The ADEPT project covered the main research area s of the institute from 1997 to 2003. ADEPT was not just a single project but a set of interrelated, complementary research activities aiming at next generation workflow management technology. With ADEPT1 a powerful proof-of-concept prototype had been implemented in this project. In particular, ADEPT1 was used by many research groups world-wide to implement flexible and adaptive process-aware applications. In 2004 we decided to start our work on the ADEPT2 technology which comprises additional features and provides an integrated implementation of them (see projects ADEPT2 and AristaFlow)

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If current process management systems shall be applied to a broad spectrum of applications, they will have to be significantly improved with respect to their technological capabilities. Particularly, in dynamic environments it must be possible to quickly implement and deploy new processes, to enable ad-hoc modifications of running process instances on-the-fly (e.g., to dynamically add, delete or move process steps), and to support process schema evolution with instance migration (i.e., to propagate process schema changes to already running instances if desired). These requirements must be met without affecting process consistency and by preserving the robustness of the process management system. In the ADEPT2 project we address these challenges in an integrated way and provide a powerful proof-of-concept implementation of a high-end process management system. Our overall vision is to provide a next generation process management technology which can be used in a variety of application domains.

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In this project we developed a comprehensive approach for achieving scalability in (distributed) workflow management systems. This includes advanced techniques and algorithms for workflow schema partitioning and distributed workflow control.

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In this project we realized a comprehensive and powerful approach for workflow schema evolution and change propagation in adaptive workflow management systems.

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One major project goal of this project was to realize a software environment, which supports the component-based development of adaptive, process-aware enterprise applications in a "plug & play" like fashion. For this we have provided and implemented an adaptive process management system which offers a degree of flexibility and adaptability that goes far beyond the capabilities of current workflow management systems. This process management system has been based on the ADEPT workflow technology (see projects ADEPT1 and ADEPT2). Particularly, the offered functionality allows to develop process-aware information systems orders of magnitudes faster and with much more built-in flexibility than today. Another and probably the most important project goal was to provide this kind of development and execution environment to the industrial partners who use it as platform for application development and for realizing new kinds of enterprise software.

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In this project we developed a change framework for organizational models as well as access rules as known from information systems. In particular, the developed CEOSIS framework considers all phases of the lifecycle of organizational models and access rules.

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Process-aware information systems have to be frequently adapted in order to deal with business process changes in the real world. One important challenge not adequately addressed so far concerns the evolution of process choreographies, i.e., the change of interactions and message exchanges between the partner processes in a cross-organizational setting. If respective modifications are conducted in an uncontrolled manner, inconsistencies or even errors (e.g., deadlocks) might occur in the sequel. In particular, modifications of private processes performed by a single party may indirectly affect the implementation of the private processes of partners as well. In the DYCHOR (DYnamic CHOReographies) project we elaborate a framework for coping with this fundamental challenge. DYCHOR allows process engineers to detect how changes of a private process may affect its related public view and - if so - how respective changes can be propagated to the public as well as the private processes of partners. To achieve this, DYCHOR exploits the formal semantics of the applied changes and automatically determines the adaptations becoming necessary for the partner processes. As proof-of-concept the main ideas of DYCHOR have been prototypically implemented. Altogether, DYCHOR provides an important contribution towards the realization of adaptive, cross-organizational processes.

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Introducing process-aware information systems (PAISs) is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine or influence these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to PAISs. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these methods to deal with the dynamic interactions of the many technological, organizational and projectdriven cost factors which specifically arise in the context of PAISs.
Picking up this problem, in the EcoPOST project we are developing a framework to investigate the complex cost structures of PAIS engineering projects through qualitative cost evaluation models. In this context we introduce cost evaluation models as well as rules and guidelines for their design. Respective evaluation models also reflect on results we gathered through empirical and experimental research. Altogether our EcoPOST framework provides an important tool supporting PAIS engineers in gaining a better understanding of the critical factors determining the costs of PAIS engineering projects.

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In this project we delevoped a sophisticated approach for determining the impact each web service (of a composite service) has on the composition at runtime. More precisely, MoDe4SLA is able to identify complex dependencies between Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in a service composition. By explicating these dependencies, causes of SLA violations of a service can be explained by malfunctioning of the services it depends on. MoDe4SLA assists managers in identifying such causes.

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Periodicity is a wide spread phenomenon in real world and common in a large number of applications from different domains (e.g. finance and healthcare).  In this research project all aspects related to the operational support of periodicity in information systems were systematically investigated and powerful solution approaches were developed.

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Process Intelligence (PI) offers companies the possibility to analyze and optimize their business processes in real-time. For this, it provides methods, concepts and tools to collect and analyze process and business data that is distributed over various information systems. The goal of the project is to develop methods and concepts for next generation Process Intelligence. In the project we will deal with data integration issues, monitoring of compliance rules and evaluate existing tools and conduct surveys and case studys.

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The need for more flexiblity of process-aware information systems (PAIS) has been discussed for several years and different approaches for adaptive process management have emerged. Only few of them provide support for both changes of individual process instances and the propagation of process type changes to a collection of related process instances. The knowledge about changes has not yet been exploited by any of these systems. To overcome this practical limitation, PAIS must capture the whole process life cycle and all kinds of changes in an integrated way. They must allow users to deviate from the predefined process in exceptional situations, and assist them in retrieving and reusing knowledge about previously performed changes. If similar instance deviations occur frequently, process engineers should be supported in deriving improved process models from them. This, in turn, allows them to evolve the PAIS over time as well as the knowledge about the changes. In ProCycle we develop a next generation PAIS, which provides integrated and seamless process life cycle support. ProCycle combines the ADEPT2 framework for dynamic process changes with concepts and methods provided by case-based reasoning (CBR) technology like CBRFlow.

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In this project we developed a comprehensive framework evidencing the existence of activity patterns for defining recurrent business functions within process models. Furthermore, we investigated the benefits and completeness of these activity patterns with respect to business process mode

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