An Inter-organizational Dynamic Business Process Oriented Decision-Making Behavioral Rule Description Method

CTL Model Repair for Inter-organizational Business Processes Modelled as oWFN

Efficient inter-organizational business processes in the field of e-commerce require the integration of electronic document and data interchange and inter-organizational processes. We propose to support inter-organizational business processes by so-called XML nets, which are a new kind of high-level Petri net. XML nets are a formal, graphical modeling language that allows one to model both the flow of XML documents and the business process. XML nets are based on GXSL, a graphical XML schema definition language, and its related graphical XML document manipulation language (XManiLa). They can be directly executed by a workflow engine. Advantage can be taken of the formal foundation of XML nets, e.g. when analyzing a (global) inter-organizational workflow model: XML nets support the process of identifying relevant process fragments, assigning them to the appropriate organizational units, and thus they help in deriving an improved, process-oriented organizational structure.

Service-Oriented Support for Dynamic Interorganizational Business Process Management

Electronic commerce on the Internet has become exceedingly dynamic and inter-organizational in recent times. Interorganizational workflow management system has become an important paradigm for business-to-business electronic commerce applications. The modeling of interorganizational business processes is a challenging task, due to the high degree of autonomy and heterogeneity of the cooperative organizations. A number of standardization initiatives are working on standards for modeling languages that can be employed under interorganizational environments. This paper presents a formal specification methodology for interorganizational workflow modeling which is founded upon the pi-calculus process algebra. This method works well for characterizing the behaviors and interactions of the workflow processes that belong to different organizations in terms of the semantics of pi-calculus. Experimental results show that the proposed method works well for the modeling of electronic commerce systems under interorganizational environments.

Dynamic and flexible systems offer huge advantages for businesses in addressing dynamic uncertain factors and implementing dynamic business processes (DBP). However, DBP remains a challenge from the perspectives of modeling, simulation, and implementation because of a nontrivial understanding of “What is a dynamic business process?” A variety of approaches for DBP modeling and implementation have been proposed over the past years, yet few comprehensive studies analyzing DBP from different particular perspectives (e.g., business process (BP) variability, aspect oriented BP, service compositions, etc.) and research questions that lay the foundation for the development of a meaning of a DBP have been reported. The motivation behind this review is to examine DBP meaning from a global perspective and, consequently, answer the previously presented research question. Therefore, in this paper, we present a systematic literature review (SLR) comprised of 67 papers from five respective digital libraries, which index Computer Science (CS), Information Systems (IS), and Software Engineering (SE) journals and conference proceedings. Two points of view are analyzed in the selected papers. First, we observe the similarities and differences between the proposed approaches to DBP modeling and implementation. From these observations, we define six main requirements for DBP (DBPR). In addition, the comparison of the selected papers according to DBPR shows that most of the approaches analyzed limit BP dynamicity, since they use partially predefined BP models. Secondly, we analyze the papers based on a visualization perspective that shows the less explored areas as follows: more flexible process modeling approach and its implementation in IS should be developed; usage of historic data should be extended; domain knowledge usage, like goal-orientation, multi-criteria optimization, domain knowledge, artificial intelligence, etc., should be included and extended to ensure BP dynamicity. As such, this study makes important contributions and serves as a useful resource for future DBP studies and practice. Moreover, we expect that our results could inspire researchers and practitioners towards further work aimed at bringing forward the field of DBP modeling and implementation.

Business process management (BPM) is a widely adopted approach for identifying, documenting, and improving business processes. One of the main goals of BPM is to assure that the business processes of an organization constantly produce the desired outcome. One considerable challenge in this context is that not every process can be fully anticipated in advance. Particularly so-called knowledge intensive processes are characterized by a high level of complexity, reduced repeatability, and the occurrence of unexpected events. Many authors argue that knowledge intensive processes may benefit from informal work practices as they exhibit more potential for improvements. Non knowledge intensive processes, on the other hand, are typically considered to be less frequently affected by negative deviations from management intended structures. In this paper, we conduct a positivist case study to challenge these viewpoints from literature. In particular, we empirically investigate the effect of informal work practices on knowledge intensive as well as non knowledge intensive business processes in a German IT company that offers one of Europe's leading online project platforms. Our results show that existing view points are too general and that a more balanced discussion of knowledge intensity is needed.

Employees’ Reactions to IT-enabled Process Innovations in the Age of Data Analytics in Healthcare

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.

The software development process (SDP) contains many variables depending on the methodology chosen. Software development methodologies such as Agile or Waterfall can specify how and in what sequence software is developed. However, the SDP remains a hot topic among practitioners and academics, who seek to clarify the key aspects that influence the successful implementation of the SDP. As the SDP is a dynamic and knowledge-intensive business process (BP), one of its most impact components is the human factor (HF). It is difficult to predict how the HF impacts the sequence and results of SDP implementation. This paper proposes a new approach to investigate the impact of the HF on the SDP through the perspectives of different software development methodologies. The advantages and novelties of this approach include modelling HF uncertainties through their fuzzification in SDP activities, modelling different SDP methodologies using a case-handling approach, and simulating a dynamic, case-based SDP with real HF-related data collected from several IT organizations. The results show that the impact of the HF on SDP performance differs across the Waterfall and Agile methodologies. The results also allow researchers and practitioners working on software development projects to familiarize themselves with the impact of the HF on different SDPs, and to assess the degree of development risk associated with the SDP depending on the methodology chosen.

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.

A reference architecture for managing dynamic inter-organizational business processes

The present paper proposes an integrated model for inter-organizational business process integration. The model does not just tackle the execution of processes, but takes into account also the integration process itself, which has turned out to be a key cost driver in many integration projects. After the identification of the market needs, the state of the art is illustrated in terms of technologies and methodologies that facilitate business process integration. Based on this, the model is decomposed into three different layers: ‘integration phases’, ‘level of implementation’ and ‘actor roles’. The paper concludes with an integrated view on the model and the identification of current shortcomings and future fields of research.

This paper focuses on roles and their coordination of inter-organizational business process, a new model, Role-Based Petri Net ( RBPN ), is presented based on theory of Petri net. And some important characteristics of this model are discussed. The application case indicates that this model has great applied value in inter-organizational business process modeling.

van der Aalst et al. proved that the soundness problem is solvable in polynomial time for free-choice workflow nets (FCWF-nets). However, FCWF-nets cannot model most web services composition and interorganizational business processes because the interaction among processes does not usually satisfy the free-choice requirement. Asymmetric-choice workflow nets (ACWF-nets) as a larger class than FCWF-nets can model lots of such cases. Our previous work showed that the (weak) soundness problem is co-NP-hard for three-bounded ACWF-nets. Later, Tiplea et al. proved that for three-bounded acyclic ACWF-nets, the weak soundness problem is co-NP-complete. We sharp these results in this paper. First, we prove that for ACWF-nets, whether they are one-bounded or ${k}$ -bounded ( ${k}~\boldsymbol {>} 1$ ), the soundness problem is co-NP-hard. Second, it is proven that the soundness is equivalent to the weak soundness for any acyclic ACWF-nets, i.e., an acyclic ACWF-net is sound if and only if it is weakly sound.

The paper presents the application of Multiagent Based Simulation to analysis of supply chain behavior. As has been shown in the paper, agent oriented approach may be considered as a powerful conceptual framework for organization modeling and workbench for simulations of intra- and inter-organizational business processes. All of these theses have gradually been proved in the subsequent sections of the article. Firstly the agent paradigm has been presented as a toolbox for business modeling and complexity management. Then the classical model of supply chain simulation has been transformed to its agent-based version. Finally the case study presents how the agent model of the supply chain may be used in the process of bullwhip effect analysis based on the simulation experiment.Keywordsagent-oriented modelingagent-oriented simulationbusiness modelingsupply chain modelingextended enterprise simulation