Trends in BPM Research (Sommersemester 2016)

Dozent: Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske (Business Process Technology)
Tutoren: Dr. Luise Pufahl

Allgemeine Information

• Semesterwochenstunden: 2
• ECTS: 3
• Benotet: Ja
• Einschreibefrist: 22.04.2016
• Lehrform: Vorlesung
• Belegungsart: Wahlpflichtmodul

Studiengänge, Modulgruppen & Module

Beschreibung

Business process modeling (BPM) is a well-established method in industry to capture business processes of an organization for documentation, implementation, monitoring and improvement purposes. In our group, we develop methods, concepts and tools to support and improve this area, e.g. by integrating batch processing into business processes. Further, we look into related research areas (see the figure below) and investigate in how far business process modeling can benefit from other research.

In this course, we want to present you current research trends in BPM and want to give you insights into the work of researchers. You will get to know techniques for approaching research topics. This can give you support in defining own research topics, e.g. for your master thesis.

 

(1) Batch Processing in Business Processes: In existing business process models, it is assumed that the executions of a process model, i.e. the process instances, run totally independently from each other. However, in certain situations a synchronized execution of a group of process instances, called batch execution, can improve the process performance. 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 the first part of the lecture, we will have a look into approaches to realize batch processing in business processes, especially at an approach developed by the BPT group integrating batch activities in process models.

(2) Process Models and Decision ModelProcesss: A company's value chain is directly affected by how well it designs and coordinates enterprise decision making. Therefore, we present decision modeling complementary to business process modeling. Coupling the two disciplines comes with various challenges. For instance, the interplay of decisions and processes must be consistent. Hence, we will introduce a set of consistency criteria and different methods for checking them. Additionally, decision-aware compliance checking verifies semantic properties of business processes while considering complementary decision logic. In this part of the lecture, you will learn about formalization of processes and decisions, model checking methods, and symbolic data abstractions. Further, you will see how these techniques are applied for compliance checking.

(3) Fragment-Oriented Case Handling: One of the main drivers in BPM research is to increase the flexibility of the processes that can be modeled and supported by process management systems. Case Management is one recent example which aims at supporting knowledge work, in which the course of the case evolves during its execution, depending on data objects and user decisions. In this part of the lecture, you will encounter the case management model and notation (CMMN) standard, artifact-centric process modeling approaches, and declarative process modeling. This will culminate in the hybrid approach of dynamically combined process fragments that was developed at our group and implemented during the last bachelor project as Chimera framework.

(4) Use Events to implement Business Processes: Business processes today are often run in a distributed environment with several participants. Events are a form of message/signal exchanges between the partners. Also, processes can receive events from external sources like a sensor or a traffic API. The information carried by the events are then used to improve the flexibility or decision making of the process. An event processing platform connects to different event sources, operates on event streams and notifies the event consumers about specific event occurrences. However, there are various aspects to consider while using events in business processes, for example, event binding, event subscription, event correlation or event timestamps. This part of the lecture will focus on such issues and the current state of research in the area of complex event processing.

(5) Choreographies and their RESTful Implementation: Today, business process management is a key approach to organize work, and many companies represent their operations in business process models. Recently, choreography diagrams were introduced to represent interactions between business processes, run by different partners. While there is considerable work on using process models during process implementation, there is little work on using choreography models to implement interactions. In this part of the lecture, we focus on a novel approach to enhance choreography diagrams by execution information. The approach is based on the REST architecture style. This is the primary way for communication between interacting systems.

Voraussetzungen

No requirements for this lecture. The bachelor lecture POIS is helpful for the lecture.. 

Literatur

Mathias Weske: Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012, 2007.

More literature will be published during the lecture.

Lern- und Lehrformen

This lecture will be held by the PhD students of our chair. Each PhD student will cover two lecture appointments.

Leistungserfassung

The final exam will be an oral exam.

Termine

	Date	Topic	Lecturer
	11/04 + 18/04	Overview and Introduction into BPM	Luise Pufahl
	25/04	Batch Processing in Business Processes	Luise Pufahl
	02/05 + 08/05	Process Models and Decision Models - Soundness Checking of Decision-Aware Business Models	Kimon Batoulis
	16/05 + 23/05	Process Models and Decision Models - Compliance Checking of Decision-Aware Business Models	Stephan Haarmann
	30/05 + 06/06	Fragment-Oriented Case Handling	Marcin Hewelt
	13/06 + 20/06	Use Events to Implement Business Processes	Sankalita Mandal
	27/06	Application in Industry	tba
	04/07 + 11/07	Choreographies and their RESTful Implementation	Adriatik Nikaj
	18/07	Summary	tba

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