A survey on modeling dynamic business processes

In this chapter we deal with testing of business processes implemented using computer systems. We have discussed challenges associated with business process testing, identified aspects of business processes that need to be tested and capabilities that the testing tool(s) or environment should have in order to perform such testing. The chapter also discusses a commonly used software testing methodology in light business process testing for provisioning of structured mechanism for business process testing. One of the aspects of managing complex and dynamic business processes is making sure that the process delivers what is required of it at all times. Dynamics of the business may require frequent changes in the business process and whenever such changes takes place there is a need to test the process thoroughly to ascertain that the process is still working according to the requirements laid down for it. This becomes even more important if the business process is implemented using computer systems since over a period of time the computer software becomes more prone to error as it is updated frequently to accommodate the business changes hence the requirement for testing complex business processes.

Generally, the environment and enterprises' condition are not stable, in order to promote the enterprises' competitive power, mangers must continuously improve the business processes' performance. Based on the simulation method and multi-objective optimization theory, the thesis builds a dynamic multi-objective optimization model for business process optimization. Firstly the framework of optimization model is introduced, the framework include logic of the simulation process and parameters' selection. Secondly, a business process's performance review model is given for evaluation, and also point out that there is a balanced point among time, cost and quality, and the point can help us to find the optimal design of business process. Finally, the thesis provide a experiment to verify the validity of the model put forward by the thesis, and the result prove that the model is effective in optimization of business process.

About Our Authors

PurposeThis paper presents M-PoP, a method to model large, complex, and dynamic business processes. These processes have sometimes resulted from alliances of organizations (i.e. joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions) and are referred to as Processes-of-Business Processes (PoP). Due to the difficulty of modeling these dynamic processes, alliances of organizations have often lost opportunities, competitiveness, and profitability, so requiring suitable modeling methods.Design/methodology/approachThe authors proposed M-PoP that can model PoP through three views in different abstraction levels and using well-known techniques in industry and academia, mainly those from Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). For this, M-PoP presents three main steps: identification of PoP elements, modeling of PoP, and verification of PoP models. To evaluate M-PoP, we applied it in a real-world business process in the health domain.FindingsThe evaluation results point out the capability and viability of M-PoP to deal with dynamic business processes.Research limitations/implicationsM-PoP still needs to be applied in various real-world scenarios to gather evidence of its productivity, efficiency, and scalability.Practical implicationsThis novel method could change the way organizations model their business processes and, as a consequence, it could leverage strategic business opportunities.Originality/valueM-PoP is the first method that makes it possible to model large and complex business processes and, most importantly, dynamic processes.

Business process management systems such as the workflow management system and the enterprise application integration system manage process flow on a minute-by-minute basis in various application domains. In the conventional approach, the business process must be predefined before it is implemented. However, involving business users in the early stage of the design phase is neither efficient nor realistic in the dynamic business world. This study proposes a framework to implement a dynamic business process in the P2P Semantic Web, which provides the flexibility to dynamically alter business process and to take semantic data into consideration. The system is demonstrated by a case of a manufacturer that is processing an order.

IT-enabled redesign of complex and dynamic business processes: the case of bank credit evaluation

agile information systems, flexible information systems development, distributed information systems development, global software development, software development, special issue

The increasing adoption of Process-aware Information Systems (PAISs), together with the variability of Business Processes (BPs) across different application contexts, has resulted in large process model repositories with collections of related process model variants. To reduce both costs and occurrence of errors, the explicit management of variability throughout the BP lifecycle becomes crucial. In literature, several proposals dealing with BP variability have been proposed. However, the lack of a method for their systematic comparison makes it difficult to select the most appropriate one meeting current needs best. To close this gap, this work presents an evaluation framework that allows analyzing and comparing the variability support provided by existing proposals developed in the context of BP variability. The framework encompasses a set of language requirements as well as a set of variability support features. While language requirements allow assessing the expressiveness required to explicitly represent variability of different process perspectives, variability support features reflect the tool support required to properly cover such expressiveness. Our evaluation framework has been derived based on an in-depth analysis of several large real-world process scenarios, an extensive literature review, and an analysis of existing PAISs. In this vein, the framework helps to understand BP variability along the BP lifecycle. In addition, it supports PAISs engineers in deciding, which of the existing BP variability proposals meets best their needs.

As the significant success of business enterprises, information system development becomes IT managers' concern to keep the balance between business and information system. The information system has an important role to deliver advantages to the business enterprises. To keep maintain these issues, information system should be developed to innovate the business process. However, in developing an information system, the information system process improvement may obtain the possibility of information system development failures. Therefore, to avoid the failures in implementing information systems there are some important factors. Those factors are called critical success factors (CSF). Therefore, this study observes the critical success factors (CSF) in information system development (ISD) projects. This systematic literature review discusses critical success factors in information system development. The method section determines the research question. It also describes how to collect and filter the data. The order of this research written is according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses Checklist or also known as PRISMA Checklist. Therefore, to collect and filter the data, this systematic literature review uses Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses method or also known as PRISMA method. There were 20 papers selected to help this research based on the filtering papers due to PRISMA flow diagram. Most of those papers are discussing information system development and the rest are about factors of information system development. The result section has two parts, which are study characteristics and study results. This systematic literature review concluded that there are five critical success factors in developing information system projects. Those critical success factors are people, project, organization, knowledge, and expertise. Those critical success factors are also supported by several items of each factor. Therefore, the output of this research is expected to satisfy the information system development projects to meet the organizations' need and reduce also possibly avoid the failures in information system development projects.

Open environment of dynamic interoperable electronic business processes is a key demand for the increasing business applications. Business processes are at the core of dynamic electronic business. In this paper, we propose a model for business processes that provides an intelligent model for supporting distribute electronic business environment. This study brings up the business process on the semantic web and we define an agent's ontology for this interaction framework. This mechanism can help agents understand the knowledge dynamically and cooperation with other agents in business process.

Business processes and information systems mutually affect each other in non-trivial ways. Frequently, the business process design and the information system design are not well aligned. This means that business processes are designed without taking the information system impact into account, and vice versa. Missing alignment at design time often results in quality problems at runtime, such as large response times of information systems, large process execution times, overloaded information systems or interrupted processes. Aligning business process quality and information system quality at design time requires to
\nsolve the following problems (P). Business process quality and information system quality have to be characterized. P1: In contrast to information system quality, which is specified in the ISO/IEC 9126 standard, for example, there is no common and comprehensive understanding of business process quality. P2: Beyond that, current business process
\nmodeling notations do not aim to represent quality aspects. The impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, is unknown at design
\ntime. P3: The mutual impact between business processes and information systems must be predicted at design time.
\nIn this thesis, the Business Process Quality Reference-Model (BPQRM), a quality model for business processes, is introduced. The model allows for a comprehensive characterization of business process quality (P1). The BPQRM is applied successfully in a case study to
\nidentify potential for process quality improvement in practice. Based on the BPQRM an existing process modeling notation is extended by model elements to represent quality
\naspects (P2). Simulation is a powerful means to predict the impact of a business process on the quality of an information system, and vice versa, at design time. This thesis proposes two simulation approaches to predict the mutual impact between business processes and information systems, in terms of performance (P3). The approach Business
\nIT Impact Simulation (BIIS) defines interfaces between the business process simulation and the information system simulation. Performance-relevant information is exchanged
\nvia the interfaces between both simulations. Using business process simulation and information system simulation in isolation, workload burstiness is not adequately reflected.
\nThis is especially true for occasional, volatile peak loads. Workload burstiness can significantly affect the performance of business processes and information systems. The approach Integrated Business IT Impact Simulation (IntBIIS) for the integration of business processes and information systems in a single simulation allows for reflecting workload burstiness correctly. The simulation approaches support the comparison of design alternatives and the verification of a certain design against requirements. A case study confirms the feasibility in practice and the acceptance from practitioners’ point of
\nview.

Implementing blockchain benefits various construction management processes, such as securing payments, enabling traceable design process, and enhancing information transparency in supply chain. However, blockchain implementation in construction is still in its infancy due to weak functionality of smart contracts, which are self-enforceable programs allowing iteration between external data and blockchain. In the context of construction management that embraces complex and dynamic business processes, smart contracts are currently designed based on specific and isolated functional requirements without considering the connection and execution logic between these functions. It leads to inefficient collaboration and even execution errors, thereby corrupting data quality and even causing business failure. Therefore, this paper proposes a Blockchain-BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) integrated (BBI) framework for construction management. The framework poses two contributions. First, a BPMN-driven method is developed to design smart contracts supporting executing linked and logically connected business activities. Second, an access control strategy is integrated into smart contracts to safeguard the accessibility of sensitive business data in a blockchain environment. The BBI framework is validated in an actual BIM design collaboration scenario, and results show its feasibility and computational performance are acceptable. Several aspects for improvement and future directions are discussed in the end

A Novel Approach for Dynamic Business Processes and Process Changes with Petri Net

Summary form only given. This poster presents an experience, on gathering business needs in business models adapted to the business expert language and translating these needs into a service oriented architecture (SOA) in a systematic way. The poster introduces the current situation highlighting three interoperability problems: (1) Organisations do not use a standard, unified and widely adopted business process definition language. Organisations want a common understanding of the process where they are involved from different perspectives; (2) Information systems are implemented to address specific requirements, ignoring future integration needs by using proprietary formats, and ad-hoc communication strategies and protocols; and (3) Information systems do not, clearly, support the business processes. There is a gap between business process models and their information systems implementations. The approach shown in this poster is based on the usage of the SOA paradigm from a model driven point of view: a model driven service oriented architecture (MDSOA) framework. Based on the MDA specification we have identified a metamodel for each of the three abstraction levels: (1) POP* (process, organisation, product) is selected as the metamodel to represent and exchange business processes. POP* is the unified enterprise modelling language (UEML) successor. POP* metamodel represents the starting point; (2) PIM4SOA (platform independent model for service oriented architecture) (Benguria et al., 2006) is a metamodel to represent service, process, information and quality of service elements; and (3) WSDL (Web service description language) and BPEL (business process execution language) are platform specific languages

The failure rate of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations is estimated to be greater than 65%. Lowering the failure rate and supporting the success of information systems (IS) are the ultimate goals of IS practitioners and researchers. However, most previous research in the area has focused on identifying factors such as critical success factors (CSFs) that are correlated with IS success. There has been little research on how IS implementation may lead to successful results. The state of knowledge in IS implementation may be likened to cooking with a list of ingredients but not the recipe. Drawing on process theory, this study examines the process of IS implementation by explaining how factors of IS implementation influence each other and how interactions among them produce results. Based on one successful case and two unsuccessful cases, we develop the process model of IS implementation, by which the process of IS implementation and the dynamics of IS success can be explained. The proposed model facilitates an understanding of how repeating patterns of IS failure can be reversed, and could serve to guide new IS implementation projects.