Enabling Flexibility In Process Aware Information Systems

In today’s dynamic business world, the success of a company increasingly depends on its ability to react to changes in its environment in a quick and flexible way. Companies have therefore identified process agility as a competitive advantage to address business trends like increasing product and service variability or faster time to market, and to ensure business IT alignment. Along this trend, a new generation of information systems has emerged—so-called process-aware information systems (PAIS), like workflow management systems, case handling tools, and service orchestration engines. With this book, Reichert and Weber address these flexibility needs and provide an overview of PAIS with a strong focus on methods and technologies fostering flexibility for all phases of the process lifecycle (i.e., modeling, configuration, execution and evolution). Their presentation is divided into six parts. Part I starts with an introduction of fundamental PAIS concepts and establishes the context of process flexibility in the light of practical scenarios. Part II focuses on flexibility support for pre-specified processes, the currently predominant paradigm in the field of business process management (BPM). Part III details flexibility support for loosely specified processes, which only partially specify the process model at build-time, while decisions regarding the exact specification of certain model parts are deferred to the run-time. Part IV deals with user- and data-driven processes, which aim at a tight integration of processes and data, and hence enable an increased flexibility compared to traditional PAIS. Part V introduces existing technologies and systems for the realization of a flexible PAIS. Finally, Part VI summarizes the main ideas of this book and gives an outlook on advanced flexibility issues. The book’s target groups include researchers, PhD students and Master students in the field of information systems. After reading the book, they will better understand PAIS flexibility aspects. To support the easy use as a textbook, a series of exercises is provided at the end of each chapter and slides and further teaching material are available on the book’s web site www.flexible-processes.com. Professionals specializing in business process management (BPM) who want to obtain a good understanding of flexibility challenges in BPM and state-of-the-art solutions will also benefit from the presentations of open source as well as commercial process management systems and related practical scenarios.

This book provides a state-of-the-art perspective on intelligent process-aware information systems and presents chapters on specific facets and approaches applicable to such systems. Further, it highlights novel advances and developments in various aspects of intelligent process-aware information systems and business process management systems. Intelligence capabilities are increasingly being integrated into or created in many of today’s software products and services. Process-aware information systems provide critical computing infrastructure to support the various processes involved in the creation and delivery of business products and services. Yet the integration of intelligence capabilities into process-aware information systems is a non-trivial yet necessary evolution of these complex systems. The book’s individual chapters address adaptive process management, case management processes, autonomically-capable processes, process-oriented information logistics, process recommendations, reasoning over process models, process portability, and business process intelligence. The primary target groups are researchers and PhD/Master students in the field of information systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management in Mediterranean Countries, ISCRAM-med 2016, held in Madrid, Spain, in October 2016. Information systems and technologies can play a key role in crisis management in order to support preparation, response, mitigation and recovery processes. Yet technology is not enough to guarantee a better management process, and therefore the conference does not only focus on engineering technologies, but also on their application and practical experiences. The 12 full and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on mobile apps for citizens, modeling and simulation, development of information systems, information and knowledge management, collaboration and coordination, social computing, and issues in humanitarian crisis.

A unifying foundation to design and implement process-aware information systems This publication takes on the formidable task of establishing a unifying foundation and set of common underlying principles to effectively model, design, and implement process-aware information systems. Authored by leading authorities and pioneers in the field, Process-Aware Information Systems helps readers gain a thorough understanding of major concepts, languages, and techniques for building process-aware applications, including: * UML and EPCs: two of the most widely used notations for business process modeling * Concrete techniques for process design and analysis * Process execution standards: WfMC and BPEL * Representative commercial tools: ARIS, TIBCO Staffware, and FLOWer Each chapter begins with a description of the problem domain and then progressively unveils relevant concepts and techniques. Examples and illustrations are used extensively to clarify and simplify complex material. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises, ranging from simple questions to thought-provoking assignments. Sample solutions for many of the exercises are available on the companion Web site. Armed with a new and deeper understanding, readers are better positioned to make their own contributions to the field and evaluate various approaches to a particular task or problem. This publication is recommended as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in computer science and information systems, as well as for professionals involved in workflow and business process management, groupware and teamwork, enterprise application integration, and business-to-business integration. A Solution's Manual is available online. An Instructor Support FTP site is also available.

In 2013, the International Conference on Advance Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE) turns 25. Initially launched in 1989, for all these years the conference has provided a broad forum for researchers working in the area of Information Systems Engineering. To reflect on the work done so far and to examine prospects for future work, the CAiSE Steering Committee decided to present a selection of seminal papers published for the conference during these years and to ask their authors, all prominent researchers in the field, to comment on their work and how it has developed over the years. The scope of the papers selected covers a broad range of topics related to modeling and designing information systems, collecting and managing requirements, and with special attention to how information systems are engineered towards their final development and deployment as software components. With this approach, the book provides not only a historical analysis on how information systems engineering evolved over the years, but also a fascinating social network analysis of the research community. Additionally, many inspiring ideas for future research and new perspectives in this area are sparked by the intriguing comments of the renowned authors.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of ten international workshops held in Innsbruck, Austria, in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Business Process Management, BPM 2015, in September 2015. The seven workshops comprised Adaptive Case Management and other Non-workflow Approaches to BPM (AdaptiveCM 2015), Business Process Intelligence (BPI 2015), Social and Human Aspects of Business Process Management (BPMS2 2015), Data- and Artifact-centric BPM (DAB 2015), Decision Mining and Modeling for Business Processes (DeMiMoP 2015), Process Engineering (IWPE 2015), and Theory and Applications of Process Visualization (TaProViz 2015). The 42 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 104 submissions. In addition, four short papers and one keynote (from TAProViz) are also included in this book.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 10th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, WEBIST 2014, held in Barcelona, Spain, April 2014, organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC), and technically sponsored by the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). The purpose of the WEBIST series of conferences is to bring together researches, engineers and practitioners interested in technological advances and business applications of web-based information systems. The 21 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected originally 153 paper submissions. They were organized in topical sections names, internet technology; web interfaces and applications; society, e-business and e-government; web intelligence; and mobile information systems. The book also contains two invited talks in full-paper length.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support, BPMDS 2015, and the 20th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design, EMMSAD 2015, held together with the 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2015) in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 2015. The 17 full papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 43 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business process development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into topical sections on enabling value creation, human-centric paradigms, mining for processes, declarative approaches, understanding and sharing, quality and security issues, and new areas for BPMDS. The 12 full and three short papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 33 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing modeling methods and methodologies for the analysis and design of information systems, enterprises, and business processes. They are grouped into topical sections on fundamental issues in modeling, requirements and regulations, enterprise and software ecosystem modeling, information and process model quality, meta-modeling and domain-specific modeling and model composition, modeling of architecture and design, and novel applications of modeling.