in the future.publishe