On July 29th, 2015 
Jens Kolb successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled
Abstraction, Visualization, and Evolution of Process Models
at Ulm University, Germany. The DBIS team is pleased to congratulate Dr. Kolb on his successful PhD defense and wishes him all the best for his future career. Jens' PhD advisor and promotor has been Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (DBIS).
The PhD thesis contributes the proView framework to systematically create and update process views (i.e., abstractions) on process models and business processes respectively. More precisely, process views abstract large process models by hiding or combining process information. As a result, they provide an abstracted, but personalized representation of process information to domain experts. In particular, updates of a process view are supported, which are then propagated to the related process model as well as associated process views. Thereby, up-to-dateness and consistency of all process views defined on any process model can be always ensured. Finally, proView preserves the behaviour and correctness of a process model. In turn, process model abstractions realized by views are still not sufficient to assist domain experts in comprehending and evolving process models. Thus, additional process visualizations are introduced that provide text-based, form-based, and hierarchical representations of process models. Particularly, these process visualizations allow for view-based process abstractions and updates as well. Finally, process interaction concepts are introduced enabling domain experts to create and evolve process models on touch-enabled devices. This facilitates the documentation of process models in workshops or while interviewing process participants at their workplace.
Members of the PhD committee:
- Prof. Dr. Uwe Schöning (Chairman)
- Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert (Promotor and First Referee)
- Prof. Dr. Michael Weber (Second Referee)
- Prof. Dr. Franz Schweiggert (Core Committee Member)
- Prof. Dr. Helmuth Partsch (Core Committee Member)