Business process modeling pluralized

Traditional centralized business process management approaches pose difficulties in coping with rapid changes and evolving process models. We developed the Plural method to allow for decentralized modeling of processes. The Plural method enables process participants, rather than a centralized group of process engineers or managers, to model and maintain their processes. In previous works, we introduced the Plural method and discussed its applications in case studies. This paper elaborates more into the notation component of the Plural method. We describe the diagram types used for capturing process information. We also present a case study performed in a small web application development company. We discuss the results together with a synthesis of the findings and lessons learned from our previous case studies

Transformation From Business Process Models To Process Ontology: A Case Study

Business process modeling is utilized by organizations for defining and reengineering their business processes. On the other hand, ontologies are developed to strengthen shared understanding between people, organizations and software systems and ease reuse. From knowledge management point of view, both are efficient tools for creating knowledge. A tool supported transformation from process models to ontology could enhance the benefits gained from both and increase development efficiency and consistency. This study aims to demonstrate such an automated transformation on a real case. Within the study, a case study is performed to enable this transformation manually from business process models defined with eEPC language to a process ontology and an algorithm is designed and implemented for automated transformation

When Saeed Betrays Fuad: Laughing at the Mechanized Occupation

This thesis comparatively explores the emergence of the comic in the novel The Secret Life of Saeed The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi and the film The Time That Remains directed by Elia Suleiman, by building on Bergson’s theory of mechanization. By tracing Bergson’s idea that comic effect is created through the creeping up of the mechanical on the living, the establishment of the “mechanical occupation” as a source of the comic will be elucidated. The comic will be explored in terms of the ways in which both texts offer a new historicizing operation, being works that focus on the narration of the past. More particularly, Habibi’s appropriation (or parody) of the Arabic literary heritage (turāth), as well as Suleiman’s parody of historicizing narrative forms will be conceptualized in terms of the (failing) categories of modernity, such as the nation, tradition, and history, within the context of the crises of Palestinian self-representation. Finally, the possibilities of memory-work will be explored within the transtextual space that is built from reading the two texts in dialogue, and possibilities of the application of the concept of mechanization expanded in order to demonstrate its relevance in finding connections between literary and social analysis in the context of Palestine

The effect of anions of transition metal salts on the structure of modified mesostructured silica films and monoliths

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The structure of the preformed LC mesophase of water:transition metal salt ([M(H2O)6]X2):acid (HX):oligo(ethylene oxide) (or Pluronics):tetramethylorthosilicate (TMOS) mixture during hydrolysis and partial polymerization of the silica source is maintained upon further polymerization and condensation of the silica species in the solid state. The liquid mixture in early stage of the silica polymerization could be casted or dip coated to a surface of a glass or silicon wafer to produce mesostructured silica monoliths and films, respectively. The silica species and ions (metal ions and anions) influence the structure of the LC mesophases (as a result, the structure of silica) and the hydrophilic and hydrophobic balance in the reaction media. The silica structure can be changed from hexagonal to cubic by increasing, for example, the nitrate salt concentration in the nitrate salt systems. A similar transformation takes place in the presence of very low perchlorate salt concentration. The salt concentration in the mesostructured silica can be increased up to 1.1/1.0 salt/SiO2 w/w ratio, in mesostructured silica materials by maintaining its lamella structure in P123 and cubic in the CnEOm systems. However, the materials obtained from the P123 systems undergo transformation from lamella to 2D hexagonal upon calcinations. The method developed in this work can be used to modify the internal surface of the pores with various transition metal ions and metal oxides that may find application in catalysis. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The Influence of Using Collapsed Sub-processes and Groupson the Understandability of Business Process Models

Many factors influence the creation of businessprocess models which are understandable for a targetaudience. Understandability of process models becomesmore critical when size and complexity of the modelsincrease. Using vertical modularization to decompose suchmodels hierarchically into modules is considered toimprove their understandability. To investigate thisassumption, two experiments were conducted. The exper-iments involved 2 large-scale real-life business processmodels that were modeled using BPMN v2.0 (BusinessProcess Model and Notation) in the form of collaborationdiagrams. Each process was modeled in 3 modularityforms: fully-flattened, flattened where activities areclustered using BPMN groups, and modularized usingseparately viewed BPMN sub-processes. The objective wasto investigate if and how different forms of modularityrepresentation (used for vertical modularization) in BPMNcollaboration diagrams influence the understandability ofprocess models. In addition to the forms of modularityrepresentation, the presentation medium (paper vs. com-puter) and model reader’s level of business process mod-eling competency were investigated as factors thatpotentially influence model comprehension. 60 businesspractitioners from a large organization and 140 graduatestudents participated in our experiments. The results indi-cate that, when these three modularity representations areconsidered, it is best to present the model in a ‘flattened’form (with or without the use of groups) and in the ‘paper’format in order to optimally understand a BPMN model.The results also show that the model reader’s businessprocess modeling competency is an important factor ofprocess model comprehension

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS: A CASE STUDY

Business process definitions might serve variety of purposes. Two common uses of process models are business process management and software requirements analysis. Although commonalities exist, different models are established for these goals. Establishment of different models not only requires larger amount of effort but also results in inter-model inconsistencies and creates overheads for keeping the models integrated. This paper describes a case study to establish a unified modeling approach for overcoming these difficulties. The case study was performed in a large scale governmental organization. As part of the case study, process models were developed and requirements definitions were generated from process models. The outcomes of the case study were validated by the organization who utilized them in generating quality manuals as well as acquiring software artifacts. The results show that, business process models can be used for software requirements analysis, while the total effort for business process modeling and software requirements analysis is significantly decreased

A Hybrid MAC Protocol with Channel-dependent Optimized Scheduling for Clustered Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

We propose a novel optimal time slot allocation scheme for clustered underwater acoustic sensor networks that leverages physical (PHY) layer information to minimize the energy consumption due to unnecessary retransmissions thereby improving network lifetime and throughput. To reduce the overhead and the computational complexity, we employ a two-phase approach where: (i) each member node takes a selfish decision on the number of time slots it needs during the next intra-cluster cycle by solving a Markov decision process (MDP), and (ii) the cluster head optimizes the scheduling decision based on the channel quality and an urgency factor. To conserve energy, we use a hybrid medium access scheme, i.e., time division multiple access (TDMA) for the intra-cluster communication phase and carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) for the cluster head-sink communication phase. The proposed MAC protocol is implemented and tested on a real underwater acoustic testbed using SM-75 acoustic modems by Teledyne Benthos. Simulations illustrate an improvement in network lifetime. Additionally, simulations demonstrate that the proposed scheduling scheme with urgency factor achieves a throughput increase of 28 % and improves the reliability by up to 25 % as compared to the scheduling scheme that neither use MDP nor optimization. Furthermore, testbed experiments show an improvement in throughput by up to 10 % along with an improvement in reliability. 1

Approximate COSMIC functional size - guideline for approximate COSMIC functional size measurement

The COSMIC method provides a standardized way of measuring the functional size of software from the functional domains commonly referred to as 'business application' or 'Management Information Systems' (MIS) and 'real-time' software, and hybrids of these. In practice it is often sufficient to measure a functional size approximately. Typical situations where such a need arises are early in the life of a project, before the functional user requirements ('FUR') have been specified down to the level of detail where the precise size measurement is possible or when a measurement is needed, but there is insufficient time or no need to measure the required size using the standard method. The guideline describes the current state of the art with regard to approximate COSMIC functional size measurement. All proposed COSMIC approximation methods rely on determining some average of the size(s) and/or number(s) of functional processes. The fact that the size of a single functional process has no upper finite limit is probably the reason why multiple COSMIC approximation methods have been developed for different types of software. Therefore the guideline describes a number of approximation methods with their pros and cons, their recommended area of application and their validity, rather than document a single COSMIC approximation method