@phdthesis{Smirnov2011,
  author    = {Smirnov, Sergey},
  title     = {Business process model abstraction},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-60258},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Business process models are used within a range of organizational initiatives, where every stakeholder has a unique perspective on a process and demands the respective model. As a consequence, multiple process models capturing the very same business process coexist. Keeping such models in sync is a challenge within an ever changing business environment: once a process is changed, all its models have to be updated. Due to a large number of models and their complex relations, model maintenance becomes error-prone and expensive. Against this background, business process model abstraction emerged as an operation reducing the number of stored process models and facilitating model management. Business process model abstraction is an operation preserving essential process properties and leaving out insignificant details in order to retain information relevant for a particular purpose. Process model abstraction has been addressed by several researchers. The focus of their studies has been on particular use cases and model transformations supporting these use cases. This thesis systematically approaches the problem of business process model abstraction shaping the outcome into a framework. We investigate the current industry demand in abstraction summarizing it in a catalog of business process model abstraction use cases. The thesis focuses on one prominent use case where the user demands a model with coarse-grained activities and overall process ordering constraints. We develop model transformations that support this use case starting with the transformations based on process model structure analysis. Further, abstraction methods considering the semantics of process model elements are investigated. First, we suggest how semantically related activities can be discovered in process models-a barely researched challenge. The thesis validates the designed abstraction methods against sets of industrial process models and discusses the method implementation aspects. Second, we develop a novel model transformation, which combined with the related activity discovery allows flexible non-hierarchical abstraction. In this way this thesis advocates novel model transformations that facilitate business process model management and provides the foundations for innovative tool support.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{SmirnovZamaniFarahaniWeske2011,
  author    = {Smirnov, Sergey and Zamani Farahani, Armin and Weske, Mathias},
  title     = {State propagation in abstracted business processes},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-130-1},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-51480},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {16},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {Business process models are abstractions of concrete operational procedures that occur in the daily business of organizations. To cope with the complexity of these models, business process model abstraction has been introduced recently. Its goal is to derive from a detailed process model several abstract models that provide a high-level understanding of the process. While techniques for constructing abstract models are reported in the literature, little is known about the relationships between process instances and abstract models. In this paper we show how the state of an abstract activity can be calculated from the states of related, detailed process activities as they happen. The approach uses activity state propagation. With state uniqueness and state transition correctness we introduce formal properties that improve the understanding of state propagation. Algorithms to check these properties are devised. Finally, we use behavioral profiles to identify and classify behavioral inconsistencies in abstract process models that might occur, once activity state propagation is used.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{SmirnovReijersNugterenetal.2010,
  author    = {Smirnov, Sergey and Reijers, Hajo A. and Nugteren, Thijs and Weske, Mathias},
  title     = {Business process model abstraction : theory and practice},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-054-0},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-41782},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {17},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Business process management aims at capturing, understanding, and improving work in organizations. The central artifacts are process models, which serve different purposes. Detailed process models are used to analyze concrete working procedures, while high-level models show, for instance, handovers between departments. To provide different views on process models, business process model abstraction has emerged. While several approaches have been proposed, a number of abstraction use case that are both relevant for industry and scientifically challenging are yet to be addressed. In this paper we systematically develop, classify, and consolidate different use cases for business process model abstraction. The reported work is based on a study with BPM users in the health insurance sector and validated with a BPM consultancy company and a large BPM vendor. The identified fifteen abstraction use cases reflect the industry demand. The related work on business process model abstraction is evaluated against the use cases, which leads to a research agenda.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{SmirnovWeidlichMendlingetal.2009,
  author    = {Smirnov, Sergey and Weidlich, Matthias and Mendling, Jan and Weske, Mathias},
  title     = {Action patterns in business process models},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-009-0},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-33586},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {19},
  year      = {2009},
  abstract  = {Business process management experiences a large uptake by the industry, and process models play an important role in the analysis and improvement of processes. While an increasing number of staff becomes involved in actual modeling practice, it is crucial to assure model quality and homogeneity along with providing suitable aids for creating models. In this paper we consider the problem of offering recommendations to the user during the act of modeling. Our key contribution is a concept for defining and identifying so-called action patterns - chunks of actions often appearing together in business processes. In particular, we specify action patterns and demonstrate how they can be identified from existing process model repositories using association rule mining techniques. Action patterns can then be used to suggest additional actions for a process model. Our approach is challenged by applying it to the collection of process models from the SAP Reference Model.},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{PolyvyanyySmirnovWeske2008,
  author    = {Polyvyanyy, Artem and Smirnov, Sergey and Weske, Mathias},
  title     = {Reducing the complexity of large EPCs},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32959},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {Inhalt: 1 Introduction 2 Motivation and Goal 3 Fundamentals 4 Elementary Abstractions 5 Real World Example 6 Conclusions},
  language  = {en}
}
@book{PolyvyanyySmirnovWeske2008,
  author    = {Polyvyanyy, Artem and Smirnov, Sergey and Weske, Mathias},
  title     = {The triconnected abstraction of process models},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-940793-65-2},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32847},
  publisher      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {17},
  year      = {2008},
  abstract  = {Contents: Artem Polyvanny, Sergey Smirnow, and Mathias Weske The Triconnected Abstraction of Process Models 1 Introduction 2 Business Process Model Abstraction 3 Preliminaries 4 Triconnected Decomposition 4.1 Basic Approach for Process Component Discovery 4.2 SPQR-Tree Decomposition 4.3 SPQR-Tree Fragments in the Context of Process Models 5 Triconnected Abstraction 5.1 Abstraction Rules 5.2 Abstraction Algorithm 6 Related Work and Conclusions},
  language  = {en}
}