BPMN Miner: Automated discovery of BPMN process models with hierarchical structure

Existing techniques for automated discovery of process models from event logs generally produce flat process models. Thus, they fail to exploit the notion of subprocess as well as error handling and repetition constructs provided by contemporary process modeling notations, such as the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). This paper presents a technique, namely BPMN Miner, for automated discovery of hierarchical BPMN models containing interrupting and non-interrupting boundary events and activity markers. The technique employs approximate functional and inclusion dependency discovery techniques in order to elicit a process–subprocess hierarchy from the event log. Given this hierarchy and the projected logs associated to each node in the hierarchy, parent process and subprocess models are discovered using existing techniques for flat process model discovery. Finally, the resulting models and logs are heuristically analyzed in order to identify boundary events and markers. By employing approximate dependency discovery techniques, BPMN Miner is able to detect and filter out noise in the event log arising for example from data entry errors, missing event records or infrequent behavior. Noise is detected during the construction of the subprocess hierarchy and filtered out via heuristics at the lowest possible level of granularity in the hierarchy. A validation with one synthetic and two real-life logs shows that process models derived by the proposed technique are more accurate and less complex than those derived with flat process discovery techniques. Meanwhile, a validation on a family of synthetically generated logs shows that the technique is resilient to varying levels of noise.     

BPMN改进MVC建模的研究

介绍了业务流程研究的最新成果和对企业级应用集成的意义,分析了MVC实际应用中的缺陷,MVC和BPMN(Business Process Modeling Notation)在机理上的可衔接性,从而提出用BPMN辅助MVC建模,使基于MVC模型的应用结构更趋合理,并且更容易实现EAI.     

BPMN: An introduction to the standard

The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the de-facto standard for representing in a very expressive graphical way the processes occurring in virtually every kind of organization one can think of, from cuisine recipes to the Nobel Prize assignment process, incident management, e-mail voting systems, travel booking procedures, to name a few. In this work, we give an overview of BPMN and we present what are the links with other well-known machineries such as BPEL and XPDL. We give an assessment of how the OMG's BPMN standard is perceived and used by practitioners in everyday business process modeling chores.     

建模语言DSC和BPMN的对比分析

业务流程建模是业务流程管理(Business Process Management,BPM)中最为重要的环节,一个好的建模语言对业务流程的建模和开发起到非常关键的作用。各具特色的业务过程建模语言不断出现,对语言的研究、分析和比较已经成为流程设计与流程实现之间的一个重要问题。介绍了一种新的业务流程建模语言DSC(Dynamic SystemChart),并将DSC和目前比较流行的建模语言BPMN(Business Process Modeling Notation)做了比较分析。     

A modular approach to the specification and management of time duration constraints in BPMN

The modeling and management of business processes deals with temporal aspects both in the inherent representation of activity coordination and in the specification of activity properties and constraints. In this paper, we address the modeling and specification of constraints related to the duration of process activities. In detail, we consider the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard and propose an approach to define re-usable duration-aware process models that make use of existing BPMN elements for representing different nuances of activity duration at design time. Moreover, we show how advanced event-handling techniques may be exploited for detecting the violation of duration constraints during the process run-time. The set of process models specified in this paper suitably captures duration constraints at different levels of abstraction, by allowing designers to specify the duration of atomic tasks and of selected process regions in a way that is conceptually and semantically BPMN-compliant. Without loss of generality, we refer to real-world clinical working environments to exemplify our approach, as their intrinsic complexity makes them a particularly challenging and rewarding application environment.     

BPMNt: A BPMN extension for specifying software process tailoring

ContextAlthough SPEM 2.0 has great potential for software process modeling, it does not provide concepts or formalisms for precise modeling of process behavior. Indeed, SPEM fails to address process simulation, execution, monitoring and analysis, which are important activities in process management. On the other hand, BPMN 2.0 is a widely used notation to model business processes that has associated tools and techniques to facilitate the aforementioned process management activities. Using BPMN to model software development processes can leverage BPMN’s infrastructure to improve the quality of these processes. However, BPMN lacks an important feature to model software processes: a mechanism to represent process tailoring.ObjectiveThis paper proposes BPMNt, a conservative extension to BPMN that aims at creating a tailoring representation mechanism similar to the one found in SPEM 2.0.MethodWe have used the BPMN 2.0 extensibility mechanism to include the representation of specific tailoring relationships namely suppression, local contribution, and local replacement, which establish links between process elements (such as in the case of SPEM). Moreover, this paper also presents some rules to ensure the consistency of BPMN models when using tailoring relationships.ResultsIn order to evaluate our proposal we have implemented a tool to support the BPMNt approach and have applied it for representing real process adaptations in the context of an academic management system development project. Results of this study showed that the approach and its support tool can successfully be used to adapt BPMN-based software processes in real scenarios.ConclusionWe have proposed an approach to enable reuse and adaptation of BPMN-based software process models as well as derivation traceability between models through tailoring relationships. We believe that bringing such capabilities into BPMN will open new perspectives to software process management.     

基于Pi演算的BPMN编排模式

针对业务流程建模标记（BPMN）无法依靠自身对编排进行形式化分析的问题,提出用Pi演算描述BPMN编排模式,实现对BPMN编排的描述。BPMN编排模式是服务交互模式的BPMN表达。实验结果表明,该方法能够找到并排除BPMN编排中的死锁。     

From fine-grained to abstract process models: A semantic approach

Organizations actively managing their business processes face a rapid growth of the number of process models that they maintain. Business process model abstraction has proven to be an effective means to generate readable, high-level views on business process models by showing coarse-grained activities and leaving out irrelevant details. In this way, abstraction facilitates a more efficient management of process models, as a single model can provide for many relevant views. Yet, it is an open question how to perform abstraction in the same skillful way as experienced modelers combine activities into more abstract tasks. This paper presents an approach that uses semantic information of a process model to decide on which activities belong together, which extends beyond existing approaches that merely exploit model structural characteristics. The contribution of this paper is twofold: we propose a novel activity aggregation method and suggest how to discover the activity aggregation habits of human modelers. In an experimental validation, we use an industrial process model repository to compare the developed activity aggregation method with actual modeling decisions, and observe a strong correlation between the two. The presented work is expected to contribute to the development of modeling support for the effective process model abstraction.     

基于结构化定理的BPMN结构化方法

在基于标准模型驱动业务流程的开发环境中,需要把模型转换为代码。该文提出一种新的基于结构化定理的解决方法,把业务过程建模符号的非结构化程序转化为结构化程序,并通过一个实际案例说明其可行性。实验结果表明,该方法是有效的。     

BPMN到BPEL2.0的模型转换方法

随着WSBPEL2.0规范标准的提出,现有的BPMN到BPEL的组件转换方法已不再适用。为了适应BPEL的变化,对组件的转换进行改动和扩展,对错误处理活动在语义上提供支持,并且提供了显式的事务特性支持。这种设计已经在中国科学院软件研究所软件工程中心研制的OnceBPD建模工具中得到实现,并在实际运用中检验了其可用性。     

BPMN 2.0过程模型的语义和分析

BPMN 2.0已成为了建模业务过程事实上的标准。BPMN 2.0过程模型中建模元素的混用会产生控制流方面的语义错误。首先,建立了BPMN 2.0过程模型到工作流网的映射,并使用Petri网来形式定义过程模型的语义;其次,借助Petri网的分析技术,使用这种定义的语义对BPMN 2.0过程模型进行了合理性分析。实验结果表明,这种形式化可以识别BPMN 2.0过程模型中的语义错误。     

Developing a decision model for business process outsourcing

Information technology (IT) outsourcing has been one of the critical issues in organization management. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is an advanced type of IT outsourcing, which will be the next big wave in information technology services. Nevertheless, since prior studies have only examined issues related to traditional IS outsourcing, there have been few researches that introduce and discuss the important factors that should be considered in the decision of BPO adoption. This paper identifies factors affecting the BPO decision and structures a decision model using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method.By proposing a quantitative decision model, this paper will not only assist management in making better decisions in outsourcing their business processes, but also help them to obtain the most benefits from BPO.     

From event streams to process models and back: Challenges and opportunities

The domains of complex event processing (CEP) and business process management (BPM) have different origins but for many aspects draw on similar concepts. While specific combinations of BPM and CEP have attracted research attention, resulting in solutions to specific problems, we attempt to take a broad view at the opportunities and challenges involved. We first illustrate these by a detailed example from the logistics domain. We then propose a mapping of this area into four quadrants — - two quadrants drawing from CEP to create or extend process models and two quadrants starting from a process model to address how it can guide CEP. Existing literature is reviewed and specific challenges and opportunities are indicated for each of these quadrants. Based on this mapping, we identify challenges and opportunities that recur across quadrants and can be considered as the core issues of this combination. We suggest that addressing these issues in a generic manner would form a sound basis for future applications and advance this area significantly.     

Syntax highlighting in business process models

Sense-making of process models is an important task in various phases of business process management initiatives. Despite this, there is currently hardly any support in business process modeling tools to adequately support model comprehension. In this paper we adapt the concept of syntax highlighting to workflow nets, a modeling technique that is frequently used for business process modeling. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we establish a theoretical argument to what extent highlighting could improve comprehension. Second, we formalize a concept for syntax highlighting in workflow nets and present a prototypical implementation with the WoPeD modeling tool. Third, we report on the results of an experiment that tests the hypothetical benefits of highlighting for comprehension. Our work can easily be transferred to other process modeling tools and other process modeling techniques.     

Analysis and improvement of business process models using spreadsheets

Software in general is thoroughly analyzed before it is released to its users. Business processes often are not – at least not as thoroughly as it could be – before they are released to their users, e.g., employees or software agents. This paper ascribes this practice to the lack of suitable instruments for business process analysts, who design the processes, and aims to provide them with the necessary instruments to allow them to also analyze their processes. We use the spreadsheet paradigm to represent business process analysis tasks, such as writing metrics and assertions, running performance analysis and verification tasks, and reporting on the outcomes, and implement a spreadsheet-based tool for business process analysis. The results of two independent user studies demonstrate the viability of the approach.     

Configurable multi-perspective business process models

A configurable process model provides a consolidated view of a family of business processes. It promotes the reuse of proven practices by providing analysts with a generic modeling artifact from which to derive individual process models. Unfortunately, the scope of existing notations for configurable process modeling is restricted, thus hindering their applicability. Specifically, these notations focus on capturing tasks and control-flow dependencies, neglecting equally important ingredients of business processes such as data and resources. This research fills this gap by proposing a configurable process modeling notation incorporating features for capturing resources, data and physical objects involved in the performance of tasks. The proposal has been implemented in a toolset that assists analysts during the configuration phase and guarantees the correctness of the resulting process models. The approach has been validated by means of a case study from the film industry.     

BPMN映射到BPEL4WS的模型边界确定方法

针对BPMN边界灵活的特点以及由此向BPEL4WS映射时带来的问题,提出利用概念化令牌作为中间元素,将BPMN边界至BPEL4WS边界的映射转化成两个步骤,解决BPMN向BPEL4WS映射时的边界确定问题。     

Workflow simulation for operational decision support using event graph through process mining

It is increasingly common to see computer-based simulation being used as a vehicle to model and analyze business processes in relation to process management and improvement. While there are a number of business process management (BPM) and business process simulation (BPS) methodologies, approaches and tools available, it is more desirable to have a systemic BPS approach for operational decision support, from constructing process models based on historical data to simulating processes for typical and common problems. In this paper, we have proposed a generic approach of BPS for operational decision support which includes business processes modeling and workflow simulation with the models generated. Processes are modeled with event graphs through process mining from workflow logs that have integrated comprehensive information about the control-flow, data and resource aspects of a business process. A case study of a credit card application is presented to illustrate the steps involved in constructing an event graph. The evaluation detail is also given in terms of precision, generalization and robustness. Based on the event graph model constructed, we simulate the process under different scenarios and analyze the simulation logs for three generic problems in the case study: 1) suitable resource allocation plan for different case arrival rates; 2) teamwork performance under different case arrival rates; and 3) evaluation and prediction for personal performances. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach is able to model business processes using event graphs and simulate the processes for common operational decision support which collectively play an important role in process management and improvement.     

Minimizing test-point allocation to improve diagnosability in business process models

Diagnosability analysis aims to determine whether observations available during the execution of a system are sufficient to precisely locate the source of a problem. Previous work deals with the diagnosability problem in contexts such as circuits and systems, but no with the adaptation of the diagnosability problem to business processes. In order to improve the diagnosability, a set of test points needs to be allocated. Therefore, the aim of this contribution is to determine a test-point allocation to obtain sufficient observable data in the dataflow to allow the discrimination of faults for a later diagnosis process. The allocation of test points depends on the strategies of the companies, for this reason we defined two possibilities: to improve the diagnosability of a business process for a fixed number of test points and the minimization of the number of test points for a given level of diagnosability. Both strategies have been implemented in the Test-Point Allocator tool in order to facilitate the integration of the test points in the business process model life cycle. Experimental results indicate that diagnosability of business processes can be improved by allocating test points in an acceptable time.     

Improving process models by discovering decision points

Workflow management systems (WfMS) are widely used by business enterprises as tools for administrating, automating and scheduling the business process activities with the available resources. Since the control flow specifications of workflows are manually designed, they entail assumptions and errors, leading to inaccurate workflow models. Decision points, the XOR nodes in a workflow graph model, determine the path chosen toward completion of any process invocation. In this work, we show that positioning the decision points at their earliest points can improve process efficiency by decreasing their uncertainties and identifying redundant activities. We present novel techniques to discover the earliest positions by analyzing workflow logs and to transform the model graph. The experimental results show that the transformed model is more efficient with respect to its average execution time and uncertainty, when compared to the original model.