UUlm – DBIS-Veranstaltungen

EDOC 2024

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 11:05:00 +0200

For more information, please visit https://conferences.big.tuwien.ac.at/biweek2024/edoc.html

BPM Conference 2024

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0200

For more information, please visit https://bpm2024.agh.edu.pl/

CAiSE 2024

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 10:59:00 +0200

For more information, please visit https://cyprusconferences.org/caise2024/

An Approach for Discovering Data-driven Object Lifecycle Processes

Thu, 16 May 2024 12:30:00 +0200

The discovery of process models from event logs has been a well-understood topic regarding activity-centric processes. For alternative paradigms (e.g., data- or object-centric processes as implemented in many information systems), however, this model discovery still poses several challenges. One of these challenges concerns the discovery of object behavior expressed in terms of object lifecycle processes. In particular, this discovery requires the consideration of different granularity levels (i.e., object states and object attributes). This paper presents an approach for discovering object lifecycle processes. The approach divides the discovery of object lifecycle processes into subproblems by preprocessing event logs to enable the use of well-known discovery algorithms. Overall, object-centric process mining gives insights into data-driven and object-centric processes as implemented in many information systems.

RCIS 2024

Tue, 14 May 2024 11:03:00 +0200

For more information, please visit https://www.rcis-conf.com/rcis2024/

Transforming Object-Centric Process Models into BPMN 2.0 Models in the PHILharmonicFlows Framework

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:00:00 +0100

Business processes can be modeled using a plethora of different paradigms including activity-centric (e.g., imperative, declarative), and data-centric processes.
The former focus on the process activities to be executed as well as their execution order and constraints, whereas the latter deal with the data required to progress during process execution.
Both representations, however, allow describing the same process, but from different viewpoints.
Consequently, a transformation between process representations based on the different paradigms yields promising perspectives for enabling a holistic view on both the behavior and the data perspective of a process and fosters a common understanding of different paradigms.
This paper presents an approach for transforming object-centric processes (i.e., object lifecycle processes and their interactions) into corresponding activity-centric representations modeled in terms of BPMN 2.0.
We present seven transformation rules for mapping an object- to an activity-centric process, illustrated along a running example.
We evaluate the approach based on a proof-of-concept implementation that can automatically perform the necessary transformations and has been applied in multiple scenarios.
Overall, our approach for transforming object-centric processes into BPMN 2.0 models provides new insights into the relationship between the two paradigms and enables a more flexible and effective way of modeling business processes in general.

Towards Robustness of IoT devices in BPMNE4IoT

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0100

Integrating the Internet of Things into Business Process Management has gained traction for several
years to improve smart applications (e.g., smart homes, Industry 4.0). Different frameworks have been
proposed to integrate IoT in all stages of the BPM lifecycle. However, current frameworks lack proper
support for dealing with issues related to error handling, like sensor faults, fallback strategies, and
redundancies. Therefore, it has to be assessed to what extent error handling should be included in
the abstraction layer of IoT-aware processes to increase both robustness and reliability.

Predictive Process Monitoring: An Implementation and Comparison of Student Performance Prediction

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 10:30:00 +0100

Predictive monitoring can support students during the semester by motivating them if they are not performing well enough in a lecture or exercise. Furthermore, supervisor can create additional exercise sheets or can adapt their lectures and exercises to the needs (i.e. knowledge gaps) of the students. To realise this, three different regression algorithms (i.e. Neuronal Networks, Decision Trees, and Random Forest) are implemented to continuously predict further exercise points and the final grade during a semester. These algorithms are trained and tested based on student points and grades from previous semesters. A total of 17,136 predictions were determined, analysed, and compared. In several exercise sheets, all algorithms achieve between 91% and 96% correct predictions with a variance of 10% (i.e. up to 2.5 points). With 15% variance, 98.5% corrected results are possible. The prediction of grades with a variance of 0.3 (i.e. one grade level) with the Decision Tree and the Random Forest only achieves 32% to 35% correctness.

From Activity- to Object-centric Business Process Support: Challenges, Technologies, Applications

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:00:00 +0100

The utmost importance of data for knowledge-intensive business processes has led to the emergence of object-centric and data-driven process management approaches. By tightly integrating process and data, which more or less constitute two sides of the same coin, these approaches differ significantly from the widely used activity-centric process paradigm, aiming at the support of semi- or unstructured processes and offering by far the highest flexibility. The progress of an object-centric process depends on the availability of object data rather than on the completion of black-box activities. Moreover, the focus has shifted from large, monolithic processes towards small data-driven processes (i.e., object lifecylces), which are running concurrently, but need to interact with each other to reach a given business goal. The keynote speech gives insights into the evolution from activity- to object-centric business process management (BPM) approaches with a focus on process flexibility issues. Moreover, it deals with fundamental concepts, features and enabling technologies of activity- and object-centric approaches to business process management. Finally, it discusses how object-centric process management approaches enable new avenues with respect to the engineering, automation, and monitoring of large-scale business processes in the era of digitization and Industry 4.0.

Simulating Event Logs from Object Lifecycle Processes

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:00 +0100

Process Mining leverages event data to discover, analyze, and optimize business processes.
Consequently, the availability and quality of event logs is crucial for the applicability as well as the development of process mining algorithms.
However, obtaining such event logs from real-world scenarios is limited and costly.
In this paper, we present an approach for simulating event logs from object lifecycle processes.
Overall, the approach is capable of simulating event logs for object lifecycle processes that may be used to validate process mining algorithms.

ZEUS Workshop

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:35:00 +0100

For more information, visit https://zeus2024.pi.uni-bamberg.de/

Improving Comprehensibility of IoT-Driven Business Processes through BPMN 2.0 Extension: A User Study

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:00:00 +0100

Enhancing business processes with IoT capabilities enables the collection of data, which can be leveraged to optimize and automate business processes. As a prerequisite for exploiting these benefits in the context of BPM, IoT aspects needs to be explicitly captured in business models. Modeling IoT-driven business processes with BPMN 2.0, however, might be hindered by the ambiguous use of the modeling elements. To tackle this challenge, we have proposed a BPMN 2.0 extension for IoT (BPMNE4IoT) that incorporates specific IoT modeling elements. BPMNE4IoT enables the modeling, execution, monitoring, and recording of IoT-driven business processes. In general, the effectiveness of any BPMN 2.0 extensions depend on its comprehensibility by BPM practitioners. Consequently, user studies are required, which investigate the effects of IoT-specific elements on process model readers. This paper presents the results of such a user study (N=249), which aims to determine whether IoT involvement becomes visually better apparent in our language extension BPMNE4IoT compared to standard BPMN 2.0. In particular, the user study confirms that the involvement of IoT aspects in BPMNE4IoT is more discernible for both experts and non-experts compared to the BPMN 2.0 standard.

Business Process Management Conferences

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 12:01:00 +0200

For more information, visit https://bpm2023.sites.uu.nl/

Tales From the Past: Adapting App Repositories to App Store Dynamics

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 09:20:00 +0200

The pervasiveness of smartphones in daily life has enabled the transformation of healthcare services into digital services, often offered as mobile apps to make them more accessible to the general public. The steady increase of apps in the app stores, in turn, led to the creation of app repositories to help end users, physicians, therapists, and healthcare providers find high-quality apps based on expert app ratings. However, these ratings are only valid for a specific release of an app. In this paper, we aim to describe the problems of current app repositories and present an approach to address these shortcomings. More specifically, our approach is able to periodically monitor the two major proprietary app stores and react to change events. We further present a mechanism to extract additional information from Android apps and to automate this procedure. Finally, our paper aims to stimulate discussion on what additional tools app researchers need to better study app quality and execution.

Handling Process Variants in Information Systems with Software Product Line Engineering

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 13:30:00 +0200

Different organisations often run similar business processes at the operational level. Existing approaches define reference or base processes that may be customized to organisationspecific needs to use synergies and reduce costs. However, existing approaches strongly focus on the model perspective rather than on the implementation level of the Process-Aware Information System (PAIS). Software Product Line (SPL) Engineering deals with the implementation and maintenance of similar software products. An SPL comprises common core artefacts based on which a set of similar software products can be derived. This paper demonstrates how to build a PAIS Product Line by applying the concepts of SPL Engineering. The specified and immutable control flow of the PAIS Product Line eliminates dependencies among features, which reduces the challenges of SPL Engineering. A proof-of-concept illustrates the approach.

Data-Driven Customization of Object Lifecycle Processes

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 13:30:00 +0200

Object-aware processes are capable of automatically generating data-driven forms based on pre-specified object lifecycle processes. Thereby, lifecycle process states correspond to user forms, which comprise the object attributes required to complete the form and to transition to the next process state. The pre-specified flow logic of the steps within a state (i.e., the order in which object attributes shall be written), in turn, determines how the corresponding form is organized and how users are guided in filling the form fields. In practice, however, the order in which users interact with form fields is often user-specific. Even if the pre-specified logic of steps is perceived as intuitive by certain users, others may prefer filling the form in a different order. Although this flexibility constitutes a built-in feature of object lifecycle processes, any guidance not fully matching the mental model of a specific user decreases usability and increases mental effort. By learning from the previous interactions a particular user has had with an object-aware process, the presented approach aims at the data-driven customization of lifecycle processes and corresponding user forms. In particular, the approach enables the data-driven customization of forms for users frequently deviating from the standard guidance based on the adaptions automatically derived for the corresponding lifecycle processes. This enables valuable self-adaptions for both lifecycle processes and process-aware information systems in general.

25th IEEE International Conference on Business Informatics

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 09:56:00 +0200

For more information, visit https://cbi2023.org/

Integrating IoT-Driven Events into Business Processes

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 16:33:00 +0200

Extending Business Process Management (BPM) with Internet of Things (IoT) enhances process automation, improves process monitoring, and enables decision making based on data from the physical world. In this context, the transformation of low-level IoT data to process-level IoT-driven events constitutes an important step. However, the modeling of these transformations is challenging due to the complexity of IoT environments. Contemporary approaches do not provide sufficient support to model these transformations. Process models either become too complex with increasing numbers of devices and transformations, or this logic is externalized and viewed as a black box. This paper presents an integrated approach to model IoT-driven events in processes based on a BPMN 2.0 extension and a tool that adopts concepts from DMN. A scenario from smart production is used to demonstrate the application and improved integration of IoT-driven events in processes.

Modeling, Executing and Monitoring IoT-Driven Business Rules

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 09:30:00 +0200

The Internet of Things (IoT) is used in various areas to ease daily life and to make it more efficient. The IoT is a network of physical objects equipped with sensors, actuators, software, and technologies for exchanging the gathered data. In numerous domains, such as healthcare and smart home, IoT devices can be used to enable smart applications. Business Process Management (BPM), in turn, enables the analysis, modeling, implementation, execution, and monitoring of business processes. Extending BPM with IoT capabilities enhances process automation, improves process monitoring, and enables managing IoT-driven business rules. In the context of the latter the aggregation of low- level IoT data into high-level business information is a paramount important step. However, modeling, executing, and monitoring IoT-driven business rules based on BPMN 2.0 and Decision Model and Notation (DMN) might not be the best suited approach. This paper presents a framework that provides an extended BPMN notation for modeling, executing, and monitoring IoT-driven decision processes. The framework is implemented as a proof-of-concept prototype, a real-world scenario is presented to illustrate its use.

Monitoring object-centric Business Processes: An Empirical Study

Thu, 25 May 2023 14:00:00 +0200

Monitoring dashboards provide an appropriate way of presenting a multitude of information on running business processes to involved actors. Essential components of a monitoring dashboard are charts that visualise this information in an aggregated, intuitive and useful way. A popular representative is the Sunburst Chart, which constitutes a pie chart with several colour-coded circles that can visualise a hierarchical structure. This visualisation technique seems to be particularly suited for monitoring object-centric processes. In this paper a procedure for automatically deriving a sunburst chart from the patterns of a relational process structure, describing an object-centric process, is presented. To investigate the readability, comprehension, and general acceptance of sunburst chart in the context of a monitoring object-centric process, an empirical study with 157 participants was conducted. As key observation of this study, the majority of the participants can read and comprehend the sunburst chart very well, e.g., on average more than 90% of the multiple-choice questions were answered correctly. Overall, sunburst charts offer promising perspective for the monitoring of large object-centric process.

17th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science

Tue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200

For more information visit https://www.rcis-conf.com/rcis2023/

Discovering Process Models of Different Granularity from Legacy Software Systems

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:08:00 +0100

Processes models shall enable a better understanding and management of business processes as well as the information systems implementing these processes.
Usually, different stakeholders of various enterprise levels are interested in process models which raises specific requirements concerning process model abstraction.
While business managers are interested in high-level (i.e., abstract) process views, process participants need more fine-grained process views during process enactment.
This also applies to many legacy software systems that implement business processes, but were originally not designed to provide process model details.
In this paper, we present an approach for preprocessing event logs obtained from legacy software systems such that process models of different granularity levels can be discovered from them.

Free Technical Solutions for Ecological Momentary Assessments - Searching GitHub plus Google

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 14:40:00 +0100

Smartphones are increasingly being used to deliver healthcare services and to conduct medical research using apps. The emerging field is also called mobile health (mHealth). Many specific data collection strategies have been developed for medical data to mitigate biases of more traditional methods (e.g., the recall bias). In the larger context, the aim is to collect data in real-time and real-life, also referred to as data with higher ecological validity. One strategy that is particularly prominent is called Ecological Momentary Assessments (EMA). Even if other data collection strategies are used, they are usually combined with EMA. For this purpose, scientists are faced with the problem of having to locate a technical mHealth platform supporting EMA. To simplify this task, we conducted a search on and applied the PRISMA guidelines, with the goal of identifying current platforms and frameworks that can be used freely and support on-premise installations. In addition, we did a Google search to see if there are frameworks that meet the above criteria, but are not published on . The results show that despite great popularity in the scientific community, only few freely available EMA platforms and frameworks exist.

International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 10:00:00 +0100

For more information, visit http://centeris.scika.org/

Deriving Event Logs from Legacy Software Systems

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 14:30:00 +0200

Abstract. The modernization of legacy software systems is one of the key challenges in software industry, which requires comprehensive system analysis. In this context, process mining has proven to be useful for understanding the (business) processes implemented by the legacy software system. However, process mining algorithms are highly dependent on both the quality and existence of suitable event logs. In many scenarios, existing software systems (e.g., legacy applications) do not leverage process engines capable of producing such high-quality event logs, which hampers the application of process mining algorithms. Deriving suitable event log data from legacy software systems, therefore, constitutes a relevant task that fosters data-driven analysis approaches, including process mining, data-based process documentation, and process-centric software migration. This paper presents an approach for deriving event logs from legacy software systems by combining knowledge from source code and corresponding database operations. The goal is to identify relevant business objects as well as to document user and software interactions with them in an event log suitable for process mining.