@article{YousfiHeweltBaueretal.2018, author = {Yousfi, Alaaeddine and Hewelt, Marcin and Bauer, Christine and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Toward uBPMN-Based patterns for modeling ubiquitous business processes}, series = {IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics}, volume = {14}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics}, number = {8}, publisher = {Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers}, address = {Piscataway}, issn = {1551-3203}, doi = {10.1109/TII.2017.2777847}, pages = {3358 -- 3367}, year = {2018}, abstract = {Ubiquitous business processes are the new generation of processes that pervade the physical space and interact with their environments using a minimum of human involvement. Although they are now widely deployed in the industry, their deployment is still ad hoc . They are implemented after an arbitrary modeling phase or no modeling phase at all. The absence of a solid modeling phase backing up the implementation generates many loopholes that are stressed in the literature. Here, we tackle the issue of modeling ubiquitous business processes. We propose patterns to represent the recent ubiquitous computing features. These patterns are the outcome of an analysis we conducted in the field of human-computer interaction to examine how the features are actually deployed. The patterns' understandability, ease-of-use, usefulness, and completeness are examined via a user experiment. The results indicate that these four indexes are on the positive track. Hence, the patterns may be the backbone of ubiquitous business process modeling in industrial applications.}, language = {en} } @article{YousfiBatoulisWeske2019, author = {Yousfi, Alaaeddine and Batoulis, Kimon and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Achieving Business Process Improvement via Ubiquitous Decision-Aware Business Processes}, series = {ACM Transactions on Internet Technology}, volume = {19}, journal = {ACM Transactions on Internet Technology}, number = {1}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York}, issn = {1533-5399}, doi = {10.1145/3298986}, pages = {19}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Business process improvement is an endless challenge for many organizations. As long as there is a process, it must he improved. Nowadays, improvement initiatives are driven by professionals. This is no longer practical because people cannot perceive the enormous data of current business environments. Here, we introduce ubiquitous decision-aware business processes. They pervade the physical space, analyze the ever-changing environments, and make decisions accordingly. We explain how they can be built and used for improvement. Our approach can be a valuable improvement option to alleviate the workload of participants by helping focus on the crucial rather than the menial tasks.}, language = {en} } @article{PufahlWeske2019, author = {Pufahl, Luise and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Batch activity: enhancing business process modeling and enactment with batch processing}, series = {Computing}, volume = {101}, journal = {Computing}, number = {12}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Wien}, issn = {0010-485X}, doi = {10.1007/s00607-019-00717-4}, pages = {1909 -- 1933}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Organizations strive for efficiency in their business processes by process improvement and automation. Business process management (BPM) supports these efforts by capturing business processes in process models serving as blueprint for a number of process instances. In BPM, process instances are typically considered running independently of each other. However, batch processing-the collectively execution of several instances at specific process activities-is a common phenomenon in operational processes to reduce cost or time. Currently, batch processing is organized manually or hard-coded in software. For allowing stakeholders to explicitly represent their batch configurations in process models and their automatic execution, this paper provides a concept for batch activities and describes the corresponding execution semantics. The batch activity concept is evaluated in a two-step approach: a prototypical implementation in an existing BPM System proves its feasibility. Additionally, batch activities are applied to different use cases in a simulated environment. Its application implies cost-savings when a suitable batch configuration is selected. The batch activity concept contributes to practice by allowing the specification of batch work in process models and their automatic execution, and to research by extending the existing process modeling concepts.}, language = {en} } @article{NikajWeskeMendling2019, author = {Nikaj, Adriatik and Weske, Mathias and Mendling, Jan}, title = {Semi-automatic derivation of RESTful choreographies from business process choreographies}, series = {Software and systems modeling}, volume = {18}, journal = {Software and systems modeling}, number = {2}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Heidelberg}, issn = {1619-1366}, doi = {10.1007/s10270-017-0653-2}, pages = {1195 -- 1208}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Enterprises reach out for collaborations with other organizations in order to offer complex products and services to the market. Such collaboration and coordination between different organizations, for a good share, is facilitated by information technology. The BPMN process choreography is a modeling language for specifying the exchange of information and services between different organizations at the business level. Recently, there is a surging use of the REST architectural style for the provisioning of services on the web, but few systematic engineering approach to design their collaboration. In this paper, we address this gap in a comprehensive way by defining a semi-automatic method for the derivation of RESTful choreographies from process choreographies. The method is based on natural language analysis techniques to derive interactions from the textual information in process choreographies. The proposed method is evaluated in terms of effectiveness resulting in the intervention of a web engineer in only about 10\% of all generated RESTful interactions.}, language = {en} } @article{LadleifWeske2021, author = {Ladleif, Jan and Weske, Mathias}, title = {Which event happened first?}, series = {Frontiers in blockchain}, volume = {4}, journal = {Frontiers in blockchain}, publisher = {Frontiers in Blockchain}, address = {Lausanne, Schweiz}, issn = {2624-7852}, doi = {10.3389/fbloc.2021.758169}, pages = {1 -- 16}, year = {2021}, abstract = {First come, first served: Critical choices between alternative actions are often made based on events external to an organization, and reacting promptly to their occurrence can be a major advantage over the competition. In Business Process Management (BPM), such deferred choices can be expressed in process models, and they are an important aspect of process engines. Blockchain-based process execution approaches are no exception to this, but are severely limited by the inherent properties of the platform: The isolated environment prevents direct access to external entities and data, and the non-continual runtime based entirely on atomic transactions impedes the monitoring and detection of events. In this paper we provide an in-depth examination of the semantics of deferred choice, and transfer them to environments such as the blockchain. We introduce and compare several oracle architectures able to satisfy certain requirements, and show that they can be implemented using state-of-the-art blockchain technology.}, language = {en} } @article{IhdePufahlVoelkeretal.2022, author = {Ihde, Sven and Pufahl, Luise and V{\"o}lker, Maximilian and Goel, Asvin and Weske, Mathias}, title = {A framework for modeling and executing task}, series = {Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation}, volume = {104}, journal = {Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Wien}, issn = {0010-485X}, doi = {10.1007/s00607-022-01093-2}, pages = {2405 -- 2429}, year = {2022}, abstract = {As resources are valuable assets, organizations have to decide which resources to allocate to business process tasks in a way that the process is executed not only effectively but also efficiently. Traditional role-based resource allocation leads to effective process executions, since each task is performed by a resource that has the required skills and competencies to do so. However, the resulting allocations are typically not as efficient as they could be, since optimization techniques have yet to find their way in traditional business process management scenarios. On the other hand, operations research provides a rich set of analytical methods for supporting problem-specific decisions on resource allocation. This paper provides a novel framework for creating transparency on existing tasks and resources, supporting individualized allocations for each activity in a process, and the possibility to integrate problem-specific analytical methods of the operations research domain. To validate the framework, the paper reports on the design and prototypical implementation of a software architecture, which extends a traditional process engine with a dedicated resource management component. This component allows us to define specific resource allocation problems at design time, and it also facilitates optimized resource allocation at run time. The framework is evaluated using a real-world parcel delivery process. The evaluation shows that the quality of the allocation results increase significantly with a technique from operations research in contrast to the traditional applied rule-based approach.}, language = {en} } @article{CombiOliboniWeskeetal.2021, author = {Combi, Carlo and Oliboni, Barbara and Weske, Mathias and Zerbato, Francesca}, title = {Seamless conceptual modeling of processes with transactional and analytical data}, series = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, volume = {134}, journal = {Data \& knowledge engineering}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {0169-023X}, doi = {10.1016/j.datak.2021.101895}, pages = {14}, year = {2021}, abstract = {In the field of Business Process Management (BPM), modeling business processes and related data is a critical issue since process activities need to manage data stored in databases. The connection between processes and data is usually handled at the implementation level, even if modeling both processes and data at the conceptual level should help designers in improving business process models and identifying requirements for implementation. Especially in data -and decision-intensive contexts, business process activities need to access data stored both in databases and data warehouses. In this paper, we complete our approach for defining a novel conceptual view that bridges process activities and data. The proposed approach allows the designer to model the connection between business processes and database models and define the operations to perform, providing interesting insights on the overall connected perspective and hints for identifying activities that are crucial for decision support.}, 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} }