@article{RoggeSoltiWeske2015, author = {Rogge-Solti, Andreas and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Prediction of business process durations using non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets}, series = {Information systems}, volume = {54}, journal = {Information systems}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2015.04.004}, pages = {1 -- 14}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Companies need to efficiently manage their business processes to deliver products and services in time. Therefore, they monitor the progress of individual cases to be able to timely detect undesired deviations and to react accordingly. For example, companies can decide to speed up process execution by raising alerts or by using additional resources, which increases the chance that a certain deadline or service level agreement can be met. Central to such process control is accurate prediction of the remaining time of a case and the estimation of the risk of missing a deadline. To achieve this goal, we use a specific kind of stochastic Petri nets that can capture arbitrary duration distributions. Thereby, we are able to achieve higher prediction accuracy than related approaches. Further, we evaluate the approach in comparison to state of the art approaches and show the potential of exploiting a so far untapped source of information: the elapsed time since the last observed event. Real-world case studies in the financial and logistics domain serve to illustrate and evaluate the approach presented. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{WeidlichZiekowGaletal.2014, author = {Weidlich, Matthias and Ziekow, Holger and Gal, Avigdor and Mendling, Jan and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Optimizing event pattern matching using business process models}, series = {IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering}, volume = {26}, journal = {IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering}, number = {11}, publisher = {Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers}, address = {Los Alamitos}, issn = {1041-4347}, doi = {10.1109/TKDE.2014.2302306}, pages = {2759 -- 2773}, year = {2014}, abstract = {A growing number of enterprises use complex event processing for monitoring and controlling their operations, while business process models are used to document working procedures. In this work, we propose a comprehensive method for complex event processing optimization using business process models. Our proposed method is based on the extraction of behaviorial constraints that are used, in turn, to rewrite patterns for event detection, and select and transform execution plans. We offer a set of rewriting rules that is shown to be complete with respect to the all, seq, and any patterns. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated in an experimental evaluation with a large number of processes from an insurance company. We illustrate that the proposed optimization leads to significant savings in query processing. By integrating the optimization in state-of-the-art systems for event pattern matching, we demonstrate that these savings materialize in different technical infrastructures and can be combined with existing optimization techniques.}, language = {en} } @book{MeyerPufahlFahlandetal.2013, author = {Meyer, Andreas and Pufahl, Luise and Fahland, Dirk and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Modeling and enacting complex data dependencies in business processes}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-245-2}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-65103}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {40}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Enacting business processes in process engines requires the coverage of control flow, resource assignments, and process data. While the first two aspects are well supported in current process engines, data dependencies need to be added and maintained manually by a process engineer. Thus, this task is error-prone and time-consuming. In this report, we address the problem of modeling processes with complex data dependencies, e.g., m:n relationships, and their automatic enactment from process models. First, we extend BPMN data objects with few annotations to allow data dependency handling as well as data instance differentiation. Second, we introduce a pattern-based approach to derive SQL queries from process models utilizing the above mentioned extensions. Therewith, we allow automatic enactment of data-aware BPMN process models. We implemented our approach for the Activiti process engine to show applicability.}, language = {en} } @article{PolyvyanyyGarciaBanuelosFahlandetal.2014, author = {Polyvyanyy, Artem and Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano and Fahland, Dirk and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Maximal structuring of acyclic process models}, series = {The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society}, volume = {57}, journal = {The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society}, number = {1}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0010-4620}, doi = {10.1093/comjnl/bxs126}, pages = {12 -- 35}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This article addresses the transformation of a process model with an arbitrary topology into an equivalent structured process model. In particular, this article studies the subclass of process models that have no equivalent well-structured representation but which, nevertheless, can be partially structured into their maximally-structured representation. The transformations are performed under a behavioral equivalence notion that preserves the observed concurrency of tasks in equivalent process models. The article gives a full characterization of the subclass of acyclic process models that have no equivalent well-structured representation, but do have an equivalent maximally-structured one, as well as proposes a complete structuring method. Together with our previous results, this article completes the solution of the process model structuring problem for the class of acyclic process models.}, language = {en} } @article{BaierDiCiccioMendlingetal.2018, author = {Baier, Thomas and Di Ciccio, Claudio and Mendling, Jan and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Matching events and activities by integrating behavioral aspects and label analysis}, series = {Software and systems modeling}, volume = {17}, journal = {Software and systems modeling}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1619-1366}, doi = {10.1007/s10270-017-0603-z}, pages = {573 -- 598}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Nowadays, business processes are increasingly supported by IT services that produce massive amounts of event data during the execution of a process. These event data can be used to analyze the process using process mining techniques to discover the real process, measure conformance to a given process model, or to enhance existing models with performance information. Mapping the produced events to activities of a given process model is essential for conformance checking, annotation and understanding of process mining results. In order to accomplish this mapping with low manual effort, we developed a semi-automatic approach that maps events to activities using insights from behavioral analysis and label analysis. The approach extracts Declare constraints from both the log and the model to build matching constraints to efficiently reduce the number of possible mappings. These mappings are further reduced using techniques from natural language processing, which allow for a matching based on labels and external knowledge sources. The evaluation with synthetic and real-life data demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach and its robustness toward non-conforming execution logs.}, language = {en} } @unpublished{DumasReckerWeske2012, author = {Dumas, Marlon and Recker, Jan and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Management and engineering of process-aware information systems: Introduction to the special issue}, series = {INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, volume = {37}, journal = {INFORMATION SYSTEMS}, number = {2}, publisher = {PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD}, address = {OXFORD}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2011.09.003}, pages = {77 -- 79}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @article{DeckerWeske2011, author = {Decker, Gero and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Interaction-centric modeling of process choreographies}, series = {Information systems}, volume = {36}, journal = {Information systems}, number = {2}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2010.06.005}, pages = {292 -- 312}, year = {2011}, abstract = {With the rise of electronic integration between organizations, the need for a precise specification of interaction behavior increases. Information systems, replacing interaction previously carried out by humans via phone, faxes and emails, require a precise specification for handling all possible situations. Such interaction behavior is described in process choreographies. While many proposals for choreography languages have already been made, most of them fall into the category of interconnection models, where the observable behavior of the different partners is described and then related via message flow. As this article will show, this modeling approach fails to support fundamental design principles of choreographies and typically leads to modeling errors. This motivates an alternative modeling style, namely interaction modeling, for overcoming these limitations. While the main concepts are independent of a concrete modeling language, iBPMN is introduced as novel interaction modeling language. Formal execution semantics are provided and a comprehensive toolset implementing the approach is presented.}, language = {en} } @article{DeckerKoppLeymannetal.2009, author = {Decker, Gero and Kopp, Oliver and Leymann, Frank and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Interacting services : from specification to execution}, issn = {0169-023X}, doi = {10.1016/j.datak.2009.04.003}, year = {2009}, abstract = {Interacting services play a key role to realize business process integration among different business partners by means of electronic message exchange. In order to provide seamless integration of these services, the messages exchanged as well as their dependencies must be well-defined. Service choreographies are a means to describe the allowed conversations. This article presents a requirements framework for service choreography languages, along which existing choreography languages are assessed. The requirements framework provides the basis for introducing the language BPEL4Chor, which extends the industry standard WS-BPEL with choreography-specific concepts. A validation is provided and integration with executable service orchestrations is discussed.}, language = {en} } @article{HerzbergMeyerWeske2015, author = {Herzberg, Nico and Meyer, Andreas and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Improving business process intelligence by observing object state transitions}, series = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, volume = {98}, journal = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0169-023X}, doi = {10.1016/j.datak.2015.07.008}, pages = {144 -- 164}, year = {2015}, abstract = {During the execution of business processes several events happen that are recorded in the company's information systems. These events deliver insights into process executions so that process monitoring and analysis can be performed resulting, for instance, in prediction of upcoming process steps or the analysis of the run time of single steps. While event capturing is trivial when a process engine with integrated logging capabilities is used, manual process execution environments do not provide automatic logging of events, so that typically external devices, like bar code scanners, have to be used. As experience shows, these manual steps are error-prone and induce additional work. Therefore, we use object state transitions as additional monitoring information, so-called object state transition events. Based on these object state transition events, we reason about the enablement and termination of activities and provide the basis for process monitoring and analysis in terms of a large event log. In this paper, we present the concept to utilize information from these object state transition events for capturing process progress. Furthermore, we discuss a methodology to create the required design time artifacts that then are used for monitoring at run time. In a proof-of-concept implementation, we show how the design time and run time side work and prove applicability of the introduced concept of object state transition events. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{BazhenovaZerbatoOlibonietal.2019, author = {Bazhenova, Ekaterina and Zerbato, Francesca and Oliboni, Barbara and Weske, Mathias}, title = {From BPMN process models to DMN decision models}, series = {Information systems}, volume = {83}, journal = {Information systems}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0306-4379}, doi = {10.1016/j.is.2019.02.001}, pages = {69 -- 88}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The interplay between process and decision models plays a crucial role in business process management, as decisions may be based on running processes and affect process outcomes. Often process models include decisions that are encoded through process control flow structures and data flow elements, thus reducing process model maintainability. The Decision Model and Notation (DMN) was proposed to achieve separation of concerns and to possibly complement the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for designing decisions related to process models. Nevertheless, deriving decision models from process models remains challenging, especially when the same data underlie both process and decision models. In this paper, we explore how and to which extent the data modeled in BPMN processes and used for decision-making may be represented in the corresponding DMN decision models. To this end, we identify a set of patterns that capture possible representations of data in BPMN processes and that can be used to guide the derivation of decision models related to existing process models. Throughout the paper we refer to real-world healthcare processes to show the applicability of the proposed approach. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{HaarmannHolfterPufahletal.2021, author = {Haarmann, Stephan and Holfter, Adrian and Pufahl, Luise and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Formal framework for checking compliance of data-driven case management}, series = {Journal on data semantics : JoDS}, volume = {10}, journal = {Journal on data semantics : JoDS}, number = {1-2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1861-2032}, doi = {10.1007/s13740-021-00120-3}, pages = {143 -- 163}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Business processes are often specified in descriptive or normative models. Both types of models should adhere to internal and external regulations, such as company guidelines or laws. Employing compliance checking techniques, it is possible to verify process models against rules. While traditionally compliance checking focuses on well-structured processes, we address case management scenarios. In case management, knowledge workers drive multi-variant and adaptive processes. Our contribution is based on the fragment-based case management approach, which splits a process into a set of fragments. The fragments are synchronized through shared data but can, otherwise, be dynamically instantiated and executed. We formalize case models using Petri nets. We demonstrate the formalization for design-time and run-time compliance checking and present a proof-of-concept implementation. The application of the implemented compliance checking approach to a use case exemplifies its effectiveness while designing a case model. The empirical evaluation on a set of case models for measuring the performance of the approach shows that rules can often be checked in less than a second.}, language = {en} } @book{HerzbergWeske2013, author = {Herzberg, Nico and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Enriching raw events to enable process intelligence : research challenges}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-241-4}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64012}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {30}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Business processes are performed within a company's daily business. Thereby, valuable data about the process execution is produced. The quantity and quality of this data is very dependent on the process execution environment that reaches from predominantly manual to fullautomated. Process improvement is one essential cornerstone of business process management to ensure companies' competitiveness and relies on information about the process execution. Especially in manual process environments data directly related to the process execution is rather sparse and incomplete. In this paper, we present an approach that supports the usage and enrichment of process execution data with context data - data that exists orthogonally to business process data - and knowledge from the corresponding process models to provide a high-quality event base for process intelligence subsuming, among others, process monitoring, process analysis, and process mining. Further, we discuss open issues and challenges that are subject to our future work.}, language = {de} } @article{WeidlichMendlingWeske2011, author = {Weidlich, Matthias and Mendling, Jan and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Efficient consistency measurement based on behavioral profiles of process models}, series = {IEEE transactions on software engineering}, volume = {37}, journal = {IEEE transactions on software engineering}, number = {3}, publisher = {Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers}, address = {Los Alamitos}, issn = {0098-5589}, doi = {10.1109/TSE.2010.96}, pages = {410 -- 429}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Engineering of process-driven business applications can be supported by process modeling efforts in order to bridge the gap between business requirements and system specifications. However, diverging purposes of business process modeling initiatives have led to significant problems in aligning related models at different abstract levels and different perspectives. Checking the consistency of such corresponding models is a major challenge for process modeling theory and practice. In this paper, we take the inappropriateness of existing strict notions of behavioral equivalence as a starting point. Our contribution is a concept called behavioral profile that captures the essential behavioral constraints of a process model. We show that these profiles can be computed efficiently, i.e., in cubic time for sound free-choice Petri nets w.r.t. their number of places and transitions. We use behavioral profiles for the definition of a formal notion of consistency which is less sensitive to model projections than common criteria of behavioral equivalence and allows for quantifying deviation in a metric way. The derivation of behavioral profiles and the calculation of a degree of consistency have been implemented to demonstrate the applicability of our approach. We also report the findings from checking consistency between partially overlapping models of the SAP reference model.}, language = {en} } @misc{HaarmannBatoulisNikajetal.2018, author = {Haarmann, Stephan and Batoulis, Kimon and Nikaj, Adriatik and Weske, Mathias}, title = {DMN Decision Execution on the Ethereum Blockchain}, series = {Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE 2018}, volume = {10816}, journal = {Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE 2018}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Cham}, isbn = {978-3-319-91563-0}, issn = {0302-9743}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-91563-0_20}, pages = {327 -- 341}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Recently blockchain technology has been introduced to execute interacting business processes in a secure and transparent way. While the foundations for process enactment on blockchain have been researched, the execution of decisions on blockchain has not been addressed yet. In this paper we argue that decisions are an essential aspect of interacting business processes, and, therefore, also need to be executed on blockchain. The immutable representation of decision logic can be used by the interacting processes, so that decision taking will be more secure, more transparent, and better auditable. The approach is based on a mapping of the DMN language S-FEEL to Solidity code to be run on the Ethereum blockchain. The work is evaluated by a proof-of-concept prototype and an empirical cost evaluation.}, language = {en} } @article{YousfiWeske2019, author = {Yousfi, Alaaeddine and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Discovering commute patterns via process mining}, series = {Knowledge and Information Systems}, volume = {60}, journal = {Knowledge and Information Systems}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {London}, issn = {0219-1377}, doi = {10.1007/s10115-018-1255-1}, pages = {691 -- 713}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Ubiquitous computing has proven its relevance and efficiency in improving the user experience across a myriad of situations. It is now the ineluctable solution to keep pace with the ever-changing environments in which current systems operate. Despite the achievements of ubiquitous computing, this discipline is still overlooked in business process management. This is surprising, since many of today's challenges, in this domain, can be addressed by methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing, for instance user context and dynamic aspects of resource locations. This paper takes a first step to integrate methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing in business process management. To do so, we propose discovering commute patterns via process mining. Through our proposition, we can deduce the users' significant locations, routes, travel times and travel modes. This information can be a stepping-stone toward helping the business process management community embrace the latest achievements in ubiquitous computing, mainly in location-based service. To corroborate our claims, a user study was conducted. The significant places, routes, travel modes and commuting times of our test subjects were inferred with high accuracies. All in all, ubiquitous computing can enrich the processes with new capabilities that go beyond what has been established in business process management so far.}, language = {en} } @article{LuebbeWeske2012, author = {Luebbe, Alexander and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Determining the effect of tangible business process modeling}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @misc{PufahlWongWeske2018, author = {Pufahl, Luise and Wong, Tsun Yin and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Design of an extensible BPMN process simulator}, series = {Business Process Management Workshops (BPM 2017)}, volume = {308}, journal = {Business Process Management Workshops (BPM 2017)}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, isbn = {978-3-319-74030-0}, issn = {1865-1348}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_62}, pages = {782 -- 795}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Business process simulation is an important means for quantitative analysis of a business process and to compare different process alternatives. With the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) being the state-of-the-art language for the graphical representation of business processes, many existing process simulators support already the simulation of BPMN diagrams. However, they do not provide well-defined interfaces to integrate new concepts in the simulation environment. In this work, we present the design and architecture of a proof-of-concept implementation of an open and extensible BPMN process simulator. It also supports the simulation of multiple BPMN processes at a time and relies on the building blocks of the well-founded discrete event simulation. The extensibility is assured by a plug-in concept. Its feasibility is demonstrated by extensions supporting new BPMN concepts, such as the simulation of business rule activities referencing decision models and batch activities.}, language = {en} } @misc{BazhenovaZerbatoWeske2018, author = {Bazhenova, Ekaterina and Zerbato, Francesca and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Data-Centric Extraction of DMN Decision Models from BPMN Process Models}, series = {Business Process Management Workshops}, volume = {308}, journal = {Business Process Management Workshops}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Berlin}, isbn = {978-3-319-74030-0}, issn = {1865-1348}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_43}, pages = {542 -- 555}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Operational decisions in business processes can be modeled by using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN). The complementary use of DMN for decision modeling and of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) for process design realizes the separation of concerns principle. For supporting separation of concerns during the design phase, it is crucial to understand which aspects of decision-making enclosed in a process model should be captured by a dedicated decision model. Whereas existing work focuses on the extraction of decision models from process control flow, the connection of process-related data and decision models is still unexplored. In this paper, we investigate how process-related data used for making decisions can be represented in process models and we distinguish a set of BPMN patterns capturing such information. Then, we provide a formal mapping of the identified BPMN patterns to corresponding DMN models and apply our approach to a real-world healthcare process.}, language = {en} } @book{MeyerSmirnovWeske2011, author = {Meyer, Andreas and Smirnov, Sergey and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Data in business processes}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam}, address = {Potsdam}, isbn = {978-3-86956-144-8}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-53046}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam}, pages = {40}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Process and data are equally important for business process management. Process data is especially relevant in the context of automated business processes, process controlling, and representation of organizations' core assets. One can discover many process modeling languages, each having a specific set of data modeling capabilities and the level of data awareness. The level of data awareness and data modeling capabilities vary significantly from one language to another. This paper evaluates several process modeling languages with respect to the role of data. To find a common ground for comparison, we develop a framework, which systematically organizes process- and data-related aspects of the modeling languages elaborating on the data aspects. Once the framework is in place, we compare twelve process modeling languages against it. We generalize the results of the comparison and identify clusters of similar languages with respect to data awareness.}, language = {de} } @article{PolyvyanyyWeidlichWeske2011, author = {Polyvyanyy, Artem and Weidlich, Matthias and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Connectivity of workflow nets the foundations of stepwise verification}, series = {Acta informatica}, volume = {48}, journal = {Acta informatica}, number = {4}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {0001-5903}, doi = {10.1007/s00236-011-0137-8}, pages = {213 -- 242}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Behavioral models capture operational principles of real-world or designed systems. Formally, each behavioral model defines the state space of a system, i.e., its states and the principles of state transitions. Such a model is the basis for analysis of the system's properties. In practice, state spaces of systems are immense, which results in huge computational complexity for their analysis. Behavioral models are typically described as executable graphs, whose execution semantics encodes a state space. The structure theory of behavioral models studies the relations between the structure of a model and the properties of its state space. In this article, we use the connectivity property of graphs to achieve an efficient and extensive discovery of the compositional structure of behavioral models; behavioral models get stepwise decomposed into components with clear structural characteristics and inter-component relations. At each decomposition step, the discovered compositional structure of a model is used for reasoning on properties of the whole state space of the system. The approach is exemplified by means of a concrete behavioral model and verification criterion. That is, we analyze workflow nets, a well-established tool for modeling behavior of distributed systems, with respect to the soundness property, a basic correctness property of workflow nets. Stepwise verification allows the detection of violations of the soundness property by inspecting small portions of a model, thereby considerably reducing the amount of work to be done to perform soundness checks. Besides formal results, we also report on findings from applying our approach to an industry model collection.}, language = {en} }