TY - JOUR A1 - Haarmann, Stephan A1 - Holfter, Adrian A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Formal framework for checking compliance of data-driven case management JF - Journal on data semantics : JoDS N2 - 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. KW - Compliance checking KW - Case management KW - Model verification KW - Data-centric KW - processes Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s13740-021-00120-3 SN - 1861-2032 SN - 1861-2040 VL - 10 IS - 1-2 SP - 143 EP - 163 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Herzberg, Nico A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Enriching raw events to enable process intelligence : research challenges N2 - 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. N2 - Die wertschöpfenden Tätigkeiten in Unternehmen folgen definierten Geschäftsprozessen und werden entsprechend ausgeführt. Dabei werden wertvolle Daten über die Prozessausführung erzeugt. Die Menge und Qualität dieser Daten ist sehr stark von der Prozessausführungsumgebung abhängig, welche überwiegend manuell als auch vollautomatisiert sein kann. Die stetige Verbesserung von Prozessen ist einer der Hauptpfeiler des Business Process Managements, mit der Aufgabe die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Unternehmen zu sichern und zu steigern. Um Prozesse zu verbessern muss man diese analysieren und ist auf Daten der Prozessausführung angewiesen. Speziell bei manueller Prozessausführung sind die Daten nur selten direkt zur konkreten Prozessausführung verknüpft. In dieser Arbeit präsentieren wir einen Ansatz zur Verwendung und Anreicherung von Prozessausführungsdaten mit Kontextdaten – Daten die unabhängig zu den Prozessdaten existieren – und Wissen aus den dazugehörigen Prozessmodellen, um ein hochwertige Event- Datenbasis für Process Intelligence Anwendungen, wie zum Beispiel Prozessmonitoring, Prozessanalyse und Process Mining, sicherstellen zu können. Des Weiteren zeigen wir offene Fragestellungen und Herausforderungen auf, welche in Zukunft Gegenstand unserer Forschung sein werden. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 73 Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64012 SN - 978-3-86956-241-4 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Efficient consistency measurement based on behavioral profiles of process models JF - IEEE transactions on software engineering N2 - 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. KW - Process model analysis KW - process model alignment KW - behavioral abstraction KW - consistency checking KW - consistency measures Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2010.96 SN - 0098-5589 VL - 37 IS - 3 SP - 410 EP - 429 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Los Alamitos ER - TY - GEN A1 - Haarmann, Stephan A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Nikaj, Adriatik A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - DMN Decision Execution on the Ethereum Blockchain T2 - Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAISE 2018 N2 - 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. KW - Blockchain KW - Interacting processes KW - DMN Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-91563-0 SN - 978-3-319-91562-3 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91563-0_20 SN - 0302-9743 SN - 1611-3349 VL - 10816 SP - 327 EP - 341 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yousfi, Alaaeddine A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Discovering commute patterns via process mining JF - Knowledge and Information Systems N2 - 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. KW - Commute pattern KW - Commute process KW - Process mining KW - Ubiquitous computing KW - Location-based services Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-018-1255-1 SN - 0219-1377 SN - 0219-3116 VL - 60 IS - 2 SP - 691 EP - 713 PB - Springer CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Determining the effect of tangible business process modeling Y1 - 2012 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Wong, Tsun Yin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Design of an extensible BPMN process simulator T2 - Business Process Management Workshops (BPM 2017) N2 - 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. KW - Business process simulation KW - Extensibility KW - BPMN Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-74030-0 SN - 978-3-319-74029-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_62 SN - 1865-1348 VL - 308 SP - 782 EP - 795 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - GEN A1 - Bazhenova, Ekaterina A1 - Zerbato, Francesca A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Data-Centric Extraction of DMN Decision Models from BPMN Process Models T2 - Business Process Management Workshops N2 - 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. KW - Business process models KW - Process-related data KW - Decision models Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-319-74030-0 SN - 978-3-319-74029-4 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74030-0_43 SN - 1865-1348 VL - 308 SP - 542 EP - 555 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Smirnov, Sergey A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Data in business processes N2 - 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. N2 - Prozesse und Daten sind gleichermaßen wichtig für das Geschäftsprozessmanagement. Prozessdaten sind dabei insbesondere im Kontext der Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen, dem Prozesscontrolling und der Repräsentation der Vermögensgegenstände von Organisationen relevant. Es existieren viele Prozessmodellierungssprachen, von denen jede die Darstellung von Daten durch eine fest spezifizierte Menge an Modellierungskonstrukten ermöglicht. Allerdings unterscheiden sich diese Darstellungenund damit der Grad der Datenmodellierung stark untereinander. Dieser Report evaluiert verschiedene Prozessmodellierungssprachen bezüglich der Unterstützung von Datenmodellierung. Als einheitliche Grundlage entwickeln wir ein Framework, welches prozess- und datenrelevante Aspekte systematisch organisiert. Die Kriterien legen dabei das Hauptaugenmerk auf die datenrelevanten Aspekte. Nach Einführung des Frameworks vergleichen wir zwölf Prozessmodellierungssprachen gegen dieses. Wir generalisieren die Erkenntnisse aus den Vergleichen und identifizieren Cluster bezüglich des Grades der Datenmodellierung, in welche die einzelnen Sprachen eingeordnet werden. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 50 KW - business process modeling KW - process modeling languages KW - data modeling KW - data in business processes Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-53046 SN - 978-3-86956-144-8 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Polyvyanyy, Artem A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Connectivity of workflow nets the foundations of stepwise verification JF - Acta informatica N2 - 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. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00236-011-0137-8 SN - 0001-5903 VL - 48 IS - 4 SP - 213 EP - 242 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - GEN A1 - Combi, Carlo A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Zerbato, Francesca ED - Trujillo, JC Davis T1 - Conceptual modeling of processes and data BT - Connecting different perspectives T2 - Conceptual Modeling, ER 2018 N2 - Business processes constantly generate, manipulate, and consume data that are managed by organizational databases. Despite being central to process modeling and execution, the link between processes and data is often handled by developers when the process is implemented, thus leaving the connection unexplored during the conceptual design. In this paper, we introduce, formalize, and evaluate a novel conceptual view that bridges the gap between process and data models, and show some kinds of interesting insights that can be derived from this novel proposal. Y1 - 2018 SN - 978-3-030-00847-5 SN - 978-3-030-00846-8 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00847-5_18 SN - 0302-9743 SN - 1611-3349 VL - 11157 SP - 236 EP - 250 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Polyvyanyy, Artem A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Causal behavioural profiles - efficient computation, applications, and evaluation JF - Fundamenta informaticae N2 - Analysis of behavioural consistency is an important aspect of software engineering. In process and service management, consistency verification of behavioural models has manifold applications. For instance, a business process model used as system specification and a corresponding workflow model used as implementation have to be consistent. Another example would be the analysis to what degree a process log of executed business operations is consistent with the corresponding normative process model. Typically, existing notions of behaviour equivalence, such as bisimulation and trace equivalence, are applied as consistency notions. Still, these notions are exponential in computation and yield a Boolean result. In many cases, however, a quantification of behavioural deviation is needed along with concepts to isolate the source of deviation. In this article, we propose causal behavioural profiles as the basis for a consistency notion. These profiles capture essential behavioural information, such as order, exclusiveness, and causality between pairs of activities of a process model. Consistency based on these profiles is weaker than trace equivalence, but can be computed efficiently for a broad class of models. In this article, we introduce techniques for the computation of causal behavioural profiles using structural decomposition techniques for sound free-choice workflow systems if unstructured net fragments are acyclic or can be traced back to S-or T-nets. We also elaborate on the findings of applying our technique to three industry model collections. KW - Causal Behavioural Profiles KW - Formal Methods KW - Behavioural Abstraction KW - Structural Decomposition KW - Exclusiveness KW - Concurrency KW - Order Relations KW - Causality KW - Optionality Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3233/FI-2011-614 SN - 0169-2968 VL - 113 IS - 3-4 SP - 399 EP - 435 PB - IOS Press CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Smirnov, Sergey A1 - Reijers, Hajo A. A1 - Nugteren, Thijs A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Business process model abstraction : theory and practice N2 - 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. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 35 Y1 - 2010 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-41782 SN - 978-3-86956-054-0 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Business Process Management : Concepts, Languages, Architectures Y1 - 2007 SN - 978-3-540-73521-2 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73522-9 PB - Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg CY - Berlin, Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pernici, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Business process management Y1 - 2006 SN - 0169-023X ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Eid-Sabbagh, Rami-Habib A1 - Hewelt, Marcin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Business process architectures with multiplicities : transformation and correctness N2 - Business processes are instrumental to manage work in organisations. To study the interdependencies between business processes, Business Process Architectures have been introduced. These express trigger and message ow relations between business processes. When we investigate real world Business Process Architectures, we find complex interdependencies, involving multiple process instances. These aspects have not been studied in detail so far, especially concerning correctness properties. In this paper, we propose a modular transformation of BPAs to open nets for the analysis of behavior involving multiple business processes with multiplicities. For this purpose we introduce intermediary nets to portray semantics of multiplicity specifications. We evaluate our approach on a use case from the public sector. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 77 Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66780 SN - 978-3-86956-257-5 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Bringing design thinking to business process modeling Y1 - 2011 SN - 978-3-642-13756-3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Baier, Thomas A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Bridging abstraction layers in process mining JF - Information systems N2 - While the maturity of process mining algorithms increases and more process mining tools enter the market, process mining projects still face the problem of different levels of abstraction when comparing events with modeled business activities. Current approaches for event log abstraction try to abstract from the events in an automated way that does not capture the required domain knowledge to fit business activities. This can lead to misinterpretation of discovered process models. We developed an approach that aims to abstract an event log to the same abstraction level that is needed by the business. We use domain knowledge extracted from existing process documentation to semi-automatically match events and activities. Our abstraction approach is able to deal with n:m relations between events and activities and also supports concurrency. We evaluated our approach in two case studies with a German IT outsourcing company. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Process mining KW - Abstraction KW - Event mapping Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2014.04.004 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 46 SP - 123 EP - 139 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weber, Ingo A1 - van der Aalst, Wil A1 - Brocke, Jan Vom A1 - Cabanillas, Cristina A1 - Daniel, Florian A1 - Debois, Soren A1 - Di Ciccio, Claudio A1 - Dumas, Marlon A1 - Dustdar, Schahram A1 - Gal, Avigdor A1 - Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano A1 - Governatori, Guido A1 - Hull, Richard A1 - La Rosa, Marcello A1 - Leopold, Henrik A1 - Leymann, Frank A1 - Recker, Jan A1 - Reichert, Manfred A1 - Reijers, Hajo A. A1 - Rinderle-Ma, Stefanie A1 - Solti, Andreas A1 - Rosemann, Michael A1 - Schulte, Stefan A1 - Singh, Munindar P. A1 - Slaats, Tijs A1 - Staples, Mark A1 - Weber, Barbara A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Xu, Xiwei A1 - Zhu, Liming T1 - Blockchains for Business Process Management BT - Challenges and Opportunities JF - ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems N2 - Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way interorganizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution without a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this promise and the limits thereof, in this article, we outline the challenges and opportunities of blockchain for business process management (BPM). We first reflect how blockchains could be used in the context of the established BPM lifecycle and second how they might become relevant beyond. We conclude our discourse with a summary of seven research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology in the context of BPM. KW - Blockchain KW - business process management KW - research challenges Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3183367 SN - 2158-656X SN - 2158-6578 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Kunze, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Behavioural Models BT - From Modelling Finite Automata to Analysing Business Processes N2 - This textbook introduces the basis for modelling and analysing discrete dynamic systems, such as computer programmes, soft- and hardware systems, and business processes. The underlying concepts are introduced and concrete modelling techniques are described, such as finite automata, state machines, and Petri nets. The concepts are related to concrete application scenarios, among which business processes play a prominent role. The book consists of three parts, the first of which addresses the foundations of behavioural modelling. After a general introduction to modelling, it introduces transition systems as a basic formalism for representing the behaviour of discrete dynamic systems. This section also discusses causality, a fundamental concept for modelling and reasoning about behaviour. In turn, Part II forms the heart of the book and is devoted to models of behaviour. It details both sequential and concurrent systems and introduces finite automata, state machines and several different types of Petri nets. One chapter is especially devoted to business process models, workflow patterns and BPMN, the industry standard for modelling business processes. Lastly, Part III investigates how the behaviour of systems can be analysed. To this end, it introduces readers to the concept of state spaces. Further chapters cover the comparison of behaviour and the formal analysis and verification of behavioural models. The book was written for students of computer science and software engineering, as well as for programmers and system analysts interested in the behaviour of the systems they work on. It takes readers on a journey from the fundamentals of behavioural modelling to advanced techniques for modelling and analysing sequential and concurrent systems, and thus provides them a deep understanding of the concepts and techniques introduced and how they can be applied to concrete application scenarios. Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-3-319-44958-6 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER -