Дисертації з теми "Business process modeling rules"

Organizações modernas apresentam demandas relacionadas à automação dos seus processos de negócio devido à alta complexidade dos mesmos e à necessidade de maior eficácia na execução. Neste contexto, a tecnologia de workflow tem se mostrado bastante eficiente, principalmente para a automatização dos processos de negócio. No entanto, por ser uma tecnologia emergente e em evolução, workflow apresenta algumas limitações. Ainda que diversos (meta) modelos de workflow tenham sido propostos nos últimos, anos, seus sub-modelos para representação dos aspectos estruturais da organização apresentam baixo poder de expressão. Além disso, a maioria das ferramentas para modelagem de workflow não provêm funcionalidades para definição, consulta e reuso de padrões. Um dos principais problemas é falta de um mapeamento consolidado entre padrões de funções recorrentes em processos de negócio (ex: solicitação de execução de atividade, aprovação de documentos) e (meta) modelos e/ou ferramentas para modelagem de processos de negócio e workflow. Além disso, a maioria das abordagens em padrões de workflow não exploram a completude e necessidade dos seus padrões para modelagem de workflow. A primeira contribuição desta tese é um Modelo Transacional de Processos de Negócio (MTPN) com suporte aos aspectos estruturais da organização. O metamodelo possibilita a criação de (sub-)processos de negócio a partir do reuso de padrões, principalmente com base nestes aspectos. Adicionalmente, o metamodelo sugere a geração automática de padrões através da Linguagem de Execução para Web Services (BPEL4WS). Outra importante contribuição da tese é um conjunto de padrões de workflow representados como atividades de bloco. Cada padrão descreve uma função recorrente em processos de negócio. A mineração de 190 processos de workflow de mais de 10 organizações diferentes provou a existência dos padrões com alto suporte nos processos de workflow analisados. Além disso, o estudo mostrou que o conjunto de padrões é suficiente e necessário para modelar todos os 190 processos investigados. O estudo também resultou em um conjunto de regras de associação. As regras não apenas contribuem para uma melhor definição dos padrões de atividade de bloco, mas também para a combinação destes com padrões de controle de fluxo.
Modern organizations have demands related to the automation of their business processes since such processes are highly complex and need to be efficiently executed. Within this context, the workflow technology has shown to be very effective, mainly in the business process automation. However, as it is an emergent technology and in constant evolution, workflow presents some limitations. Though several workflow (meta) models have been proposed in recent years, their sub-models for organizational structure aspects representation show limited power of expression. On the other hand, most of the current workflow modeling tools do not provide functionalities that enable users to define, query, and reuse workflow patterns properly. One of the main problems is the non-availability of a consolidated mapping between patterns based on recurrent functions found in business processes (e.g., request for activity execution, notification, decision, or approval) and workflow (meta) models or workflow modeling tools. Relying on these problems, the first contribution of this thesis is a Transactional Metamodel of Business Process (TMBP) with support to organizational structure aspects. The metamodel makes feasible to create business (sub-)processes from the reuse of organizational –based workflow patterns. An additional feature of TMBP supports the generation of business (sub-)processes through the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS). Other important contribution of this thesis is a set of workflow patterns represented as block activity patterns. Each pattern refers to a recurrent business function frequently found in business processes. The mining of 190 workflow processes of more than 10 different organizations has evidenced the existence of the set of workflow patterns with high support in the workflow processes analyzed. Moreover, it became clear through this study that the set of patterns is both necessary and enough to design all 190 processes that were investigated. As a consequence of the mining process, a set of association rules was identified too. The rules not only help to better define specific workflow patterns, but also combine them with existent control flow patterns. These rules can be useful for building more complex workflows.

Para permitir um efetivo gerenciamento de processos de negócio, o primeiro passo é o desenvolvimento de modelos de processo adequados aos objetivos das organizações. Tais modelos são utilizados para descreverem papéis e responsabilidades dos colaboradores nas organizações. Além disso, a modelagem de processos é de grande importância para documentar, entender e automatizar processos. As organizações, geralmente provêm documentos não estruturados e de difícil entendimento por parte dos analistas. Neste panorama, a modelagem de processos se torna demorada e de alto custo, podendo gerar modelos de processo que estão em desacordo com a realidade prevista pelas organizações. A extração de modelos ou fragmentos de processo a partir de descrições textuais pode contribuir para minimizar o esforço necessário à modelagem de processos. Neste contexto, esta dissertação propõe uma abordagem para identificar elementos de processo de negócio em texto em linguagem natural de forma semiautomática. Baseado no estudo de processamento de linguagem natural, foi definido um conjunto de regras de mapeamento para identificar elementos de processo em descrição textual Além disso, para avaliar as regras de mapeamento e viabilizar a abordagem proposta, foi desenvolvido um protótipo capaz de identificar elementos de processo em texto de forma semiautomática. Para medir o desempenho do protótipo proposto, foram utilizadas métricas de recuperação de informação, tais como precisão, revocação e medida-F. Além disso, foram aplicados dois questionários com o objetivo de verificar a aceitação perante os usuários. As avaliações apresentam resultados promissores. A análise de 70 textos, apresentou, em média, 73,61% de precisão, 70,15% de revocação e 71,82% de medida-F. Além disso, os resultados do primeiro e segundo questionários apresentaram, em média, 91,66% de aceitação dos participantes. A principal contribuição deste trabalho é propor regras de mapeamento para identificar elementos de processo em texto em linguagem natural para auxiliar e minimizar o tempo necessário à modelagem de processos realizada pelos analistas de processo.
To enable effective business process management, the first step is the design of appropriate process models to the organization’s objectives. These models are used to describe roles and responsibilities of the employees in an organizations. In addition, business process modeling is very important to report, understand and automate processes. However, the documentation existent in organizations about such processes is mostly unstructured and difficult to be understood by analysts. In this context, process modeling becomes highly time consuming and expensive, generating process models that do not comply with the reality of the organizations. The extracting of process models from textual descriptions may contribute to minimize the effort required in process modeling. In this context, this dissertation proposes a semi-automatic approach to identify process elements in natural language text. Based on the study of natural language processing, it was defined a set of mapping rules to identify process elements in text. In addition, in order to evaluate the mapping rules and to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a prototype was developed able to identify process elements in text in a semiautomatic way To measure the performance of the proposed prototype metrics were used to retrieve information such as precision, recall, and F-measure. In addition, two surveys were developed with the purpose of verifying the acceptance of the users. The evaluations present promising results. The analyses of 70 texts presented, on average, 73.61% precision, 70.15% recall and 71.82% F-measure. In addition, the results of the first and second surveys presented on average 91.66% acceptance of the participants. The main contribution of this work is to provide mapping rules for identify process elements in natural language text to support and minimize the time required for process modeling performed by process analysts.

Šiuo metu vis daugiau įmonių nori apibrėžti organizacijose vykstančius veiklos procesus (toliau VP) atvaizduojant juos grafiškai, tačiau VP modeliuojantis analitikas ne visuomet nustato visus procese esančius apribojimus. Kadangi šių apribojimų jis negali peržiūrėti ir jų patvirtinti sumodeliuotame VP modelyje, padidėja rizika atsirasti neatitikimams ir klaidoms. Tai gali sutrikdyti organizacijos veiklą. Vadovaudamasis pateiktais VP modeliais kiekvienas dalyvis žino, kokia yra jo pozicija organizacijoje bei kokios jam deleguotos atsakomybės. Todėl ir yra svarbu, kad nubraižyti VP modeliai atitiktų realius organizacijos procesus. Taip pat svarbu išlaikyti informacijos vieningumą, modeliuojant kitus veiklos aspektus bei aiškumą bendradarbiaujant organizacijoje. Dėl šių priežasčių reikalingas veiklos žodynas (toliau VŽ), apibrėžiantis organizacijoje naudojamus pagrindinius terminus, faktus ir sinonimus, bei veiklos taisyklės (toliau VT), apibrėžiančios visus apribojimus organizacijoje. Dėl VP pokyčių ir didelės apimties, VŽ ir VT sudarymui turi būti naudojamas automatinis VŽ formavimo ir VT sudarymo metodas, kurio pagalba verslo atstovas sutaupo laiko ir užtikrina jo atitikimą realiai vykstantiems VP. Metodo realizacijai analizuojami VP modeliavimo (BPMN2, UML, Workflow) ir VŽ bei VT (SBVR, SRML ir PRR) formavimo standartai, įvertinant suprantamumą vartotojams, informacijos pateikimą, bei kitas funkcijas (pavyzdžiui, modelių transformavimas į vykdomąjį kodą, XML failo... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]
There are many organizations that want to represent their business processes (BP) using modeling notations, such as BPMN, UML and Workflow but usually the analyst cannot identify all necessary constraints of BP. Therefore responsibilities for the representatives of the organization cannot be correctly specified which leads to poor quality of work. In order to avoid such problems business process diagrams (BPD) must meet the real world processes. The research area of thesis covers various BP and business rules (BR) modeling notations, the intersection of BP and BR (the relevance and formation of BP and BR, applicability and integration of BR, the extraction of BR and business vocabulary (BV) from BPD). The main issue is the automated extraction of BV and BR from BPD which is used not only to compare business model to real organization processes but also it is useful to have BV in organization for more effective collaboration. The main tasks to solve the identified issue are the analysis of BP with their constraints, analysis of the structures of BR and their applicability in BP, the analysis of structures of BR in BP and finally the formation of the algorithm for the automated result’s extraction, creation and evaluation of prototype. The analysis of existing methods revealed that there is no such method that allows user to form BP and BR effectively integrating all necessary aspects. BPMN and SBVR standards are chosen as main knowledge resources because of their ability to... [to full text]

Disertacijoje tiriamas sprendimų modelių kūrimas verslo taisyklių ir procesų modelių pagalba bei šių modelių transformacijos į programų sistemų komponentus realizuojančius automatizuotus sprendimus informacinėje sistemoje. Analitinėje disertacijos dalyje apžvelgiami sprendimu modeliai ir metodai skirti intelektualizuotų informacinių sistemų kūrimui. Tolimesniuose skyriuose pateikiamas, remiantis analizės rezultatais, sukurtas modelių karkasas ir jo pagrindu sukurtas metodas skirtas sprendimų modelių automatizavimui. Baigiamajame disertacijos skyriuje aprašomi eksperimentai, kuriuose atliekamos sprendimų modelių transformacijos. Galiausiai pateikiami eksperimentų rezultatai ir galutinės išvados.
In the presented thesis we offer modernisation of information system development methods used for implementation of automated information-, rule-, knowledge- and model-based decision processes assisted by early separation and development of a business logic model and implementation of decision-making and knowledge discovery process models with further support to business people with suitable interfaces for modification of decision-making processes without involvement of software developers in later exploitation stages. In the analytical part of the dissertation, decision models and methods of intellectualised information systems are analysed. According to the results obtained during the analysis, investigation on the proposed framework and a decision model based method for decision-making process automation is carried out. In the final chapter several experiments are described in order to evaluate the proposed method, and the general conclusions complete the research.

Дисертація на здобуття наукового ступеня доктора філософії за спеціальністю 122 "Комп’ютерні науки". – Національний технічний університет "Харківський політехнічний інститут", Харків, 2020. Об’єктом дослідження є процес синтезу структури та реструктуризації бізнес-процесів складних систем. Предметом дослідження є моделі та інформаційна технологія аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів на основі використання різних нотацій моделювання. Дисертацію присвячено вирішенню науково-практичної задачі – розробці моделей та інформаційної технології аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів складних систем. У вступі обґрунтовано актуальність теми дисертаційної роботи, зазначено зв’язок роботи з науковими темами, сформульовано мету і задачі дослідження, визначено об’єкт, предмет та методи дослідження, показано наукову новизну та практичне значення отриманих результатів, наведено інформацію про практичне використання, особистий внесок здобувача, апробацію результатів дослідження та їх висвітлення у публікаціях. Приводяться відомості щодо структури та обсягу дисертаційної роботи. У першому розділі проведено аналіз процесу синтезу структури та реструктуризації бізнес-процесів складних систем як об’єкта дослідження. Виділені проблеми, які в даний момент ще не вирішені і є актуальними з точки зору аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. Детально розглянуті найбільш популярні та поширені нотації опису структури бізнес- процесів (BPMN, EPC, IDEF0 та DFD); сучасні підходи щодо накопичення та аналізу колекцій моделей бізнес-процесів з метою їх повторного використання; формати представлення структури бізнес-процесів (XPDL, AML, BPMN 2.0). Розглянуто існуючі методи та засоби аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. В результаті здійсненого огляду було визначено, що у розглянутих літературних джерелах не представлені формальні методи, які б дозволили виявити порушення правил побудови структури бізнес-процесів, представлених за допомогою різних нотацій моделювання, та сформувати рекомендації щодо їх усунення. Сформульовано постановку задачі дослідження проблем, які було виявлено під час аналізу процесу синтезу структури та реструктуризації бізнес-процесів складних систем в ролі об’єкта дослідження. Основними з даних проблем є: формалізація правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів на основі різних нотацій моделювання; розробка узагальненого критерію якості моделей бізнес-процесів; формування методу аналізу та вдосконалення структури бізнес-процесів; розробка моделей, призначених для формування рекомендацій щодо усунення виявлених порушень правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів; розробка інформаційної технології аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. У другому розділі сформовано теоретичні основи аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. На основі рекомендацій щодо побудови моделей бізнес-процесів визначено та формалізовано правила побудови моделей бізнес-процесів з використанням різних нотацій моделювання. Сформовано окремі критерії та розроблено узагальнений критерій якості моделей бізнес-процесів на основі методу адитивної згортки критеріїв. На основі виконаних досліджень отримали подальший розвиток: – метод кількісного аналізу структури бізнес-процесів за рахунок формування коефіцієнтів збалансованості, які, на відміну від існуючого, враховують різні елементи структури бізнес-процесу та особливості їх з’єднання, що дозволяє застосувати сформовані коефіцієнти для аналізу моделей бізнес-процесів у різних нотаціях з метою визначення їх відповідності правилам побудови; – метод оцінки якості моделей бізнес-процесів за рахунок формалізації правил побудови та формування узагальненого критерію якості замість окремих метрик якості моделей бізнес-процесів у певних нотаціях, що дозволяє оцінити якість моделі бізнес-процесу на основі єдиного кількісного показника. Третій розділ присвячено розробці моделей аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. Було розглянуто метод аналізу та вдосконалення структури бізнес-процесів, який дозволяє виявити та усунути порушення правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів при використанні різних нотацій моделювання, та відповідні моделі, призначені для формування рекомендацій щодо усунення виявлених порушень правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів (необхідні зміни у кількості відповідних елементів структури бізнес-процесу та зв’язків між ними), що дозволяє підвищити їхню якість. Оптимізаційні задачі вирішуються на основі використання методу градієнтного спуску. Метод аналізу та вдосконалення структури бізнес-процесів базується на людино- машинній процедурі прийняття рішень, тому було запропоновано процедуру формування зрозумілих людині рекомендацій у вигляді текстових вказівок щодо вдосконалення структури бізнес-процесів на основі результатів вирішення оптимізаційних задач. З метою повторного використання досвіду щодо підвищення якості моделей бізнес-процесів було розроблено процедуру їх групування за подібністю щодо відповідності правилам побудови структури бізнес-процесу. В результаті виконаних досліджень було вперше: – розроблено метод аналізу та вдосконалення структури бізнес-процесів, що дозволяє виявити та усунути порушення правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів при використанні різних нотацій моделювання; – розроблено моделі, призначені для формування рекомендацій щодо усунення виявлених порушень правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів, що дозволяє підвищити якість структури бізнес-процесів. У четвертому розділі на основі опису процесу аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів були визначені функціональні можливості та сформульовані вимоги до інформаційної технології. Архітектура інформаційної технології базується на використанні сучасних технологій вилучення, обробки та збереження інформації про структуру бізнес-процесів. Робота користувача з отриманими результатами може здійснюватися як через веб-інтерфейс, так і на основі використання аналітичної приладової панелі, яка демонструє узагальнені результати аналізу та забезпечує підтримку прийняття рішень щодо підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів. Працездатність розробленої інформаційної технології було перевірено на заздалегідь підготовлених моделях бізнес-процесів у різних нотаціях, в яких було навмисно допущено структурні помилки, які порушують правила побудови структури бізнес-процесів у нотаціях BPMN, EPC, IDEF0 та DFD, а також на повнорозмірній вихідній інформації щодо структури бізнес-процесів у різних нотаціях та різної галузевої приналежності. В результаті було удосконалено інформаційну технологію аналізу та підвищення якості структури бізнес-процесів, яка базується на використанні розроблених методу та моделей замість існуючих рішень, що дозволяє автоматизувати виявлення та усунення порушень правил побудови моделей бізнес-процесів при використанні різних нотацій моделювання. Аналіз отриманих результатів дослідження показав, що розроблений метод та моделі, на яких базується інформаційна технологія, на відміну від існуючих формальних методів та засобів, дозволяють не лише більш точно виявити помилки у структурі бізнес-процесів, поданих у нотаціях BPMN, EPC, IDEF0 та DFD, а й оцінити якість структури бізнес-процесу на основі єдиного кількісного показника та отримати рекомендації щодо її підвищення шляхом внесення необхідних змін у кількості відповідних елементів структури бізнес- процесу та зв’язків між ними. Наведено результати впровадження дисертаційного дослідження у ТОВ "Науковий Парк НТУ "ХПІ" (м. Харків), у Інституті монокристалів НАН України (м. Харків), у науково-дослідних роботах та навчальному процесі кафедри програмної інженерії та інформаційних технологій управління Національного технічного університету "ХПІ".
Thesis for obtaining the philosophy doctor scientific degree on the specialty 122 “Computer sciences”. – National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”, Kharkiv, 2020. Object of research is the process of synthesis and redesign of the business process structure of complex systems. Subject of research includes models and information technology of analysis and quality improvement of the business process structure based on the using of various modeling notations. The dissertation is devoted to the solution of the scientific and practical problem – development of the models and information technology of analysis and quality improvement of the business process structure of complex systems. The introduction substantiates the relevance of the topic of the dissertation, indicates the relationship with scientific topics, the purpose and objectives of the study are formulated, the object, subject and methods of research are identified, the scientific novelty and practical significance of the obtained results is shown, the information on practical use, personal contribution of the applicant, validation of the research results and their coverage in publications are provided. Information about the structure and scope of the dissertation is given. The first section analyzes the process of synthesis and redesign of the business processes structure of complex systems as a research object. Issues that have not yet been resolved and are relevant in terms of analysis and improvement of the quality of business processes are denoted. The most popular and widely used notations (BPMN, EPC, IDEF0, and DFD) that serve to describe business process structure, modern approaches to storing and analyzing business process model collections for their further reuse, business process structure representation formats (XPDL, AML, BPMN 2.0) are discussed in detail. Existing methods and tools of analysis and improvement of quality of business process structure are considered. As a result of the review, it was determined that the reviewed literature sources are not present formal methods that would allow to identify violations of the rules of structure of business processes, represented by various notations of modeling, and to generate recommendations in order to their elimination. The research problem related to those issues, which were revealed during the analysis of the process of synthesis and restructuring of the structure of business processes of complex systems as a research object, is formulated. The main of these problems are: formalization of rules of business process model design based on different modeling notations; development of the generalized quality criterion for business process models; formation of the method of analysis and improvement of a business process structure; development of the models, which are intended to form recommendations for elimination of revealed violations of business process model design rules; development of the information technology of analysis and quality improvement of the business process structure. The second section describes the theoretical foundations of the analysis and improvement of the quality of the structure of business processes. Based on the recommendations of business process model design, the rules of business process model design using different modeling notations are defined and formalized. Individual criteria have been formed, as well as the generalized quality criterion for business process models has been developed, which is based on the multi-criteria decision making method. The research presented in the second section has allowed elaborating: – the method of quantitative analysis of the business process structure is elaborated through the formation of balance coefficients, which, unlike the existing one, take into account different elements of the business process structure and features of their interrelations, which allows to apply the formed coefficients for the analysis of business process models in different notations in order to determine their compliance with the design rules; – the method of business process model quality assessment is elaborated by formalizing the design rules and generating a generic quality criterion instead of individual business process model metrics for certain notations, which allows to evaluate the business process model quality using a single quantitative metric. The third section is devoted to the development of models of analysis and improvement of the business process structure. There were considered the method of analysis and improvement of the business process structure, which allows detecting and eliminating violations of business process model design rules when using different modeling notations, and the models used to form recommendations for elimination of detected violations of business process model design rules (necessary changes in the number of certain elements of the business process structure and connections between them), which allows to improve the business process structure quality. The corresponding optimization problems are solved using the gradient descent method. The method of analyzing and improving the business process structure is based on the human-machine decision-making process, so it was proposed the procedure for formulating recommendations in the form of understandable text instructions for improving the business process structure based on the results of optimization problem solutions. In order to reuse the experience of improving the business process model quality, the procedure for grouping them by similarity in the context of fulfillment to the rules of business process structure design was developed. As the result of research, for the first time were obtained: – the method of analysis and improvement of the business process structure, which allows identifying and eliminating violations of the rules of building business models when using different modeling notations; – the models designed to formulate recommendations for eliminating identified violations of business process model design rules, which can improve the quality of the business process structure. In the fourth section on the basis of a detailed description of the process of analysis and improvement of the business process structure quality, functional capabilities and requirements for the information technology were defined. The information technology architecture is based on the use of modern technologies for extracting, processing and storing information about the business process structure. User work with the obtained results can be performed either through the web interface or through the analytical dashboard, which demonstrates generalized analysis results and provides decision support for improving the quality of the business process structure. The information technology was validated using prepared business process models provided in various notations, in which structural errors that violate certain business process structure design rules of BPMN, EPC, IDEF0, and DFD notations were intentionally injected; and using the full scale input information on the business process structure provided in different notations and domains. As the result there were improved the information technology of analysis and improvement of quality of business process structure, which is based on the developed method and models instead of existing solutions, which further allows automating detection and elimination of violations of business process models design in various notations. The analysis of the research results has shown that the formed method and the developed models, on which the information technology is based, unlike the existing formal methods and tools, allow not only to more accurately detect errors in the business process structure described using BPMN, EPC, IDEF0, and DFD notations, but also to evaluate the quality of the business process structure on the basis of a single quantitative indicator and obtain recommendations for its improvement by making necessary changes in the number of certain elements of the business process structure and the relations between them. Thesis research results were implemented at the “Scientific Park of NTU “KhPI” LLC (Kharkiv), state scientific institution “Institute for Single Crystals” of National Academy of Science of Ukraine (Kharkiv), in scientific research works and educational process of the Department of Software Engineering and Management Information Technologies of National Technical University “KhPI”.

Atualmente as empresas precisam de sistemas ágeis a mudanças constantes do ambiente do negócio e para garantir que os sistemas cumpram com sua finalidade, os desenvolvedores devem possuir uma compreensão mais aprofundada sobre a organização, seus objetivos, metas e estratégias de mercado. O principal problema para o desenvolvimento de sistemas de software tem sido a dificuldade em se obter informações sobre o domínio da aplicação. Essa dificuldade levou ao surgimento de técnicas de modelagem organizacional, sendo uma atividade valiosa para a compreensão do ambiente empresarial. O EKD - Enterprise Knowledge Development - é uma metodologia que fornece uma forma sistemática e controlada de analisar, entender, desenvolver e documentar uma organização. Infelizmente não possui uma sintaxe e semântica bem definidas, dificultando análises mais complexas dos modelos. Como resultado, o modelo de processos de negócio do EKD pode ser ambíguo e de difícil análise, principalmente em sistemas mais complexos, não sendo possível verificar a consistência e completude do modelo. Neste trabalho, esses problemas serão estudados sob uma abordagem baseada em redes de Petri. O formalismo de redes de Petri a torna uma importante técnica de modelagem para a representação de processos. Além disso, redes de Petri permitem rastrear cada etapa da operação sem ambigüidade e possuem métodos eficientes de análise que garantem que o modelo está livre de erros. Assim, este trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver um método de avaliação do modelo de processo de negócio do EKD (MPN-EKD). Por meio desse método é possível verificar se o modelo tem erros de construção e travamentos. Este método pode ser aplicado em modelos direcionados para o desenvolvimento de sistema de informação ou de controle do fluxo de trabalho, e pode ser utilizado também para o estudo de estratégias de trabalho e simulação do fluxo de trabalho.
Nowadays all companies need fast systems and frequent changes on the business environment and to guarantee that the systems are reaching their goals, the developers must have a deeper comprehension of the enterprise, its goals and market strategies. The main problem to the development of software systems has been the difficulty to obtain information about the application domain. This difficulty leaded to the creation of enterprise modeling techniques, which is a valuable activity for the comprehension of business environment. The EKD - Enterprise Knowledge Development - is a methodology that gives a systematic and controlled way to analyze, understand, develop, and document an enterprise. Unfortunately it doesn\'t have syntax neither a semantic well defined, which doesn\'t help on more complex analyses of the models. As a result, the enterprise process model of EKD can be ambiguous and hard to analyze, especially on more complex systems, and also it is not possible to verify the consistency and entireness of the model. On this paper, these problems will be studied under an approach based on Petri nets. Because of the Petri nets formalism this is an important modeling technique to process representation. Furthermore, Petri nets allow the tracking of each step of the operation without ambiguity and also they have efficient methodology for analyses, which guarantee the accuracy of the model. Therefore, this work has the objective to develop an evaluation methodology of the business process model of EKD (MPN-EKD). Such methodology will make possible the verification of possible building and locking model errors. This methodology can be applied to information systems or workflow, and also can be used to study the strategies of work and workflow simulations.

A preocupação da engenharia de software esteve por muito tempo relacionada a aspectos da funcionalidade do sistema, ou seja, com \"o que\" e \"como\" fazer e não com o \"por que\" fazer. Tais aspectos, envolvidos nos processos existentes, buscam a definição das propriedades desejadas, em lugar de observarem a informação de uma forma mais ampla, começando com as necessidades do próprio negócio, ou dos objetivos dos sistemas nele embutidos. As técnicas de análise estruturadas, diagrama de fluxo de dados e modelagem entidade e relacionamento modelam importantes conceitos para o desenvolvimento de sistemas, mas não buscam por soluções alternativas inovadoras aos problemas da organização. É comum encontrar situações onde o sistema não satisfaz às reais necessidades do negócio, embora esteja tecnicamente correto. O entendimento dos aspectos sociais, organizacionais, técnicos, jurídicos e econômicos é essencial para a realização de um bom trabalho de engenharia de requisitos. Nesse sentido, a modelagem organizacional facilita a compreensão do ambiente empresarial e é reconhecida como uma atividade valiosa pela engenharia de requisitos. O modelo organizacional representa o \"mundo\" onde se aplicam as regras do negócio. O entendimento das regras do negócio é muito importante para a organização ser flexível em um ambiente de crescente competitividade. Com a necessidade de se ter a modelagem dos aspectos relativos à organização para que o sistema atenda as suas reais necessidades, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo investigar o processo de desenvolvimento de software buscando conhecer técnicas ou métodos que atendem aos requisitos organizacionais, enfatizando o uso de regras do negócio com a finalidade de obter a especificação de requisitos.
The software engineering\'s focus were for a long time related to system\'s functionality aspects, or with \"what\" and \"how\" to do, and not with \"why\" to do. Those aspects in the existents process are looking for the definition of the desired proprieties instead observe the information in a more large aspect, beginning with the business needs itself or the systems goals inserted in it. The structure analysis techniques, flux data diagram, and relationship and entity modeling form important concepts for systems development but do not search for innovating alternatives solutions for organization\'s problems. It is very common to find situations were the system does not satisfy the real business needs, thought it is technically correct. The comprehension of social, organizational, technical, juridical and economics aspects are essential for a good realization of requirements in engineering work. In that way the enterprise modeling makes the business environment comprehension easier and is recognized as a value activity by the requirements engineering. The enterprise model represents the \"world\" where the business rules are applied. The comprehension of the business rules is very important so the organization can be flexible in a growing competitive environment. With the necessity to have a modeling of the relative aspects to the organization so the system can accomplish the real needs, this present research has the objective to investigate a software development process trying to find techniques or methods that answer the enterprise\'s requirement, emphasizing the use of business rules to obtain the specifics requirements.

Knowledge is considered important for the survival and growth of an enterprise. Currently knowledge is stored in various places including the bottom drawers of employees. The human being is considered to be the most important knowledge provider. Over the years knowledge based systems (KBS) have been developed to capture and nurture the knowledge of domain experts. However, such systems were considered to be separate and different from the traditional information systems development. Many KBS development projects have failed. The main causes for such failures have been recognised as the difficulties associated with the process of knowledge elicitation, in particular the techniques and methods employed. On the other hand, the main emphasis of information systems development has been in the areas of data and information capture relating to transaction based systems. For knowledge to be effectively captured and nurtured it is necessary for knowledge to be part of the information systems development activity. This thesis reports on a process of investigation and analysis conducted into the areas of information, knowledge and the overlapping areas. This research advocates a hybrid approach, where knowledge and information capture to be considered as one in a unified environment. A meta-schema design based on Formal Object Role Modelling (FORM), independent of implementation details, is introduced for this purpose. This is considered to be a key contribution of this research activity. Both information and knowledge is expected to be captured through this approach. Meta data types are provided for the capture of business rules and they form part of the knowledge base of an organisation. The integration of knowledge with data and information is also described. XML is recognised by many as the preferred data interchange language and it is investigated for the purpose of rule interchange. This approach is expected to enable organisations to interchange business rules and their meta-data, in addition to data and their schema. During interchange rules can be interpreted and applied by receiving systems, thus providing a basis for intelligent behaviour. With the emergence of new technologies such as the Internet the modelling of an enterprise as a series of business processes has gained prominence. Enterprises are moving towards integration, establishing well-described business processes within and across enterprises, to include their customers and suppliers. The purpose is to derive a common set of objectives and benefit from potential economic efficiencies. The suggested meta-schema design can be used in the early phases of requirements elicitation to specify, communicate, comprehend and refine various artefacts. This is expected to encourage domain experts and knowledge analysts work towards describing each business process and their interactions. Existing business processes can be documented and business efficiencies can be achieved through a process of refinement. The meta-schema design allows for a ?systems view? and sharing of such views, thus enabling domain experts to focus on their area of specialisation whilst having an understanding of other business areas and their facts. The design also allows for synchronisation of mental models of experts and the knowledge analyst. This has been a major issue with KBS development and one of the main reasons for the failure of such projects. The intention of this research is to provide a facility to overcome this issue. The natural language based FORM encourages verbalisation of the domain, hence increasing the understanding and comprehension of available business facts.

Workflow systems aim to provide automated support for the conduct of certain business processes. Workflow systems are driven by workflow specifications which among others, capture the execution interdependencies between various activities. These interdependencies are modelled by means of different control flow constructors, e.g., sequence, choice, parallelism and synchronisation. It has been shown in the research on workflow patterns that the support for and the interpretation of various control flow constructs varies substantially across workflow systems. Two of the most problematic patterns relate to the OR-join and to cancellation. An OR-join is used in situations when we need to model " wait and see" behaviour for synchronisation. Different approaches assign a different (often only intuitive) semantics to this type of join, though they do share the common theme that synchronisation is only to be performed for active paths. Depending on context assumptions this behaviour may be relatively easy to deal with, though in general its semantics is complicated, both from a definition point of view (in terms of formally capturing a desired intuitive semantics) and from a computational point of view (how does one determine whether an OR-join is enabled?). Many systems and languages struggle with the semantics and implementation of the OR-join because its non-local semantics require a synchronisation depending on an analysis of future execution paths. This may require some non-trivial reasoning. The presence of cancellation features and other OR-joins in a workflow further complicates the formal semantics of the OR-join. The cancellation feature is commonly used to model external events that can change the behaviour of a running workflow. It can be used to either disable activities in certain parts of a workflow or to stop currently running activities. Even though it is possible to cancel activities in workflow systems using some sort of abort function, many workflow systems do not provide direct support for this feature in the workflow language. Sometimes, cancellation affects only a selected part of a workflow and other activities can continue after performing a cancellation action. As cancellation occurs naturally in business scenarios, comprehensive support in a workflow language is desirable. We take on the challenge of providing formal semantics, verification techniques as well as an implementation for workflows with those features. This thesis addresses three interrelated issues for workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins. The concept of the OR-join is examined in detail in the context of the workflow language YAWL, a powerful workflow language designed to support a collection of workflow patterns and inspired by Petri nets. The OR-join semantics has been redesigned to represent a general, formal, and decidable approach for workflows in the presence of cancellation regions and other OR-joins. This approach exploits a link that is proposed between YAWL and reset nets, a variant of Petri nets with a special type of arc that can remove all tokens from a place. Next, we explore verification techniques for workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins. Four structural properties have been identified and a verification approach that exploits coverability and reachability notions from reset nets has been proposed. The work on verification techniques has highlighted potential problems with calculating state spaces for large workflows. Applying reduction rules before carrying out verification can decrease the size of the problem by cutting down the size of the workflow that needs to be examined while preserving some essential properties. Therefore, we have extended the work on verification by proposing reduction rules for reset nets and for YAWL nets with and without OR-joins. The proposed OR-join semantics as well as the proposed verification approach have been implemented in the YAWL environment.

This thesis focuses on modeling of business processes which are very sensitive on correct capturing of process details characterized as process events and states. At the beginning of the analysis are the process events and states classified into three types: activity related, object related and time related. Each type is analyzed in detail and there are formulated states and their transitions that form a lifecycle of each individual type of the process state. There are discussed contemporary process modeling languages starting from the very popular to relatively less known, all representing slightly different approach towards process modeling. The analysis of process events and states shows that the contemporary process modeling languages cover the defined lifecycles only partially. There are picked three popular process modeling languages and put through a test case, which is based on Czech regulation of a building process. This test case allows us to review their capabilities to capture the process events including the ways how they get along with their only partial support. Upon analysis of process events and states and the unsatisfying results of the con-temporary process modeling languages in the test case, there is introduced a new process modeling language which, as demonstrated, is capable of capturing many of the process events and states in the test case in much simpler and precise way that the three reviewed process modeling languages were able to.

Introduction: with the expanded application of ERP system, business process model-ing, as an essential part of the ERP system implementation, has already attracted in-creasingly attention from the organizations. However, even though with the great signif-icance, there is no specific guideline to indicate the key factors of a business process modeling within the ERP system implementation context, especially from the supplier, customer and consultancy point of view. Accordingly, the authors are interested in the following two research questions:1. What are the factors that ERP customer. Supplier and consultancy focused on when they do business process modeling for an ERP implementation?2. How these factors are ranked and viewed by ERP customers, suppliers and con-sultants?Purpose: This study is an exploratory study aiming at identifying improvement factors for business process modeling within the context of ERP system implementation. addi-tionally, the authors seek to identify the diverse attitudes from the parties involved in the process of ERP implantation, that are supplier, customer and consultancy, towards the significance level of the improvement factors.Method: This research has adopted an inductive approach due to the nature of its re-search questions. Besides, data has been collected through six interviews in in total. And each supplier, consultancy, customer party has been conducted two interviews respec-tively. The six interview companies are with different cultural background. Additionally, secondary data from books, magazines are obtained through documentation as well.Conclusion: The thesis main results show that there are five improvement factors con-cerning the business process modeling within ERP system implementation, involving correctness, clarity, resource efficiency, cultural specification and relevance. Based upon the suppliers, consultancies and customers points of view, correctness, clarity and cul-tural specification can be categorized into basic factors and resource efficiency, rele-vance are grouped as optional factors. Furthermore, from the customers perspective, correctness and clarity ranks at the top two places among those five factors, while con-sultants focus on correctness and resource efficiency first. Besides, suppliers regard cor-rectness as the most fundamental improvement factors for business process modeling.

In the master's thesis we are concerned with the logical perspective on business process model-ing. The logical perspective on business process modeling has several advantages. First, being a formal logical system, first-order logic let us thoroughly understand the foundations of process modeling. Second, after we understand the logical foundations of business process modeling, we are free to build a BPM language based entirely on logic, or map an existing language onto logic, which may be useful for artificial reasoning. Third, if the business process model is mapped to logic (or another declarative language) it can be easily stored in a declarative knowledge base. Forth, logic based process models can be used in companies as a basis for knowledge manage-ment. And fifth, the science of logic offers a number of various semantic enhancements, which can be used in favor of better business process modeling expressiveness. The first objective of the thesis is to perform a thorough review of the literature of both our fields -- the business process modeling and temporal logic. The related second objective is to study the ability of logic to represent processes and the notion of time in general, and to offer techniques for logical process representation. Subsequently, the examples should be provided in order to present that the selected techniques are capable of performing what is sketched in the first paragraph. The third objective is to propose improvements of the current business process modeling approach and provide relevant examples. Eventually, means of extending the tech-niques presented can be proposed, too. The major contribution of the thesis is that it constitutes a reasonable basis for further research in the chosen field. For novices or even experienced in the subject it represents a good stepping stone.

This thesis presents a study on efficient dispatching rules in ambulance dispatching. By efficient dispatching rules, we mean such dispatching rules that lower response times for priority 1 calls while keeping response times for priority 2 calls at an adequate level. A Markov process and a simulation model were developed in order to evaluate the performance of several existing and newly designed dispatching rules. On four different response areas, five different dispatching rules were tested and their performances were compared. Particular focus was put upon the dispatch rule currently used by the Swedish emergency service provider SOS Alarm; the Closest rule. Our findings indicate that the four priority-based dispatching rules all outperform the Closest rule in decreasing the mean response time for calls of priority degree 1. Furthermore, implementing restrictions on the travel time for priority 2 calls was proven an efficient way to control the trade-off between the mean response time of priority 1 and 2 calls. The conclusion was drawn that the possibilities for more efficient ambulance dispatching are many and that SOS Alarm should consider implementing priority-based dispatching rules, alike the ones presented in this thesis, in their dispatching process. A study of the ambulance operator and controller profession, and the operator’s and controller’s interplay with the decision support system used by SOS Alarm in the ambulance dispatching process, was conducted in parallel. The properties of the interaction dynamics between operator and automation and the dangers linked to it were mapped out, described and analyzed.
Denna kandidatexamensuppsats behandlar effektiva dirigeringsstrategier inom ambulansdirigering. Effektiva dirigeringsstrategier åsyftar dirigeringsstrategier som lyckas sänka svarstiden för inkommande prioritet 1-samtal, samtidigt som svarstiden för prioritet 2-samtal hålls på en tillfredsställande nivå. I syfte att utvärdera olika dirigeringsstrategier utvecklades både en Markovsk modell och en simuleringsmodell. På fyra olika geografiska områden testades och jämfördes. Fem olika dirigeringsstrategier, varav två existerande och tre nyutvecklade. Särskilt fokus riktades mot Closest rule, vilket är den dirigeringsstrategi som används i SOS Alarms verksamhet idag. Från resultaten kunde utläsas att de prioritets-baserade dirigeringsstrategierna resulterade i en lägre genomsnittlig svarstid för prioritet 1-fall än Closest rule. Dessutom konstaterades det att en begränsning av svarstiderna för prioritet 2-samtal var ett effektivt sätt att kontrollera balansen mellan de genomsnittliga svarstiderna för samtal av prioritet 1, respektive 2. Slutsatsen drogs att möjligheterna för att utveckla nya effektiva dirigeringsstrategier är många och att SOS Alarm bör överväga att implementera prioritetsbaserade dirigeringsstrategier likt dem som presenterats i denna uppsats. Parallellt studerades ambulansoperatörens och -dirigentens yrkeskunnande, samt operatörens och dirigentens samspel med det beslutsstödssystem som används i SOS Alarms dirigeringsverksamhet. Interaktionen mellan operatör och automatisering samt de relaterade riskerna kartlades, beskrevs och analyserades.

This thesis study proposes a method for organizations to perform business process modeling in a decentralized and concurrent manner. The Plural method is based on the idea that organizations&rsquo
processes can be modeled by individuals actually performing the processes. Instead of having a central and devoted group of people to understand, analyze, model and improve processes, individuals are held responsible to model and improve their own processes concurrently. These individual models are then integrated to form organization&rsquo
s process network. The method guides the application of this approach in organizations with the activities to be followed and the artifacts to be produced. To apply the method, the study also introduces a notation and a prototype toolset. A multiple-case study involving two cases is conducted in order to evaluate the applicability of the method for decentralized process modeling and validate the expected benefits.

In the aggressive business environment of today, organizations are being forced to explore new opportunities for creating a competitive advantage. The call is going out for organizations to reengineer themselves and to become more lean. Information systems/technology is a critical enabler in the reengineering process. To fully take advantage of this technology, an organization must develop an accurate enterprise-wide data model. Data modeling is a challenging, complex task which requires a vast knowledge of an enterprise and a tremendous amount of effort to complete. This dissertation explores the development of a systems prototype to support the data modeling process in a group environment. Background literature is presented from many sources addressing the systems development process, different approaches to data modeling, strategies for involving users (subject matter experts) in the development process, and concepts relating to business process reengineering. The systems development research approach is applied to the domain. A prototype system is developed, based on the IDEF1X data modeling methodology, and tested in an Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) environment. EMS provide an environment in which meetings are more effective by introducing structure and technology into the meeting process. The prototype system allows multiple participants to contribute to the modeling process in parallel. GroupSystems for Windows, from Ventana Corporation, is also used in the modeling activity. Additionally, the prototype provides a means to export data into an IDEF1X CASE tool for further analysis and development. The research blends methodology, techniques, and tools to assist subject matter experts in data model development in support of business process reengineering efforts. Research contributions include a prototype system for developing data models in a group setting that can be further enhanced and evaluated, insights into the prototype and evaluation process, and new knowledge of the group dynamics of developing data models with large groups of subject matter experts. Based on the perceptions and feedback from participants and systems analysts involved in the evaluation and testing of the prototype and the methods to support the modeling effort, the use of an EMS environment for data modeling results in shorter development times and more robust data models.

Business process models are an important means to design, analyze, implement, and control business processes. As with every type of conceptual model, a business process model has to meet certain syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic quality requirements to be of value. For many years, such quality aspects were investigated by centering on the properties of the model artifact itself. Only recently, the process of model creation is considered as a factor that influences the resulting model's quality. Our work contributes to this stream of research and presents an explorative analysis of the process of process modeling (PPM). We report on two large-scale modeling sessions involving 115 students. In these sessions, the act of model creation, i.e., the PPM, was automatically recorded. We conducted a cluster analysis on this data and identified three distinct styles of modeling. Further, we investigated how both task- and modeler-specific factors influence particular aspects of those modeling styles. Based thereupon, we propose a model that captures our insights. It lays the foundations for future research that may unveil how high-quality process models can be established through better modeling support and modeling instruction. (authors' abstract)

While several approaches exist for modeling goals and business processes in organizations, the relationships between these two views are often not well defined. This inhibits the effective reuse of available knowledge in models. This thesis aims to address this issue through the introduction of a Goal-oriented Pattern Family (GoPF) framework that helps constructing business process models from organization goals while expanding these goals, establishing traceability relationships between the goal and process views, and improving reusability. Methods for extracting domain knowledge as patterns, which are composed of goal model building blocks, process model building blocks, and their relationships, and for maintaining the patterns over time are also presented. The GoPF framework provides the infrastructure for defining pattern families, i.e., collections of related patterns for particular domains. The foundation of GoPF is formalized as a profile of the User Requirements Notation, a standard modeling language that supports goals, scenarios, and links between them. A method for the use of GoPF is defined and then illustrated through a case study that targets the improvement of patient safety in healthcare organizations. The framework and the extraction/maintenance methods are also validated against another case study involving aviation security in a regulatory environment. The GoPF framework is expected to have a positive impact on the scientific community through the formalization, evolution, and reuse of patterns in domain-specific business domains. From an industrial viewpoint, this framework will also help intermediary organizations (such as consulting firms) who are required to repeatedly create and document goal and process models for other organizations in their business domain.

Thesis (M.S. in Management) Naval Postgraduate School, December 1996.
Thesis advisor(s): Keebom Kang and Jane Feitler. "December 1996." Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-64). Also available online.

In the last 50 years, a considerable amount of research workhas been completed in the mathematical system theory and theoryof control. Implementation of the results from this researchinto practice has drastically decreased the production costs.Most production processes are highly automated, and the use ofrobots in industry is growing. As far as office, or businessprocesses are concerned, the situation is quite different.Though the office workers and sales personnel have obtainedmuch help from the modern computers, the office and salesprocesses are far behind the production processes on the levelof automation. The computers are used in the office mainly tohelp in performing various activities, e.g., to write a letter,to print an invoice, to complete a transaction, etc. Thecontrol of the business processes in the office remains, to alarge extent, manual. There is a lot to gain if the controlover business processes could be automated, at leastpartially.

The material presented in this thesis is aimed to supportthe following hypothesis: "The ideas worked out in the Mathematical system theory formodeling and controlling physical processes can be successfullyused for modeling and controlling business processes." Oneof the main ideas of mathematical system theory is to considera process as a set of valid trajectories in a state space, andthis idea is the keystone for the thesis. The thesis startswith reformulating the state-oriented approach for the domainof business processes to show what kind of sate space can beused in this domain. First, the approach is introducedinformally by means of an example. Next, a possibleformalization adjusted to the properties of business processesis discussed. Then, experimental evidences that the methodsuggested in the thesis can be used in practice are presented.The suggested method is also compared with other methods ofbusiness process modeling to find out the areas where it hasadvantages over the other methods. In the conclusion, theresults are summarized, and plansfor the future are drawn.

Most of the material included in the thesis has beenpublished and presented at international conferences. Thecontribution of this thesis consists in organizing the materialin support of the main hypothesis.

De plus en plus les organisations adoptent les systèmes d'informations sensibles aux processus basés sur Cloud en tant qu'un environnement pour gérer et exécuter des processus dans le Cloud dans l'objectif de partager et de déployer leurs applications de manière optimale. Cela est particulièrement vrai pour les grandes organisations ayant des succursales opérant dans des différentes régions avec des processus considérablement similaires. Telles organisations doivent soutenir de nombreuses variantes du même processus en raison de la culture locale de leurs succursales, de leurs règlements, etc. Cependant, le développement d'une nouvelle variante de processus à partir de zéro est sujet à l'erreur et peut prendre beaucoup du temps. Motivés par le paradigme "la conception par la réutilisation", les succursales peuvent collaborer pour développer de nouvelles variantes de processus en apprenant de leurs processus similaires. Ces processus sont souvent hétérogènes, ce qui empêche une interopérabilité facile et dynamique entre les différentes succursales. Une variante de processus est un ajustement d'un modèle de processus afin de s'adapter d'une façon flexible aux besoins spécifiques. De nombreuses recherches dans les universités et les industries visent à faciliter la conception des variantes de processus. Plusieurs approches ont été développées pour aider les concepteurs de processus en recherchant des modèles de processus métier similaires ou en utilisant des modèles de référence. Cependant, ces approches sont lourdes, longues et sujettes à des erreurs. De même, telles approches recommandent des modèles de processus pas pratiques pour les concepteurs de processus qui ont besoin d'ajuster une partie spécifique d'un modèle de processus. En fait, les concepteurs de processus peuvent mieux développer des variantes de processus ayant une approche qui recommande un ensemble bien défini d'activités à partir d'un modèle de processus défini comme un fragment de processus. Les grandes organisations multi-sites exécutent les variantes de processus BP dans l'environnement Cloud pour optimiser le déploiement et partager les ressources communes. Cependant, ces ressources Cloud peuvent être décrites en utilisant des différents standards de description des ressources Cloud ce qui empêche l'interopérabilité entre les différentes succursales. Dans cette thèse, nous abordons les limites citées ci-dessus en proposant une approche basée sur les ontologies pour peupler sémantiquement une base de connaissance commune de processus et de ressources Cloud, ce qui permet une interopérabilité entre les succursales de l'organisation. Nous construisons notre base de connaissance en étendant les ontologies existantes. Ensuite, nous proposons une approche pour exploiter cette base de connaissances afin de supporter le développement des variantes BP. De plus, nous adoptons un algorithme génétique pour allouer d'une manière optimale les ressources Cloud aux BPs. Pour valider notre approche, nous développons deux preuves de concepts et effectuons des expériences sur des ensembles de données réels. Les résultats expérimentaux montrent que notre approche est réalisable et précise dans des cas d'utilisation réels
More and more organizations are adopting cloud-based Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) to manage and execute processes in the cloud as an environment to optimally share and deploy their applications. This is especially true for large organizations having branches operating in different regions with a considerable amount of similar processes. Such organizations need to support many variants of the same process due to their branches' local culture, regulations, etc. However, developing new process variant from scratch is error-prone and time consuming. Motivated by the "Design by Reuse" paradigm, branches may collaborate to develop new process variants by learning from their similar processes. These processes are often heterogeneous which prevents an easy and dynamic interoperability between different branches. A process variant is an adjustment of a process model in order to flexibly adapt to specific needs. Many researches in both academics and industry are aiming to facilitate the design of process variants. Several approaches have been developed to assist process designers by searching for similar business process models or using reference models. However, these approaches are cumbersome, time-consuming and error-prone. Likewise, such approaches recommend entire process models which are not handy for process designers who need to adjust a specific part of a process model. In fact, process designers can better develop process variants having an approach that recommends a well-selected set of activities from a process model, referred to as process fragment. Large organizations with multiple branches execute BP variants in the cloud as environment to optimally deploy and share common resources. However, these cloud resources may be described using different cloud resources description standards which prevent the interoperability between different branches. In this thesis, we address the above shortcomings by proposing an ontology-based approach to semantically populate a common knowledge base of processes and cloud resources and thus enable interoperability between organization's branches. We construct our knowledge base built by extending existing ontologies. We thereafter propose an approach to mine such knowledge base to assist the development of BP variants. Furthermore, we adopt a genetic algorithm to optimally allocate cloud resources to BPs. To validate our approach, we develop two proof of concepts and perform experiments on real datasets. Experimental results show that our approach is feasible and accurate in real use-cases

Web services composition is an emerging paradigm for enabling inter and intra organizational integration, and a landscape of languages and techniques for modeling business processes in web service based environments has emerged and is continuously being enriched. With the advent of modeling standards, different business sectors are investigating the options for modeling their workflows. In terms of business process modeling, healthcare is a rather complex sector of activity. Indeed, modeling healthcare processes presents special requirements dictated by the complicated and dynamic nature of these processes as well as by the specificity and diversity of the actors involved in these processes. Little effort has been dedicated to evaluating the capabilities and limitations of modeling languages based on healthcare requirements. This thesis presents a set of healthcare requirements and proposes an evaluation framework for process modeling languages based on these requirements. The suitability of three major process-based service composition languages, namely BPEL, BPMN and WS-CDL, is evaluated.

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.
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.

In one of the highly globalized fields such as Marine Industry, shipping operations are hugely dependent on the quick and readily accessible information about the people, machinery and services available both at port and terminal levels. The e-collaboration tools often result in improving the potential to take advantage of the information across various dimensions such as nations, organizations and professions. In the maritime transportation sector, collaboration is very much evident as intersection between various elements associated with it such as business processes (or service management), software tools (or technologies) and users. As a result, collaboration is crucial either to make good plans that are aligned with the different stakeholders or can be used as a tool for deviation management if such a thing occurs. Usually, the maritime shipping operations are carried out both on ship and also by various bodies affiliated with port and terminal services. However, establishing collaboration between operations and tools is often challenging as they are two very different disciplines. Therefore, the knowledge gathered via intersection of software engineering and processes involved holds the means for establishing the collaboration between the service providers and potential users. Normally the information is coming from sensors as well as traditional message based sources. These information sources can be used for identifying and capturing business processes which are part of maritime enterprise to achieve collaboration among various involved parties. In this thesis, a method is proposed to overcome the problem of process management by establishing a collaboration medium between the service providers and participants in a maritime enterprise. This work is based on literature study, industry test cases and validation of test case models using process centric approach. The process centric approach, which regards notion of developing enterprise based on process models and facilitating collaboration among participants of business process models, is the main result this work. The steps are to define goals, identify business processes and define collaboration in these. To support this we need the other contributions of the thesis; i.e. uncovering the collaboration space through intersection of entities, collaboration platform, collaboration-oriented architecture and collaboration matrix generation. BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) provided a means to model the industrial test case using the process-centric approach and study collaboration among tasks in business process. The analysis of test case BPMN model validates concepts of Marine Information Center (MIS) project at SINTEF and provides set of requirements for improving collaboration further

Process models are an essential component of business process management and are found in various information systems such as workflow management systems, enterprise resource planning systems, and supply chain management systems. Process modeling and analysis are key steps in business process management. However, most existing activity-based process modeling paradigms found in process management tools lack a mathematical formalism, have limited expressive power, or have little analytical capability. Consequently, process modeling and analysis in the industry remain an art rather than a science. In this dissertation, we first propose a logic-based workflow verification approach by applying propositional logic with constraints to verifying the correctness of both acyclic and cyclic workflow models. We demonstrate that this approach is capable of detecting process anomalies in workflow models. We then propose process graphs as a graphical and mathematical tool for business process modeling and analysis. We formally define the syntax and semantics of process graphs and their constructs. We show that process graphs can not only model all types of execution order of activities, but also support multi-level abstraction, modular modeling, and analysis of the correctness of process models. We apply process graphs to defining and classifying process anomalies, and demonstrate that the proper use of process graphs can prevent certain process anomalies. We also propose process logic as a logical formalism and mathematical method to represent process models for the purpose of process verification. We formally define the syntax and semantics of process logic to reflect the characteristics of process structures in a more precise way. We establish a formal relationship between process logic and graphical representations of process models, and transform the problem of verifying the correctness of process models into the problem of determining the validity of process argument forms in process logic. We demonstrate that process logic can be used to verify completely the correctness of activity-based process models. Process graphs and process logic provide a theoretical foundation for the modeling, analysis, and verification of activity-based process models that are most widely used in the applications of business process management.

Visual process models are meant to facilitate comprehension of business processes. However, in practice, process models can be difficult to understand. The main goal of this article is to clarify the sources of cognitive effort in comprehending process models. The article undertakes a comprehensive descriptive review of empirical and theoretical work in order to categorize and summarize systematically existing findings on the factors that influence comprehension of visual process models. Methodologically, the article builds on a review of forty empirical studies that measure objective comprehension of process models, seven studies that measure subjective comprehension and user preferences, and thirty-two articles that discuss the factors that influence the comprehension of process models. The article provides information systems researchers with an overview of the empirical state of the art of process model comprehension and provides recommendations for new research questions to be addressed and methods to be used in future experiments.

Whether it is offering services, delivering solutions or driving innovations, team work has been a hallmark of efficiency and effectiveness in various industries. The healthcare industry is not left out as its service delivery process involves numerous interfaces, information flows and patient hand-offs among professionals with different educational training, differing knowledge levels and possibly working from different locations as well. As healthcare delivery evolves to being more patient-centered, so does the team settings as well, becoming more collaborative. Such changes also translate into a need for support systems to evolve to be able to provide support for the extent of collaboration that would be needed. A framework is needed to guide in the development of such systems. However, due to the varying needs of patients, team types and make-up would generally differ, so we explored the different types of team settings studying what they entail based on their various degrees of collaboration. We therefore present in this thesis a model of team based concepts, an ontology formalizing the model, team based scenarios designed using the ontology and then application of the scenarios to test the ability of BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) to model healthcare teams.

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.
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.

This generic qualitative inquiry research study investigated the effectiveness of self-directed learning and experiential learning theory on the business process modeling notation (BPMN) learning process and subsequent development of business process models. The goal was to analyze the experiences of participants’ individual learning processes for acquiring BPMN knowledge. The research study sought to answer, “How do experiential and self-directed learning approaches to BPMN affect business process model development?” The generic qualitative inquiry examined 13 participants’ responses from semi-structured interview questions. The semi-structured interview questions required participants to reflect and describe their learning process. The data analysis was completed using an inductive thematic analysis with a constant comparison method to identify themes from the codes. The self-directed learning processes, experiential learning, and key success factors themes emerged as the study’s participants described their learning process for BPMN and factors that affected the development of business process models using BPMN. The findings of this study add the BPMN self-directed learner’s mental model and BPMN experiential learning mental model that enable BPMN practitioners to understand the influences and factors of the adult learning process and how the creation of BPMN knowledge occurs for the purpose of developing business process models with BPMN.

FUNDAÇÃO DE APOIO A PESQUISA DA BAHIA
A definição dos requisitos do software, onde os engenheiros interagem com os clientes para conhecerem as atividades da organização e entenderem suas necessidades, é um processo chave para o sucesso dos sistemas de informação. Portanto, requisitos definidos de maneira clara e de acordo com as necessidades dos clientes são condições fundamentais para o desenvolvimento de sistemas de informações úteis para a organização. Nessa dissertação propomos um método que visa auxiliar o engenheiro de requisitos na tarefa de elicitação de requisitos mais aderentes ao negocio e com isto conseguir desenvolver melhores sistemas de informação para as organizações.O método proposto parte do princípio que, integrando conhecimentos adquiridos com o modelo de processo do negócio, e o modelo ontológico do negócio, podemos produzir uma sólida fonte de conhecimentos. O uso dessa fonte de conhecimentos na elicitação dos requisitos do sistema de informação da organização objetiva prover aos engenheiros de requisitos uma sólida base para a definição de requisitos aderentes ao negócio da organização. A integração da perspectiva ontológica com a perspectiva de processos é detalhada e exemplificada através de um estudo de caso.
Requirements definition, where engineers interact with clients to better know the organization`s activities and understand their needs, is a key process to the success of an information system. As such, requirements defined with clarity and according to the client`s needs are fundamental to the development of effective information systems for the organization. This dissertation proposes a method to help requirements engineers in the task of eliciting requirements. These requirements must be in accordance with the business as to improve the quality of the organization`s information systems. The proposed method integrates process modeling and business ontology. The work assumes that the integration of these perspectives provides a solid source of organization knowledge. Using this knowledge source, requirements engineers are empowered to define requirements that better fits the organization business. The integration of process modeling and business ontology is described in detail and exemplified by a case study.

Today, organizations often need to modify their business processes to cope with changes in the environment, such as mergers/acquisitions, new government regulations, and new customer demand. Most organizations also have a set of business policies defining the way they conduct their business. Although there has been extensive research on process analysis and design, how to systematically extract workflow models from business policies has not been studied, resulting in a missing link between the specification of business policies and the modeling of business processes.Given that process changes are often determined by executives and managers at the policy level, the aforementioned missing link often leads to inefficient and inaccurate implementation of process changes by business analysts and process designers. We refer to this problem as the policy mismatch problem in business process management. For organizations with large-scale business processes and a large number of business policies, solving the policy mismatch problem is very difficult and challenging.In this dissertation, we attempt to provide a formal link between business policies and workflow models by proposing a logic-based methodology for process analysis and design. In particular, we first propose a Policy-driven Process Design (PPD) methodology to formalize the procedure of extracting workflow models from business policies. In PPD, narrative process policies are parsed into precise information on various workflow components, and a set of process design rules and algorithms are applied to generate workflow models from that information.We also develop a logic-based process modeling language named Unified Predicate Language (UPL). UPL is able to represent all workflow components in a single logic format and provides analytical capability via logic inference and query. We demonstrate UPL's expressive power and analytical ability by applying it to process design and process change analysis. In particular, we use UPL to define and classify process change anomalies and develop algorithms to verify and enforce process consistency.The Policy-driven Process Design, Unified Predicate Language, and process change analysis approach found in this dissertation contribute to business process management research by providing a formal methodology for resolving the policy mismatch problem.

Process modeling is an indispensable task in the discipline of Business Process Management. The process models created in this task help its readers in to acquiring a higher comprehension of a process, allowing for the discovery of opportunities for its improvement. However, the comprehension of a process model is not guaranteed, as process modeling is a complex task that depends on the proficiency of the process modeler to avoid the creation of badly designed constructs. Process modeling guidelines are an essential tool in this regard, though they are dispersed across the many studies of the literature and not all of them have empirical evidence validating their effects. In addition to this problem, it is still an open questions if a set of process modeling guidelines makes the process modeling task more challenging and how effective modelers are in using them. It is also unclear how receptive process analysts are to the modeling guidelines. This dissertation presents a systematic literature review we conducted to collect and analyze the modeling guidelines found in the literature. It investigated a total of 520 articles, extracting a total of 45 modeling guidelines spread across 4 different categories. These 45 guidelines were simplified into a set of 20 guidelines, based on their significance to create more comprehensible process models and their practicality. This dissertation also presents the findings of an empirical experiment performed by 13 subjects that compared the results of two process modeling tasks with and without the support of the 20 modeling guidelines presented by the review, in which it was possible to observe that the subjects recognize the usefulness of the guidelines, but find them difficult to understand and use.

The successful development and implementation of business information systems requires an integrated approach which includes the seamless design of both the business processes and the information systems supporting the business processes. Therefore, several frameworks and modeling methods have been developed for an integrated modeling of the entire enterprise with respect to both organizational and information systems aspects. Due to the architecture of most existing business information systems, these approaches were usually based on traditional software development paradigms rather than on object-orientation. On the other hand, object-oriented modeling methods used to cover only aspects which are close to implementation, but not the business processes. Currently, however, these two worlds are mov-ing closer together because there are several benefits using business process models during object-oriented software development. This paper describes an approach for integrating business process and object-oriented modeling methods. With this approach, it is possible to model the relevant aspects of a company’s business processes and its object-oriented information systems without the need for switching between different modeling paradigms or for trans-lating between different modeling languages.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management) Naval Postgraduate School, Sept. 2001.
Thesis advisos: Kamel, Magdi N. ; Eitelberg, Mark J. "September 2001." Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-105). Also Available online.

Utvecklingen inom informationssystem har lett till att allt fler verksamhet villdigitalisera deras arbetsprocesser. Det växande mobila användandet av EnterpriseResource Planning (ERP) på enheter såsom smartphones, tablets och handdatorer harlett till att verksamheter ställer större krav på sina system och leverantörer av dessa.Framtidens ERPsystemmåste fungera mobilt och underlätta arbetet för de anställdaistället för att vara ännu ett ITsystemsom ska lösa organisationens alla utmaningar.Denna fallstudie är gjord hos en grossistverksamhet i Skåne som var mitt iimplementationen av sitt ERPsystem,Microsoft Dynamics. Denna studie harundersökt hur arbetet med verksamhetens affärsprocesser såg ut före och underimplementationen av det nya systemet. Bakgrunden till fallstudien var att undersökaom det fanns korrelation mellan hur väl affärsprocesserna var evaluerade, anpassadeoch hur vällyckad verksamhetens ERPimplementationblev. Fallstudien villundersöka hur processmodellering och Business Process Management (BPM) kanstödja denna slags implementation av mobila ERPsystem.Verksamheten i studien är ett mellanstort säljochdistributionsföretag med kontor på4 svenska orter. Verksamheten påbörjade 2015 en digitalisering av helaorganisationen. ITsystemeti bestod då av flera olika system som anpassats underlängre tid för att integrera med varandra och dela information precis efterorganisationens önskan. Som en del av implementationen valde de att använda ettBusiness Process Modeling verktyg för att introducera och träna användarna avprocesserna i det nya systemet. Implementationsfasen i projektet började i februari2017 och i februari 2019 har verksamheten fortfarande inte fastställt ett Golivedatum.. Medeltiden för en ERPimplementationär 17,4 månader [5]. Då verksamhetenGolivedatum har flyttats räknas det nu som att verksamhetens implementation ärförsenade och över medeltiden.Arbetet med processerna före själva projektstart uppfattas som bristfälligt utifrån BPMdras slutsatsen att förseningen av “Go livedatumet”delvis beror det på att företagetoch organisationen inte har analyserat sina egna processer och har förlitat sig förmycket på att konsultbolaget och RapidValue BPM skulle sköta inlärning ochimplementationen.
The development in information systems has led to an increasing number ofbusinesses wishing to digitize their work processes. The growing mobile use ofEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems on devices such as smartphones andtablets has led businesses to place greater demands on their information systems andsuppliers of these. ERP system in the future must be able to function mobile andfacilitate the work for the employees instead of being another IT system that will solvethe organisation's all challenges.This case study was made at a wholesale company in Skåne, which was in the midstof an ERP implementation with Microsoft Dynamics. This study has investigated howthe work with business processes looked before and during the implementation of thenew system. The background to the case study was to investigate whether there wereany correlation between how well the business processes were evaluated, adapted andhow successful the business's ERP implementation was. The case study aims toinvestigate how process modeling and Business Process Management (BPM) cansupport this kind of implementation of mobile ERP systems.The activity in the study is a mediumsizedsales and distribution company withoffices in 4 Swedish locations. In 2015, the business began digitizing the entireorganization. The IT system consisted of several different systems that had beenadapted over time to fit the needs of the organisation. As part of the implementation,they chose to use a Business Process Modeling tool to introduce the system and trainthe users of the processes in the new system. The implementation phase of the projectbegan in February 2017 and in February 2019 the business still has not set a Golivedate. The average time for an ERP implementation is 17.4 months [5]. Since theGolivedate business has been moved, it is now considered that the operation'simplementation is delayed and over the average time.The work on the processes before the actual start of the project is perceived asinadequate from BPM, the conclusion is drawn that the delay of the "Go live date" ispartly due to the fact that the company and the organization have not analyzed theirown processes and have relied too much on the consulting company and RapidValueBPM to handle learning and implementation.

The main aim of this article is the solution of actual reengineering business process problem of labor intensity calculation, which is carried out at the JSC Nasosenergomash enterprise. The model of the existing process is formed in this work, which analysis allow to identify factors that reduce the effectiveness of the calculation. As a result of the research was formed a renewed model of the updated business process, without revealed faults. The technology, which will allow the reengineering business process is proposed and will lead it to the new model.

Information technology (IT) is becoming the primary factordetermining the survival of most organizations. The differenttypes of systems and the wide range of objectives suggest thatdiverse evaluation methods are needed. There is a critical needfor a new approach to managing IT investments, and solving theinformation paradox should be a business imperative for allmanagers today.

Evaluating IT investments introduces different types ofproblems that investment in traditional assets does notconsider. The focal point shifts from measuring hard andquantifiable benefits that appear on a firm’s incomestatement to measuring soft, diffuse, and qualitativeimpact.

The decision to acquire new information technology poses anumber of serious evaluation problems for managers because theavailable methods for IT investment evaluation are mostlystatic and they do not consider dynamism in decision-makingprocesses.

Common problems with the methods for evaluating ITinvestments are related to their inability to take account ofthe full range of potential benefits. There is a gap betweentheory and practice in relation to the use of any method formaking decisions and for continuous evaluation of ITinvestments.

This thesis presents a new approach to evaluating benefitsof IT investments in a dynamic way, an approach consisting of acombination of dynamic information workflow models and businessprocess simulation techniques. The proposed approach givesmanagers and organizations the possibility of implementingother models for measuring different metrics and aspects of ITinvestments.

A dynamic information workflow model of an electric utilityandsimulation essays are presented in order to show how theproposed approach is applied. The performance measure selectedfor running experiments was efficiency, which was characterizedby the following selected performance indicators: cycle time,resource utilization, and activity costs. Empirical data wascollected from case studies of different utilities in CentralAmerican countries.

Key words:Business Process Modeling and Simulation,Evaluating IT Investments, Dynamic Information Workflow Model,Electric Utilities.

Information systems development research has documented the importance and the difficulty of eliciting requirements from users. Research on the use of Group Support Systems (GSS) for requirements elicitation led to development of the Collaborative Software Engineering Methodology (CSEM) and identified the need for collaborative methods and tools to provide a dynamic picture of the business processes that a system must support. Recent research suggests that scenarios can fill this need. A review of the scenario literature showed that although there is widespread agreement on the usefulness of scenarios, there are many questions on how to implement a user-focused, scenario-based systems development process. The purpose of this research was to advance understanding in this area and to determine: What are the collaborative modeling processes, tools, and facilitation techniques needed to effectively elicit scenarios from users in a group environment? A two-phase, multi-method systems development research approach was used. The first phase focused on use of a general-purpose GSS for collaborative scenario elicitation. A conceptual framework and initial methodology were developed and then evaluated during exploratory case studies and a laboratory experiment. The second phase focused on development and evaluation of a special-purpose GSS and methodology. Phase I results showed that: users can easily define scenarios which provide rich pictures of the problem domain; an iterative, collaborative methodology with scenario and action prompts is needed to ensure scenario completeness; and limitations of general-purpose GSS negatively impacted productivity. The Collaborative Distributed Scenario and Process Analyzer (SPA) provides integrated textual scenario and graphical process modeling capabilities which successfully overcame these limitations. This research made several contributions. CSEM was extended to define scenario usage opportunities throughout development. Scenario content, form, group process and facilitation techniques were defined for collaborative scenario elicitation using a general-purpose GSS, which can be used now by practitioners. A special-purpose GSS tool (SPA) was developed and integrated into a comprehensive methodology which allows user groups to rapidly define and analyze scenarios in face-to-face and distributed settings. Finally, flexibility designed into SPA opens up opportunities for many other uses for SPA and serves as a first-step towards a build-your-own GSS tool.

The main goal of this work is to create some kind of simple methodology that can help to improve effectiveness of public organizations. There're a lot of theories and methodologies focused on this topic and there is a good chance many new ones will be presented in the future. These came mainly from management field and sometimes from other fields as well. This work focuses mainly on Business Process Reengineering and combines it with other methodologies hoping, it will help in a process improvements in the public sector. Focus is on Czech Republic but this work should be useful to other countries as well, if necessary changes are made in order to shape things that are different between the countries. In this work, a whole project cycle of the public organization processes improvement project can be found, but some project phases will be explained in more detail then the other. Focus is on the analytic parts of the project (strategy creation, use of UML, BSC and other models and methodologies like that) rather than the project management parts of the project. All the practical examples are from public sector organization -- namely the administrative office of one of the city districts of Prague. After reading this work, reader should have moderate understanding of the application of a BPR methodology in the public sector and how it can be supported by other methodologies. There is also big portion of models and diagrams in this work showing pieces of reality from chosen public organization. Their meaning is to show what is usually done in this kind of project and how to understand the models. This works goal isn't creation of a guideline to UML or any other modeling principles.

Large corporations increasingly utilize business process models for documenting and redesigning their operations. The extent of such modeling initiatives with several hundred models and dozens of often hardly trained modelers calls for automated quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can easily be checked by existing tools, there is a notable gap for checking the quality of the textual content of models, in particular, its activity labels. In this paper, we address the problem of activity label quality in business process models. We designed a technique for the recognition of labeling styles, and the automatic refactoring of labels with quality issues. More specifically, we developed a parsing algorithm that is able to deal with the shortness of activity labels, which integrates natural language tools like WordNet and the Stanford Parser. Using three business process model collections from practice with differing labeling style distributions, we demonstrate the applicability of our technique. In comparison to a straightforward application of standard natural language tools, our technique provides much more stable results. As an outcome, the technique shifts the boundary of process model quality issues that can be checked automatically from syntactic to semantic aspects.

The subject of the thesis is an process analysis in the company AiP Safe, Ltd. First, theoretical approaches and methods for organization and business process analysis are summarized. The best known modeling notations are also described. For the analysis of AiP Safe, Ltd. was chosen BSP method and for process modeling was chosen BPMN notation. The result of the work is a suggestion to establish strategic goals and strategies to achieve them, change in the organizational structure, optimization of selected processes, introduction of new metrics, introduction of new information system and recommendations based on the SWOT analysis.

This Master's thesis focuses on modeling of business processes in public administration sector. The main objective of this study is to compare the ability of selected modeling languages to capture aspects, which are typical for processes in public administration. This objective is reached by elaboration of theoretical part where the terms public administration and business process are defined. Processes are described by their typical characteristic for public government. Based on these characteristics, suitable process is chosen, ana-lyzed and modeled using selected modeling languages. Created business process diagrams are compared and the suitability of all languages is discussed. The work also discusses the importance of process modeling, relation with eGovernment and briefly summarizes the current situation in the Czech Republic and abroad, including its comparison.

Understanding of business processes is becoming an important key factor for successful businesses and today many organizations are facing the lack of knowledge about the business processes that they are working on. Since the interaction between different business processes and different actors are becoming more common it is not only enough for employees to have knowledge about the business processes that they involve directly, but also they need to know about the other business processes in the organization. Unfortunately there is not enough research on this topic in the literature and the goal of this thesis is to propose a method for solving the indicated problem by increasing the understanding of business processes by the employees in an organization. The proposed method basically contains the design and execution of process models based on a real scenario. A case study has been conducted at an IT company where the employees have no or limited knowledge about the business processes that their organization works on. Even though the method has been only tested in one organization it is generic and can be applied to any other similar organization. The design science approach is used to develop the method and build the process models as artifacts. The process models have been verified by using an executable business modeling tool, iPB, and presented to the employees in a seminar in order to make them to understand the business processes better. The knowledge of the employees about the business processes has been analyzed before and after the presentation, thus we could compare the results and find out how much their knowledge has increased after the presentation. The results have shown that the knowledge of the employees has increased significantly. In conclusion, the method of design and presentation of executable business process models has been proved to be a solution to the problem of not understanding of business processes in an organization well enough.

La problématique scientifique abordée correspond à la modélisation et à l'amélioration des processus métiers. Ce problème est d'un intérêt croissant pour les entreprises qui prennent conscience de l'impact indéniable que peuvent avoir une meilleure compréhension et une meilleure gestion des processus métiers (PM) sur l'efficacité, la cohérence et la transparence de leurs activités. Le travail envisagé dans le cadre de la thèse vise à proposer une méthode et un outil pour mesurer et améliorer la qualité des modèles de processus métier. L’originalité de l’approche est qu’elle vise non seulement la qualité syntaxique mais aussi la qualité sémantique et pragmatique en s’appuyant notamment sur les connaissances du domaine
In recent years the problems related to modeling and improving business processes have been of growing interest. Indeed, companies are realizing the undeniable impact of a better understanding and management of business processes (BP) on the effectiveness, consistency, and transparency of their business operations. BP modeling aims at a better understanding of processes, allowing deciders to achieve strategic goals of the company. However, inexperienced systems analysts often lack domain knowledge leading and this affects the quality of models they produce.Our approach targets the problem related to business process modeling quality by proposing an approach encompassing methods and tools for business process (BP) models quality measurement and improvement. We propose to support this modeling effort with an approach that uses domain knowledge to improve the semantic quality of BP models.The main contribution of this thesis is fourfold:1. Exploiting the IS domain knowledge: A business process metamodel is identified.Semantics are added to the metamodel by the mean of OCL constraints.2. Exploiting the application domain knowledge. It relies on domain ontologies. Alignment between the concepts of both metamodels is defined and illustrated.3. Designing of the guided quality process encompassing methods and techniques to evaluate and improve the business process models. Our process propose many quality constraints and metrics in order to evaluat the quality of the models and finally the process propose relevant recommendations for improvement.4. Development of a software prototype “BPM-Quality”. Our prototype implements all theabove mentioned artifacts and proposes a workflow enabling its users to evaluate andimprove CMs efficiently and effectively.We conducted a survey to validate the selection of the quality constraints through a first experience and also conducted a second experiment to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of our overall approach and proposed improvements