Specification and verification of harmonized business-process collaborations

In the area of business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are confronted with the problem of spending a considerable time and effort on coordinating suppliers across multiple tiers of their supply chains. By supporting inter-organizational business-process collaborations with service-oriented technology, a scope for more efficient and effective supply-chain coordination is anticipated. This paper defines a formal framework, called eSourcing, for specifying structurally harmonized inter-organizational business-process collaborations. The framework permits verification of harmonized processes before their enactment. Moreover, the framework uses private and public layers to protect competitive knowledge of the individual partners. In the research project CrossWork, the eSourcing framework has been integral for harmonizing on an external level the intra-organizational business processes of a service-consuming and one or many service-providing organizations.     

Using intentional fragments to bridge the gap between organizational and intentional levels

ContextBusiness process models provide a natural way to describe real-world processes to be supported by software-intensive systems. These models can be used to analyze processes in the system-as-is and describe potential improvements for the system-to-be. But, how well does a given business process model satisfy its business goals? How can different perspectives be integrated in order to describe an inter-organizational process?ObjectiveThe aim of the present paper is to link the local and the global perspectives of the inter-organizational business process defined in BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation) to KAOS goal models (Keep All Objectives Satisfied). We maintain a separation of concerns between the intentional level captured by the goal model and the organizational level captured by the process model. The paper presents the concept of intentional fragment (a set of flow elements of the process with a common purpose) and assess its usefulness.MethodWe conducted empirical experiments where the proposed concepts – here the intentional fragments – are validated by users. Our method relies on an iterative improvement process led by users feedback.ResultsWe find that the concept of intentional fragment is useful for (1) analyzing the business process model (2) reasoning about the relations between the goal model and the business process model and (3) identifying new goals. In a previous work we focused on BPMN 2.0 collaboration models (local view). This paper extends the previous work by integrating the global view given by choreography models in the approach.ConclusionWe conclude that the notion of intentional fragment is a useful mean to relate business process models and goal models while dealing with their different nature (activity oriented vs goal oriented). Intentional fragments can also be used to analyze the process model and to infer new goals in an iterative manner.     

Automating data exchange in process choreographies

Communication between organizations is formalized as process choreographies in daily business. While the correct ordering of exchanged messages can be modeled and enacted with current choreography techniques, no approach exists to describe and automate the exchange of data between processes in a choreography using messages. This paper describes an entirely model-driven approach for BPMN introducing a few concepts that suffice to model data retrieval, data transformation, message exchange, and correlation – four aspects of data exchange. For automation, this work utilizes a recent concept to enact data dependencies in internal processes. We present a modeling guideline to derive local process models from a given choreography; their operational semantics allows to correctly enact the entire choreography from the derived models only including the exchange of data. Targeting on successful interactions, we discuss means to ensure correct process choreography modeling. Finally, we implemented our approach by extending the camunda BPM platform with our approach and show its feasibility by realizing all service interaction patterns using only model-based concepts.     

A methodology and tool environment for process analysis and reengineering

Most private and public organizations have recently turned their attention to the process by which they operate, to improve service and product quality and customer satisfaction. To support business process reengineering, methods and tools for process modeling and analysis are required. The paper presents the ARTEMIS methodology and associated tool environment for business process analysis for reengineering. In the ARTEMIS methodological framework, business processes are modeled as workflows and are analyzed according to an organizational structure perspective and an operational structure perspective. With these two perspectives, the analyst can plan reengineering interventions based on the degree of autonomy/dependency of organization units in terms of coupling, and the inter-process semantic correspondences, in terms of data and operation similarity, respectively. The ARTEMIS methodology and associated tool environment have been conceived and applied in the framework of the PROGRESS research project. In the paper, we report on a reengineering case study of this project involving the Italian Ministry of Justice.     

基于Pi-Calculus的跨组织工作流建模方法*

针对跨组织协同环境下的业务流程建模技术的不足,提出了一个新的用于跨组织业务流程的形式化建模方法。首先根据工作流管理联盟（WfMC）的有关工作流过程定义接口规范,利用PiCalculus技术对跨组织业务流程结构进行了形式化定义。此外,利用PiCalculus特有机制对并发流程及其之间的通信进行描述。提出的方法可以有效用于不同业务流程间的协同工作,并且适合于对分布式协同环境下的工作流进行建模。     

结合公共视图和对象Petri网的跨组织流程建模

组织间协同的信息流以及每个参与组织的自治性是跨组织协同的两个要素。结合跨组织工作流建模与对象网之间的相似性,提出了一种基于公共视图和对象Petri网的跨组织工作流建模方法。组织的公共视图隐藏了内部流程细节,是原流程中仅与合作伙伴相关的活动在外部的投影。通过组合各参与组织的公共视图得到了跨组织协同的信息流网结构,利用对象网的交互集建立了组织内部流程与通信结构的同步关系。通过一个建模实例阐述了该方法的有效性。     

Ensuring reliability in B2B services: Fault tolerant inter-organizational workflows

In the age of Business-to-Business (B2B) collaboration, ensuring reliability of workflows underlying inter-organizational business processes is of significant importance. There are, however, quite a few challenges towards achieving seamless operation. Such challenges arise from heterogeneity in infrastructure and coordination mechanism at participant organizations, as well as time and cost associated with recovery from failure. Our research presents foundations for a reliable scheme for recovery from failure of workflow processes spanning through multiple business entities. First, a system model is adapted from the mobile computing literature that serves to establish the requirements to be enforced by each participating organization. In our model, we adopt the Maximal Sequence Path (MSP) approach from Yoo et al. (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2132:222–236, 2001), as a means of decomposing workflows into mobile agent-driven processes that communicate via web services at each organization. This decomposition ensures defining logical points within the dynamics of a workflow instance for locating accurate and consistent states of the system for recovery in case of a failure. Then, a set of algorithms for various business scenarios are developed and presented as practical solutions. These algorithms are shown to create checkpoints such that the system is always in a globally consistent state. As such, these algorithms constitute a set of standards that can be incorporated in business process management suites that support reliable inter-organizational collaboration.     

Automating correctness verification of artifact-centric business process models

ContextThe artifact-centric methodology has emerged as a new paradigm to support business process management over the last few years. This way, business processes are described from the point of view of the artifacts that are manipulated during the process.ObjectiveOne of the research challenges in this area is the verification of the correctness of this kind of business process models where the model is formed of various artifacts that interact among them.MethodIn this paper, we propose a fully automated approach for verifying correctness of artifact-centric business process models, taking into account that the state (lifecycle) and the values of each artifact (numerical data described by pre and postconditions) influence in the values and the state of the others. The lifecycles of the artifacts and the numerical data managed are modeled by using the Constraint Programming paradigm, an Artificial Intelligence technique.ResultsTwo correctness notions for artifact-centric business process models are distinguished (reachability and weak termination), and novel verification algorithms are developed to check them. The algorithms are complete: neither false positives nor false negatives are generated. Moreover, the algorithms offer precise diagnosis of the detected errors, indicating the execution causing the error where the lifecycle gets stuck.ConclusionTo the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first verification approach for artifact-centric business process models that integrates pre and postconditions, which define the behavior of the services, and numerical data verification when the model is formed of more than one artifact. The approach can detect errors not detectable with other approaches.     

业务过程协同中数据恢复策略建模及分析

业务过程协同允许组织之间彼此进行通信,交互和协作以完成特定的业务目标。为了确保实施的正确性和一致性,需要对业务过程协同进行建模和分析,但现有的工作鲜有关注于从架构的视角和数据的层次来对其进行讨论。为此,首先提出了一种“代理端 盟主端”业务过程协同架构;其次,通过对该协同架构进行分析,提出了一种业务过程协同的数据恢复通用模型;最后,基于该通用模型,提出了数据恢复策略模型,以此为基础提出了五种数据恢复策略并采用随机Petri网对其进行建模与仿真。实验结果表明,采用最短队列随机恢复策略能够使得业务过程协同应用在协同中确保高的系统吞吐量、快的响应时间及低的拒绝率。     

基于Pi演算的跨组织工作流建模研究

传统的工作流建模方法主要用于描述组织内部流程,因而难以描述跨组织工作流面向流程、组合、抽象、涉及多个自治系统通信合作的新特点.针对此问题,提出了一种基于Pi演算的跨组织工作流建模方法,利用Pi演算的并发计算操作符,将跨组织业务流程建模为一组自治且并发执行的组织内子流程的组合,子流程建模为组织内本地流程定义和组织间控制约束的组合.基于Pi演算的弱互相似理论,验证了两个跨组织子流程外部行为的相等性,用于帮助组织内私有流程的外部抽象.基于该方法建立的跨组织工作流模型在子流程间建立了一种松耦合的关系,适用于动态的跨组织环境,同时基于严格的形式化方法,便于分析和验证.     

Aligning Collaborative Business Processes—An Organization-Oriented Perspective

Business collaboration encompasses the coordination of information flows among organizations as well as the composition of their business processes toward mutual benefits. While integrating business processes of different organizations seamlessly, it brings great challenges to keep participating organizations as autonomous entities. To address this issue, we propose a new perspective on modeling collaborative business processes with a novel concept called relative workflow (RWF). With its visibility control mechanism, the RWF model defines what a participating organization can perceive in collaboration and thereby allows each organization to customize its own collaboration process and behaviors. In this paper, we present a formal definition of RWFs and related algorithms for generating RWFs. A prototype is implemented on the Web service platform for the proof-of-concept purpose.     

Inter-organizational innovation and cloud computing

Firms are increasingly shifting from the ‘closed’ innovation paradigm, in which their innovation design and implementation activities were based on their own internal knowledge resources, skills and production facilities, towards the inter-organizational ‘open’ innovation paradigm, which is based to a significant degree on collaboration with other organizations, aiming at the exploitation of external knowledge resources, skills and production facilities as well. This paper investigates empirically the effects of firm’s inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovations, and also use of ICT for supporting this collaboration, on firm’s propensity to adopt cloud computing (CC), and in this way it examines in an ‘objective’ manner to what extent firms regard CC as a cost-effective means of supporting inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovation. Our study is based on a dataset collected in the e-Business Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement manufacturing sectors. It has been concluded that firms of these sectors regard CC as a cost-effective means of supporting collaboration with other firms for the design of innovations in their products, services and processes, and also of reducing the costs and increasing the capabilities and flexibility of already existing electronic support of inter-organizational innovation design collaboration. Furthermore, our results indicate that firms find CC useful for the reduction of the costs and the increase of the capabilities and flexibility of their existing electronic support of the complex operations required for the inter-organizational implementation of innovations.     

Evaluation of inter-organizational business process solutions: A conceptual model-based approach

Collaboration and coordination between organizations are necessary in today’s business environment, and are enabled by inter-organizational processes. Many approaches for the construction of such processes have been proposed in recent years. However, due to the lack of standard terminology it is hard to evaluate and select a solution that fits a specific business scenario. The paper proposes a conceptual model which depicts the nature of interaction between organizations through business processes under specific business requirements that emphasize the privacy and autonomy of the participating organizations. The model is generic, and relies on the generic process model (GPM) framework and on Bunge’s ontology. Being generic and theory-based, we propose to use the model as a basis for comparing and evaluating design and implementation-level approaches for inter-organizational processes. We demonstrate the evaluation procedure by applying it to three existing approaches.

Compliance by design for artifact-centric business processes

Compliance to legal regulations, internal policies, or best practices is becoming a more and more important aspect in business processes management. Compliance requirements are usually formulated in a set of rules that can be checked during or after the execution of the business process, called compliance by detection. If noncompliant behavior is detected, the business process needs to be redesigned. Alternatively, the rules can be already taken into account while modeling the business process to result in a business process that is compliant by design. This technique has the advantage that a subsequent verification of compliance is not required.     

Secure E-Commerce: Understanding the Public Key Cryptography Jigsaw Puzzle

Abstract

Today almost all organizations use the Internet extensively for both intra- and inter-organizational communications. The Internet is also the exclusive vehicle for E-commerce transactions involving customers and other business partners. This eliminates the significant infrastructure costs of private data communications networks and enables even small companies to participate in E-commerce. However, extensive use of public media for transferring sensitive data poses serious security challenges.     

From inter-organizational business process models to service-oriented architecture models

Today’s business processes become increasingly complex and often cross the boundaries of the organizations. On the one hand, to support their business processes, modern organizations use enterprise information systems that need to be aware of the organizations’ processes and contexts. Such systems are called Process-Aware Information System (PAIS). On the other hand, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a fast emerging architectural style that has been widely adopted by modern organizations to design and implement PAIS that support their business processes. This paper aims to bridge the gap between inter-organizational business processes and SOA-based PAISs that support them. It proposes a novel model-driven design method that generates SOA models expressed in SoaML taking the specification of collaborative business processes expressed in BPMN as input. We present the principles underlying the approach, the state of an ongoing implementation, and the results of two studies conducted to empirically validate the method in the context of ERP key processes.     

Taking value-networks to the cloud services: security services, semantics and service level agreements

Cloud services have become an emerging solution for organizations striving to address today’s need for agility, but little research has addressed transitioning multiple, collaborating organizations to what can be referred to as a “value-network cloud.” We know that organizations adopting cloud services to execute business processes must concomitantly reconfigure their security solutions for their integrated intra- and inter-organizational collaborations. We address the question, “What is needed to make it possible for an entire value-network to take secure, collaborative business process executions to the cloud?” Future value-network cloud solutions will require completely new security approaches that will leverage contracted brokering solutions operating as part of the cloud solution. We view value-network cloud security service provisioning as a bundle decision characterized by a mix of communication patterns relevant to intra- and inter-enterprise collaboration. We propose a cloud service broker model—using semantics and SLA based middleware—to serve as a trusted interface between the enterprise, cloud service providers and other organizations collaborating in a value-network. The approach enables IT governance for value-network cloud services. The architectural requirements adapt design principles for infrastructure management tailored from approaches to how business cartels historically conducted secure business dealings.     

一种跨边界业务过程集成平台

针对分布式异构环境下业务过程集成效率低、动态性差等问题,文章提出了一种跨边界业务过程集成模型,通过将跨边界业务过程集成模型构建为包含业务过程层、自治域内业务过程集成层以及跨边界业务过程集成层三个层次的层次模型,将每层问题简化,并通过层次间的紧密耦合解决复杂的实际问题。基于层次模型构建基于WebService的业务过程集成平台的体系结构,并利用业务过程动态协商技术,动态选择可提供个性化服务的服务提供者,按照合作双方协商结果进行实际业务过程集成,以提高跨边界业务过程集成的效率和动态适应能力。     

Discovery and analysis of e-mail-driven business processes

E-mail is used as the primary tool for business communication and collaboration. This paper presents a novel e-mail interaction mining method to discover and analyze e-mail-driven business processes. An e-mail-driven business process is perceived as a human collaboration process that consists of interactions between people who may each play different roles. The notion of message threads (i.e. sets of e-mail messages that are replies to each other) is used as the fundamental building block to construct the interactions in the e-mail-driven business process. The proposed method adopts an interaction-centric business process modeling language to visualize the discovered e-mail-driven business process. The method identifies message threads from an e-mail archive, and constructs an interaction-centric process model based on the temporal order and similarity of the threads. Process-related information is extracted from e-mail header fields. A software tool, named E-mail Interaction Miner, implements the proposed method. A case study is used to apply and evaluate the method on a set of e-mails collected from a Dutch gas transport company. The evaluation results are discussed. These results comprise business process improvement opportunities for the case organization, and contributions to theory and language development.     

Plural: A decentralized business process modeling method

Top-down and centralized approaches prevail in the design and improvement of business processes. However, centralized structures pose difficulties for organizations in adapting to a rapidly changing business environment. Here we present the Plural method which can be used to guide organizations in performing process modeling in a decentralized way. Instead of a centralized group of people understanding, modeling and improving processes, our method allows individuals to model and improve their own processes to help in fulfilling their roles in the organization. An individual model depicts a set of activities performed by a role, which together result in a cohesive service within the organization. These individual models are then integrated as necessary to show the way the organization works. We applied the Plural method in a case study of a small-size software organization. We describe the method and its underlying principles and then discuss the findings of our case study, lessons learned, and limitations. The study thus provided evidence of Plural's utility and showed how an organization might exploit its strengths.