Data in Business Process Models. A Preliminary Empirical Study

Traditional activity-centric process modeling languages treat data as simple black boxes acting as input or output for activities. Many alternate and emerging process modeling paradigms, such as case handling and artifact-centric process modeling, give data a more central role. This is achieved by introducing lifecycles and states for data objects, which is beneficial when modeling data-or knowledge-intensive processes. We assume that traditional activity-centric process modeling languages lack the capabilities to adequately capture the complexity of such processes. To verify this assumption we conducted an online interview among BPM experts. The results not only allow us to identify various profiles of persons modeling business processes, but also the problems that exist in contemporary modeling languages w.r.t. The modeling of business data. Overall, this preliminary empirical study confirms the necessity of data-awareness in process modeling notations in general

Flexible Data Acquisition in Object-aware Process Management

Abstract. Data-centric approaches to business process management, in general, no longer require specific activities to be executed in a certain order, but instead data values must be present in business objects for a successful completion. While this holds the promise of more flexible processes, the addition of the data perspective results in increased complexity. Therefore, data-centric approaches must be able to cope with the increased complexity, while still fulfilling the promise of more flexible processes. Object-aware process management specifies business processes in terms of objects as well as their lifecycle processes. Lifecycle processes determine how an object acquires all necessary data values. As data values are not always available in the order the lifecycle process of an object requires, the lifecycle process must be able to flexibly handle these deviations. Object-aware process management provides operational semantics with flexible data acquisition built into it, instead of tasking the process modeler with pre-specifying a flexible process. At the technical level, the flexible data acquisition is accomplished with process rules

A Tool for Supporting Ad-Hoc Changes to Object-Aware Processes

Process management systems are often criticized for not being flexible enough, as they restrict the actions of users to those defined in a process model. When unforeseen events occur during process execution, deviation from the actions the process model permits may become necessary. Such ad-hoc changes to process execution are not widely supported by process management systems as they pose significant challenges. This work presents a new prototypical addition to the PHILharmonicFlows process engine that allows for ad-hoc changes to processes following the object-aware process support paradigm. We demonstrate the extensions to the preexisting PHILharmonicFlows modeling and runtime user interfaces that enable users to change the underlying process models of process instances they are executing. The demonstration is intended to not only show off the ad-hoc change capabilities in the context of object-ware process management, but also inspire other researchers to employ similar ideas in other process support paradigms

Enabling Fine-grained Access Control in Flexible Distributed Object-aware Process Management Systems

To increase flexibility, object-aware process management systems enable data-driven process execution and dynamic generation of form-based tasks at run-time. Therefore, a powerful access control concept becomes necessary to define which data elements users may read or write at a given point in time during process execution. The access control concept we present in this paper has been realized in the context of the PHILharmonicFlows framework, which provides a distributed data-driven process execution engine. We present solutions that allow for complex as well as fine-grained permissions and roles, which are granted depending on the states of processes and data elements. We show how one can resolve authorization queries in real-time over multiple business objects and process instances. This constitutes a significant advantage over centralized access control systems

A User Acceptance Model for Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the rule-based automation of business processes by software bots mimicking human interactions to relieve employees from tedious work. However, any RPA initiative will not be successful if user acceptance is poor. So far, variables influencing RPA user acceptance have not been systematically investigated. The objective of this paper is to develop a model for assessing RPA user acceptance as well as variables influencing it. We derive this model using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and extend TAM by RPAspecific variables. Our empirical validation indicates that the most important variables, which significantly influence perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are facilitating conditions, result demonstrability, innovation joy, and social influence. These findings can be used to derive concrete recommendations for the design and implementation of RPA bots increasing acceptance of employees using the bots during their daily work. For the first time, an RPA user acceptance model is presented and validated contributing to an increased maturity of RPA projects

A Tool for Supporting Ad-Hoc Changes to Object-Aware Processes

Process management systems are often criticized for not being flexible enough, as they restrict the actions of users to those defined in a process model. When unforeseen events occur during process execution, deviation from the actions the process model permits may become necessary. Such ad-hoc changes to process execution are not widely supported by process management systems as they pose significant challenges. This work presents a new prototypical addition to the PHILharmonicFlows process engine that allows for ad-hoc changes to processes following the object-aware process support paradigm. We demonstrate the extensions to the preexisting PHILharmonicFlows modeling and runtime user interfaces that enable users to change the underlying process models of process instances they are executing. The demonstration is intended to not only show off the ad-hoc change capabilities in the context of object-ware process management, but also inspire other researchers to employ similar ideas in other process support paradigms

Modeling Process Interactions with Coordination Processes

With the rise of data-centric process management paradigms, small and interdependent processes, such as artifacts or object lifecycles, form a business process by interacting with each other. To arrive at a meaningful overall business process, these process interactions must be coordinated. One challenge is the proper consideration of one-to-many and many-to-many relations between interacting processes. Other challenges arise from the flexible, concurrent execution of the processes. Relational process structures and semantic relationships have been proposed for tackling these individual challenges. This paper introduces coordination processes, which bring together both relational process structures and semantic relationships, leveraging their features to enable proper coordination support for interdependent, concurrently running processes. Coordination processes contribute an abstracted and concise model for coordinating the highly complex interactions of interrelated processes

Coordinating Large Distributed Relational Process Structures

Representing a business process as a collaboration of interacting processes has become feasible with the emergence of data-centric business process management paradigms. Usually, these interacting processes have relations and, thereby, form a complex relational process structure. The interactions of processes within this relational process structure need to be coordinated to arrive at a meaningful overall business goal. However, relational process structures may become arbitrarily large. With the use of cloud technology, they may additionally be distributed over multiple nodes, allowing for scalability. Coordination processes have been proposed to coordinate relational process structures, where processes may have one-to-many and many-to-many relations at run-time. This paper shows how multiple coordination processes can be used in a decentralized fashion to more efficiently coordinate large, distributed process structures. The main challenge of using multiple coordination processes is to effectively realize the coordination responsibility of each coordination process. Key components of the solution are the subsidiary principle and the hierarchy of the relational process structure. Finally, an implementation of the coordination process concept based on microservices was developed, which allows for fast and concurrent enactment of multiple, decentralized coordination processes in large, distributed process structures

Towards Hyperscale Process Management

Scalability of software systems has been a research topic for many years and is as relevant as ever with the dramatic increases in digitization of business operations and data. This relevance also applies to process management systems, most of which are currently incapable of scaling horizontally, i.e., over multiple servers. This paper discusses an approach towards hyperscale workflows, using a data-centric process engine to encapsulate data and process logic into objects, which can then be stored and concurrently manipulated independently from each other. As this allows for more concurrent operations, even within a single data-intensive process instance, we want to prove that an implementation of a hyperscale process engine is a feasible endeavor

Executing Lifecycle Processes in Object-Aware Process Management

Data-centric approaches to business process management, in general, no longer require specific activities to be executed in a certain order, but instead data values must be present in business objects for a successful process completion. While this holds the promise of more flexible processes, the addition of the data perspective results in increased complexity. Therefore, data-centric approaches must be able to cope with the increased complexity, while still fulfilling the promise of high process flexibility. Object-aware process management specifies business processes in terms of objects as well as their lifecycle processes. Lifecycle processes determine how an object acquires all necessary data values. As data values are not always available in the order the lifecycle process of an object requires, the lifecycle process must be able to flexibly handle these deviations. Object-aware process management provides operational semantics with built-in flexible data acquisition, instead of tasking the process modeler with pre-specifying all execution variants. At the technical level, the flexible data acquisition is accomplished with process rules, which efficiently realize the operational semantics