TY - JOUR A1 - Ihde, Sven A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Völker, Maximilian A1 - Goel, Asvin A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - A framework for modeling and executing task BT - specific resource allocations in business processes JF - Computing : archives for informatics and numerical computation N2 - 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. KW - Process Execution KW - Business Process Management KW - Resource Allocation KW - Resource Management KW - Activity-oriented Optimization Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-022-01093-2 SN - 0010-485X SN - 1436-5057 VL - 104 SP - 2405 EP - 2429 PB - Springer CY - Wien ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yousfi, Alaaeddine A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Achieving Business Process Improvement via Ubiquitous Decision-Aware Business Processes JF - ACM Transactions on Internet Technology N2 - 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. KW - Business process improvement KW - ubiquitous decision-aware business process KW - ubiquitous decisions KW - context KW - uBPMN KW - DMN Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3298986 SN - 1533-5399 SN - 1557-6051 VL - 19 IS - 1 PB - Association for Computing Machinery CY - New York ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Smirnov, Sergey A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Action patterns in business process models N2 - 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. N2 - Die zunehmende Bedeutung des Geschäftsprozessmanagements führt dazu, dass eine steigende Anzahl von Mitarbeitern eines Unternehmens mit der Erstellung von Prozessmodellen betraut ist. Um trotz dieser Tendenz die Qualität der Prozessmodelle, sowie ihre Homogenität sicherzustellen, sind entsprechende Modellierungshilfen unabdingbar. In diesem Bericht stellen wir einen Ansatz vor, welcher die Prozessmodellierung durch Empfehlungen unterstützt. Jene basieren auf sogenannten Aktionsmustern, welche typische Arbeitsblöcke darstellen. Neben der Definition dieser Aktionsmuster zeigen wir eine Methode zur Identifikation dieser Muster auf. Mittels Techniken der Assoziationsanalyse können die Muster automatisch aus einer Sammlung von Prozessmodellen extrahiert werden. Die Anwendbarkeit unseres Ansatzes wird durch eine Fallstudie auf Basis des SAP Referenzmodells illustriert. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 30 Y1 - 2009 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-33586 SN - 978-3-86956-009-0 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - van der Aalst, Wil M. P. A1 - Verbeek, H. M. W. T1 - Advances in business process management Y1 - 2004 SN - 0169-023X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Andree, Kerstin A1 - Ihde, Sven A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Pufahl, Luise T1 - An exception handling framework for case management JF - Software and Systems Modeling N2 - In order to achieve their business goals, organizations heavily rely on the operational excellence of their business processes. In traditional scenarios, business processes are usually well-structured, clearly specifying when and how certain tasks have to be executed. Flexible and knowledge-intensive processes are gathering momentum, where a knowledge worker drives the execution of a process case and determines the exact process path at runtime. In the case of an exception, the knowledge worker decides on an appropriate handling. While there is initial work on exception handling in well-structured business processes, exceptions in case management have not been sufficiently researched. This paper proposes an exception handling framework for stage-oriented case management languages, namely Guard Stage Milestone Model, Case Management Model and Notation, and Fragment-based Case Management. The effectiveness of the framework is evaluated with two real-world use cases showing that it covers all relevant exceptions and proposed handling strategies. KW - Exception handling KW - Knowledge-intensive processes KW - Flexible processes; KW - Case management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-022-00993-3 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 21 IS - 3 SP - 939 EP - 962 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Batoulis, Kimon A1 - Fahland, Dirk A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Automating data exchange in process choreographies JF - Information systems N2 - Communication between organizations is formalized as process choreographies in daily business. While the correct ordering of exchanged messages can be modeled and enacted with current choreography techniques, no approach exists to describe and automate the exchange of data between processes in a choreography using messages. This paper describes an entirely model-driven approach for BPMN introducing a few concepts that suffice to model data retrieval, data transformation, message exchange, and correlation four aspects of data exchange. For automation, this work utilizes a recent concept to enact data dependencies in internal processes. We present a modeling guideline to derive local process models from a given choreography; their operational semantics allows to correctly enact the entire choreography from the derived models only including the exchange of data. Targeting on successful interactions, we discuss means to ensure correct process choreography modeling. Finally, we implemented our approach by extending the camunda BPM platform with our approach and show its feasibility by realizing all service interaction patterns using only model-based concepts. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Process modeling KW - Data modeling KW - Process choreographies KW - Data exchange KW - BPMN KW - SQL Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2015.03.008 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 53 SP - 296 EP - 329 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Batch activity: enhancing business process modeling and enactment with batch processing JF - Computing N2 - 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. KW - Batch activity KW - Batch processing KW - Business process models KW - Process Enactment KW - Colored Petri Net Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-019-00717-4 SN - 0010-485X SN - 1436-5057 VL - 101 IS - 12 SP - 1909 EP - 1933 PB - Springer CY - Wien ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Batch regions : process instance synchronization based on data N2 - Business process automation improves organizations’ efficiency to perform work. In existing business process management systems, process instances run independently from each other. However, synchronizing instances carrying similar characteristics, i.e., sharing the same data, can reduce process execution costs. For example, if an online retailer receives two orders from one customer, there is a chance that they can be packed and shipped together to save shipment costs. In this paper, we use concepts from the database domain and introduce data views to business processes to identify instances which can be synchronized. Based on data views, we introduce the concept of batch regions for a context-aware instance synchronization over a set of connected activities. We also evaluate the concepts introduced in this paper with a case study comparing costs for normal and batch processing. N2 - Die Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen unterstützt Unternehmen, die Ausführung ihrer Prozesse effizienter zu gestalten. In existierenden Business Process Management Systemen, werden die Instanzen eines Prozesses völlig unabhängig voneinander ausgeführt. Jedoch kann das Synchronisieren von Instanzen mit ähnlichen Charakteristiken wie z.B. den gleichen Daten zu reduzierten Ausführungskosten führen. Zum Beispiel, wenn ein Onlinehändler zwei Bestellungen vom selben Kunden mit der gleichen Lieferanschrift erhält, können diese zusammen verpackt und versendet werden, um Versandkosten zu sparen. In diesem Papier verwenden wir Konzepte aus dem Datenbankbereich und führen Datensichten für Geschäftsprozesse ein, um Instanzen zu identifizieren, welche synchronisiert werden können. Auf Grundlage der Datensichten führen wir das Konzept der Batch-Regionen ein. Eine Batch-Region ermöglicht eine kontext-bewusste Instanzen-Synchronisierung über mehrere verbundene Aktivitäten. Das eingeführte Konzept wird mit einer Fallstudie evaluiert, bei der ein Kostenvergleich zwischen der normalen Prozessausführung und der Batchverarbeitung durchgeführt wird. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 86 KW - BPM KW - Batchverarbeitung KW - Gruppierung von Prozessinstanzen KW - Datensicht KW - BPM KW - batch processing KW - process instance grouping KW - data view Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-69081 SN - 978-3-86956-280-3 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Dijkman, Remco A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Behaviour equivalence and compatibility of business process models with complex correspondences JF - The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society N2 - Once multiple models of a business process are created for different purposes or to capture different variants, verification of behaviour equivalence or compatibility is needed. Equivalence verification ensures that two business process models specify the same behaviour. Since different process models are likely to differ with respect to their assumed level of abstraction and the actions that they take into account, equivalence notions have to cope with correspondences between sets of actions and actions that exist in one process but not in the other. In this paper, we present notions of equivalence and compatibility that can handle these problems. In essence, we present a notion of equivalence that works on correspondences between sets of actions rather than single actions. We then integrate our equivalence notion with work on behaviour inheritance that copes with actions that exist in one process but not in the other, leading to notions of behaviour compatibility. Compatibility notions verify that two models have the same behaviour with respect to the actions that they have in common. As such, our contribution is a collection of behaviour equivalence and compatibility notions that are applicable in more general settings than existing ones. KW - behaviour equivalence KW - behaviour compatibility KW - model verification KW - behavioural models Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxs014 SN - 0010-4620 SN - 1460-2067 VL - 55 IS - 11 SP - 1398 EP - 1418 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford 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 - 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 - 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 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Bringing design thinking to business process modeling Y1 - 2011 SN - 978-3-642-13756-3 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 - Pernici, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Business process management Y1 - 2006 SN - 0169-023X 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - JOUR A1 - Luebbe, Alexander A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Determining the effect of tangible business process modeling Y1 - 2012 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - JOUR A1 - Bazhenova, Ekaterina A1 - Zerbato, Francesca A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - From BPMN process models to DMN decision models JF - Information systems N2 - 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. KW - Business process models KW - Decision models KW - BPMN KW - DMN KW - Pattern Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2019.02.001 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 83 SP - 69 EP - 88 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herzberg, Nico A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Improving business process intelligence by observing object state transitions JF - Data & knowledge engineering N2 - 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. KW - Business process management KW - Events KW - Data KW - Process Monitoring KW - BPMN Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2015.07.008 SN - 0169-023X SN - 1872-6933 VL - 98 SP - 144 EP - 164 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Decker, Gero A1 - Kopp, Oliver A1 - Leymann, Frank A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Interacting services : from specification to execution N2 - 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. Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0169023X U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2009.04.003 SN - 0169-023X ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Decker, Gero A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Interaction-centric modeling of process choreographies JF - Information systems N2 - 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. KW - Choreographies KW - B2B process integration KW - Interaction modeling KW - Business Process Modeling Notation Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2010.06.005 SN - 0306-4379 VL - 36 IS - 2 SP - 292 EP - 312 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - INPR A1 - Dumas, Marlon A1 - Recker, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Management and engineering of process-aware information systems: Introduction to the special issue T2 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2011.09.003 SN - 0306-4379 VL - 37 IS - 2 SP - 77 EP - 79 PB - PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD CY - OXFORD ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Baier, Thomas A1 - Di Ciccio, Claudio A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Matching events and activities by integrating behavioral aspects and label analysis JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - 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. KW - Process mining KW - Event mapping KW - Business process intelligence KW - Constraint satisfaction KW - Declare KW - Natural language processing Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-017-0603-z SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 17 IS - 2 SP - 573 EP - 598 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Polyvyanyy, Artem A1 - Garcia-Banuelos, Luciano A1 - Fahland, Dirk A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Maximal structuring of acyclic process models JF - The computer journal : a publication of the British Computer Society N2 - 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. KW - process modeling KW - structured process model KW - maximal structuring KW - model transformation KW - fully concurrent bisimulation Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxs126 SN - 0010-4620 SN - 1460-2067 VL - 57 IS - 1 SP - 12 EP - 35 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Meyer, Andreas A1 - Pufahl, Luise A1 - Fahland, Dirk A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Modeling and enacting complex data dependencies in business processes N2 - 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. N2 - Die Ausführung von Geschäftsprozessen in Process Engines benötigt Informationen über den Kontrollfluss, die Rollenzuordnungen und die Datenabhängigkeiten. Während die ersten beiden Aspekte bereits automatisiert von Process Engines unterstützt werden, müssen die Datenabhängigkeiten durch einen Prozessingenieur manuell hinzugefügt und gewartet werden. Allerdings ist diese Aufgabe sehr fehleranfällig und zeitintensiv. In diesem Report zeigen wir wie Prozesse mit komplexen Datenabhängigkeiten, z.B. m:n Beziehungen, modelliert und automatisiert ausgeführt werden können. Dazu erweitern wir zuerst BPMN Datenobjekte mit wenigen Annotationen, um das Handling von Datenabhängikeiten sowie die Differenzierung von Datenobjektinstanzen zu ermöglichen. Danach beschreiben wir einen Pattern-basierten Ansatz, um SQL-Queries, unter Nutzung der oben erwähnten Erweiterungen, aus Prozessmodellen abzuleiten. Damit erlauben wir die automatisierte Ausführung von Daten-orientierten BPMN Prozessmodellen. Um die Anwendbarkeit unseres Ansatzen zu demonstieren, implementierten wir ihn für die Process Engine Activiti. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 74 KW - Prozessmodellierung KW - Datenmodellierung KW - Prozessausführung KW - BPMN KW - SQL KW - Process Modeling KW - Data Modeling KW - Process Enactment KW - BPMN KW - SQL Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-65103 SN - 978-3-86956-245-2 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Ziekow, Holger A1 - Gal, Avigdor A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Optimizing event pattern matching using business process models JF - IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering N2 - 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. KW - Event processing KW - query optimisation KW - query rewriting Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/TKDE.2014.2302306 SN - 1041-4347 SN - 1558-2191 VL - 26 IS - 11 SP - 2759 EP - 2773 PB - Inst. of Electr. and Electronics Engineers CY - Los Alamitos ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rogge-Solti, Andreas A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Prediction of business process durations using non-Markovian stochastic Petri nets JF - Information systems N2 - 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. KW - Business processes KW - Duration prediction KW - Risk control KW - Stochastic Petri nets Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2015.04.004 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 54 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - GEN A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Sadiq, Shazia A1 - Soffer, Pnina A1 - Voelzer, Hagen T1 - Preface to BPM 2014 T2 - Information systems Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2015.09.006 SN - 0306-4379 SN - 1873-6076 VL - 56 SP - 233 EP - 234 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Meinel, Christoph A1 - Plattner, Hasso A1 - Döllner, Jürgen Roland Friedrich A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Polze, Andreas A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert A1 - Naumann, Felix A1 - Giese, Holger A1 - Baudisch, Patrick T1 - Proceedings of the 7th Ph.D. Retreat of the HPI Research School on Service-oriented Systems Engineering N2 - Design and Implementation of service-oriented architectures imposes a huge number of research questions from the fields of software engineering, system analysis and modeling, adaptability, and application integration. Component orientation and web services are two approaches for design and realization of complex web-based system. Both approaches allow for dynamic application adaptation as well as integration of enterprise application. Commonly used technologies, such as J2EE and .NET, form de facto standards for the realization of complex distributed systems. Evolution of component systems has lead to web services and service-based architectures. This has been manifested in a multitude of industry standards and initiatives such as XML, WSDL UDDI, SOAP, etc. All these achievements lead to a new and promising paradigm in IT systems engineering which proposes to design complex software solutions as collaboration of contractually defined software services. Service-Oriented Systems Engineering represents a symbiosis of best practices in object-orientation, component-based development, distributed computing, and business process management. It provides integration of business and IT concerns. The annual Ph.D. Retreat of the Research School provides each member the opportunity to present his/her current state of their research and to give an outline of a prospective Ph.D. thesis. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the Research Scholl, this technical report covers a wide range of research topics. These include but are not limited to: Self-Adaptive Service-Oriented Systems, Operating System Support for Service-Oriented Systems, Architecture and Modeling of Service-Oriented Systems, Adaptive Process Management, Services Composition and Workflow Planning, Security Engineering of Service-Based IT Systems, Quantitative Analysis and Optimization of Service-Oriented Systems, Service-Oriented Systems in 3D Computer Graphics sowie Service-Oriented Geoinformatics. N2 - Der Entwurf und die Realisierung dienstbasierender Architekturen wirft eine Vielzahl von Forschungsfragestellungen aus den Gebieten der Softwaretechnik, der Systemmodellierung und -analyse, sowie der Adaptierbarkeit und Integration von Applikationen auf. Komponentenorientierung und WebServices sind zwei Ansätze für den effizienten Entwurf und die Realisierung komplexer Web-basierender Systeme. Sie ermöglichen die Reaktion auf wechselnde Anforderungen ebenso, wie die Integration großer komplexer Softwaresysteme. Heute übliche Technologien, wie J2EE und .NET, sind de facto Standards für die Entwicklung großer verteilter Systeme. Die Evolution solcher Komponentensysteme führt über WebServices zu dienstbasierenden Architekturen. Dies manifestiert sich in einer Vielzahl von Industriestandards und Initiativen wie XML, WSDL, UDDI, SOAP. All diese Schritte führen letztlich zu einem neuen, vielversprechenden Paradigma für IT Systeme, nach dem komplexe Softwarelösungen durch die Integration vertraglich vereinbarter Software-Dienste aufgebaut werden sollen. "Service-Oriented Systems Engineering" repräsentiert die Symbiose bewährter Praktiken aus den Gebieten der Objektorientierung, der Komponentenprogrammierung, des verteilten Rechnen sowie der Geschäftsprozesse und berücksichtigt auch die Integration von Geschäftsanliegen und Informationstechnologien. Die Klausurtagung des Forschungskollegs "Service-oriented Systems Engineering" findet einmal jährlich statt und bietet allen Kollegiaten die Möglichkeit den Stand ihrer aktuellen Forschung darzulegen. Bedingt durch die Querschnittstruktur des Kollegs deckt dieser Bericht ein große Bandbreite aktueller Forschungsthemen ab. Dazu zählen unter anderem Self-Adaptive Service-Oriented Systems, Operating System Support for Service-Oriented Systems, Architecture and Modeling of Service-Oriented Systems, Adaptive Process Management, Services Composition and Workflow Planning, Security Engineering of Service-Based IT Systems, Quantitative Analysis and Optimization of Service-Oriented Systems, Service-Oriented Systems in 3D Computer Graphics sowie Service-Oriented Geoinformatics. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 83 KW - Hasso-Plattner-Institut KW - Forschungskolleg KW - Klausurtagung KW - Service-oriented Systems Engineering KW - Hasso Plattner Institute KW - Research School KW - Ph.D. Retreat KW - Service-oriented Systems Engineering Y1 - 2014 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-63490 SN - 978-3-86956-273-5 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Meinel, Christoph A1 - Döllner, Jürgen Roland Friedrich A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Polze, Andreas A1 - Hirschfeld, Robert A1 - Naumann, Felix A1 - Giese, Holger A1 - Baudisch, Patrick A1 - Friedrich, Tobias A1 - Böttinger, Erwin A1 - Lippert, Christoph A1 - Dörr, Christian A1 - Lehmann, Anja A1 - Renard, Bernhard A1 - Rabl, Tilmann A1 - Uebernickel, Falk A1 - Arnrich, Bert A1 - Hölzle, Katharina T1 - Proceedings of the HPI Research School on Service-oriented Systems Engineering 2020 Fall Retreat N2 - Design and Implementation of service-oriented architectures imposes a huge number of research questions from the fields of software engineering, system analysis and modeling, adaptability, and application integration. Component orientation and web services are two approaches for design and realization of complex web-based system. Both approaches allow for dynamic application adaptation as well as integration of enterprise application. Service-Oriented Systems Engineering represents a symbiosis of best practices in object-orientation, component-based development, distributed computing, and business process management. It provides integration of business and IT concerns. The annual Ph.D. Retreat of the Research School provides each member the opportunity to present his/her current state of their research and to give an outline of a prospective Ph.D. thesis. Due to the interdisciplinary structure of the research school, this technical report covers a wide range of topics. These include but are not limited to: Human Computer Interaction and Computer Vision as Service; Service-oriented Geovisualization Systems; Algorithm Engineering for Service-oriented Systems; Modeling and Verification of Self-adaptive Service-oriented Systems; Tools and Methods for Software Engineering in Service-oriented Systems; Security Engineering of Service-based IT Systems; Service-oriented Information Systems; Evolutionary Transition of Enterprise Applications to Service Orientation; Operating System Abstractions for Service-oriented Computing; and Services Specification, Composition, and Enactment. N2 - Der Entwurf und die Realisierung dienstbasierender Architekturen wirft eine Vielzahl von Forschungsfragestellungen aus den Gebieten der Softwaretechnik, der Systemmodellierung und -analyse, sowie der Adaptierbarkeit und Integration von Applikationen auf. Komponentenorientierung und WebServices sind zwei Ansätze für den effizienten Entwurf und die Realisierung komplexer Web-basierender Systeme. Sie ermöglichen die Reaktion auf wechselnde Anforderungen ebenso, wie die Integration großer komplexer Softwaresysteme. "Service-Oriented Systems Engineering" repräsentiert die Symbiose bewährter Praktiken aus den Gebieten der Objektorientierung, der Komponentenprogrammierung, des verteilten Rechnen sowie der Geschäftsprozesse und berücksichtigt auch die Integration von Geschäftsanliegen und Informationstechnologien. Die Klausurtagung des Forschungskollegs "Service-oriented Systems Engineering" findet einmal jährlich statt und bietet allen Kollegiaten die Möglichkeit den Stand ihrer aktuellen Forschung darzulegen. Bedingt durch die Querschnittstruktur des Kollegs deckt dieser Bericht ein weites Spektrum aktueller Forschungsthemen ab. Dazu zählen unter anderem Human Computer Interaction and Computer Vision as Service; Service-oriented Geovisualization Systems; Algorithm Engineering for Service-oriented Systems; Modeling and Verification of Self-adaptive Service-oriented Systems; Tools and Methods for Software Engineering in Service-oriented Systems; Security Engineering of Service-based IT Systems; Service-oriented Information Systems; Evolutionary Transition of Enterprise Applications to Service Orientation; Operating System Abstractions for Service-oriented Computing; sowie Services Specification, Composition, and Enactment. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 138 KW - Hasso Plattner Institute KW - research school KW - Ph.D. retreat KW - service-oriented systems engineering KW - Hasso-Plattner-Institut KW - Forschungskolleg KW - Klausurtagung KW - Service-oriented Systems Engineering Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-504132 SN - 978-3-86956-513-2 SN - 1613-5652 SN - 2191-1665 IS - 138 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Polyvyanyy, Artem A1 - Desai, Nirmit A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Process compliance analysis based on behavioural profiles JF - Information systems N2 - Process compliance measurement is getting increasing attention in companies due to stricter legal requirements and market pressure for operational excellence. In order to judge on compliance of the business processing, the degree of behavioural deviation of a case, i.e., an observed execution sequence, is quantified with respect to a process model (referred to as fitness, or recall). Recently, different compliance measures have been proposed. Still, nearly all of them are grounded on state-based techniques and the trace equivalence criterion, in particular. As a consequence, these approaches have to deal with the state explosion problem. In this paper, we argue that a behavioural abstraction may be leveraged to measure the compliance of a process log - a collection of cases. To this end, we utilise causal behavioural profiles that capture the behavioural characteristics of process models and cases, and can be computed efficiently. We propose different compliance measures based on these profiles, discuss the impact of noise in process logs on our measures, and show how diagnostic information on non-compliance is derived. As a validation, we report on findings of applying our approach in a case study with an international service provider. KW - Process compliance KW - Compliance measurement KW - Log conformance KW - Root cause analysis Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2011.04.002 SN - 0306-4379 VL - 36 IS - 7 SP - 1009 EP - 1025 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bano, Dorina A1 - Michael, Judith A1 - Rumpe, Bernhard A1 - Varga, Simon A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Process-aware digital twin cockpit synthesis from event logs JF - Journal of computer languages N2 - The engineering of digital twins and their user interaction parts with explicated processes, namely processaware digital twin cockpits (PADTCs), is challenging due to the complexity of the systems and the need for information from different disciplines within the engineering process. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate how to facilitate their engineering by using already existing data, namely event logs, and reducing the number of manual steps for their engineering. Current research lacks systematic, automated approaches to derive process-aware digital twin cockpits even though some helpful techniques already exist in the areas of process mining and software engineering. Within this paper, we present a low-code development approach that reduces the amount of hand-written code needed and uses process mining techniques to derive PADTCs. We describe what models could be derived from event log data, which generative steps are needed for the engineering of PADTCs, and how process mining could be incorporated into the resulting application. This process is evaluated using the MIMIC III dataset for the creation of a PADTC prototype for an automated hospital transportation system. This approach can be used for early prototyping of PADTCs as it needs no hand-written code in the first place, but it still allows for the iterative evolvement of the application. This empowers domain experts to create their PADTC prototypes. KW - process-aware digital twin cockpit KW - low-code development approaches KW - sensor data KW - event log KW - process mining KW - process-awareness Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cola.2022.101121 SN - 2590-1184 SN - 2665-9182 VL - 70 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Mendling, Jan A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Propagating changes between aligned process models JF - The journal of systems and software N2 - There is a wide variety of drivers for business process modelling initiatives, reaching from organisational redesign to the development of information systems. Consequently, a common business process is often captured in multiple models that overlap in content due to serving different purposes. Business process management aims at flexible adaptation to changing business needs. Hence, changes of business processes occur frequently and have to be incorporated in the respective process models. Once a process model is changed, related process models have to be updated accordingly, despite the fact that those process models may only be loosely coupled. In this article, we introduce an approach that supports change propagation between related process models. Given a change in one process model, we leverage the behavioural abstraction of behavioural profiles for corresponding activities in order to determine a change region in another model. Our approach is able to cope with changes in pairs of models that are not related by hierarchical refinement and show behavioural inconsistencies. We evaluate the applicability of our approach with two real-world process model collections. To this end, we either deduce change operations from different model revisions or rely on synthetic change operations. KW - Change propagation KW - Model synchronisation KW - Behavioural analysis KW - Process model alignment Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.044 SN - 0164-1212 VL - 85 IS - 8 SP - 1885 EP - 1898 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kunze, Matthias A1 - Weidlich, Matthias A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Querying process models by behavior inclusion JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - Business processes are vital to managing organizations as they sustain a company's competitiveness. Consequently, these organizations maintain collections of hundreds or thousands of process models for streamlining working procedures and facilitating process implementation. Yet, the management of large process model collections requires effective searching capabilities. Recent research focused on similarity search of process models, but querying process models is still a largely open topic. This article presents an approach to querying process models that takes a process example as input and discovers all models that allow replaying the behavior of the query. To this end, we provide a notion of behavioral inclusion that is based on trace semantics and abstraction. Additional to deciding a match, a closeness score is provided that describes how well the behavior of the query is represented in the model and can be used for ranking. The article introduces the formal foundations of the approach and shows how they are applied to querying large process model collections. An experimental evaluation has been conducted that confirms the suitability of the solution as well as its applicability and scalability in practice. KW - Process model search KW - Behavioral querying KW - Trace inclusion KW - Process model repositories Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-013-0389-6 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 14 IS - 3 SP - 1105 EP - 1125 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Polyvyanyy, Artem A1 - Smirnov, Sergey A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Reducing the complexity of large EPCs N2 - Inhalt: 1 Introduction 2 Motivation and Goal 3 Fundamentals 4 Elementary Abstractions 5 Real World Example 6 Conclusions T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 22 Y1 - 2008 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-32959 ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Rogge-Solti, Andreas A1 - Mans, Ronny S. A1 - van der Aalst, Wil M. P. A1 - Weske, Mathias T1 - Repairing event logs using stochastic process models N2 - Companies strive to improve their business processes in order to remain competitive. Process mining aims to infer meaningful insights from process-related data and attracted the attention of practitioners, tool-vendors, and researchers in recent years. Traditionally, event logs are assumed to describe the as-is situation. But this is not necessarily the case in environments where logging may be compromised due to manual logging. For example, hospital staff may need to manually enter information regarding the patient’s treatment. As a result, events or timestamps may be missing or incorrect. In this paper, we make use of process knowledge captured in process models, and provide a method to repair missing events in the logs. This way, we facilitate analysis of incomplete logs. We realize the repair by combining stochastic Petri nets, alignments, and Bayesian networks. We evaluate the results using both synthetic data and real event data from a Dutch hospital. N2 - Unternehmen optimieren ihre Geschäftsprozesse laufend um im kompetitiven Umfeld zu bestehen. Das Ziel von Process Mining ist es, bedeutende Erkenntnisse aus prozessrelevanten Daten zu extrahieren. In den letzten Jahren sorgte Process Mining bei Experten, Werkzeugherstellern und Forschern zunehmend für Aufsehen. Traditionell wird dabei angenommen, dass Ereignisprotokolle die tatsächliche Ist-Situation widerspiegeln. Dies ist jedoch nicht unbedingt der Fall, wenn prozessrelevante Ereignisse manuell erfasst werden. Ein Beispiel hierfür findet sich im Krankenhaus, in dem das Personal Behandlungen meist manuell dokumentiert. Vergessene oder fehlerhafte Einträge in Ereignisprotokollen sind in solchen Fällen nicht auszuschließen. In diesem technischen Bericht wird eine Methode vorgestellt, die das Wissen aus Prozessmodellen und historischen Daten nutzt um fehlende Einträge in Ereignisprotokollen zu reparieren. Somit wird die Analyse unvollständiger Ereignisprotokolle erleichtert. Die Reparatur erfolgt mit einer Kombination aus stochastischen Petri Netzen, Alignments und Bayes'schen Netzen. Die Ergebnisse werden mit synthetischen Daten und echten Daten eines holländischen Krankenhauses evaluiert. T3 - Technische Berichte des Hasso-Plattner-Instituts für Digital Engineering an der Universität Potsdam - 78 KW - Process Mining KW - fehlende Daten KW - stochastische Petri Netze KW - Bayes'sche Netze KW - process mining KW - missing data KW - stochastic Petri nets KW - Bayesian networks Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-66797 SN - 978-3-86956-258-2 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Combi, Carlo A1 - Oliboni, Barbara A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Zerbato, Francesca T1 - Seamless conceptual modeling of processes with transactional and analytical data JF - Data & knowledge engineering N2 - 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. KW - Conceptual modeling KW - Business process modeling KW - BPMN KW - Data modeling KW - Data warehouse KW - Decision support Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2021.101895 SN - 0169-023X SN - 1872-6933 VL - 134 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nikaj, Adriatik A1 - Weske, Mathias A1 - Mendling, Jan T1 - Semi-automatic derivation of RESTful choreographies from business process choreographies JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - 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. KW - Business process choreographies KW - RESTful choreographies KW - Natural language analysis Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-017-0653-2 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 18 IS - 2 SP - 1195 EP - 1208 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER -