it and business process modelling course at it university of copenhagen (lecture 1+2)

IT UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

IT and Business Process Modelling Business Process Modelling & AnalysisThomas Hildebrandt IT University of Copenhagen www.itu.dk/people/hilde [email protected] !!First lecture of IT and Business Process Modelling (BIMF, GBI) & Business Process Modelling and Analysis (DBMA, DIM & SDT-SE) !January 26th, 2015 Partly based on lecture slides (ch 2) by M. Reichert and B. Weber, available at www.flexible-processes.com

http://www.itu.dk/people/hilde

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.flexible-processes.com


IT and Business Process Modelling & Analysis (BIMF & DBMA) Thomas Hildebrandt, [email protected]

BIMF/DBMA Lecture 1, January 26th, 2015

Road Map

• 10-10.15: Learning Outcomes, Group project & Exam

• 10.15-10.45: What is a (Business) Process ?

• 11.00-11.45: Process-Aware Information Systems

• 12.30-14.00: Theory review-exercises in groups

2





Learning Outcomes (BSc)

3





Learning Outcomes (MSc)

4





DescripFon at learnit

5





Rough outline of course• Week 1-5: Business Process constraint mapping

(ch 1-3+12 + research papers)

• Week 6-10: Pre-specified processes, flexibility by design and compliance (Ch 4-6+10)

• Week 11-15: Ad-hoc changes, mining & evolution (Ch 7-9+12 +18 + research papers)

• MSc must pick advanced topic: Ad-hoc changes (7), Monitoring & Mining (8), Evolution (9), Compliance (10)

6





Group Project & Exam• During the course you will in groups (5 students)

• present a process constraint model (Feb 23rd)

• hand-in of your report (April 9)

• give feedback to software dev. group

• upload a final report (May 19th in LearnIT)

• give a 8 min joint presentation of report at exam followed by 8 min individual oral examination

7

learnit.itu.dk/course/view.php?id=1970132





What is a Process ?

8

“A process is a specific ordering of work acFviFes across Fme and place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for acFon” [Davenport 1993, p. 5].

A process is a collection of activities/events, ordered across time & space,

carried out by actors, and depending on & producing data/resources.

Some activities/events start the process (the beginning) Others are goals (the end)

A business process creates value for customers (& the business)





Process examples• Booking a travel

• Delivering beer to customers

• Getting pain relief at the hospital

• Getting a new loan or credit card in the bank

• Helping an unemployed at the job-center to get a job

9

Who are the actors ? What are the activities/events ?What are the goals, ending and starting events ?

How would you order the activities/events ?What data/resources produced & used by activities ?





Hospital process example

10






11

Actors ?






12

Actions & Events ?Start ?Goal ?Data ?





Group Exercise (10-‐15 min)• Discuss processes you know

• Describe (with post-it notes on A3 paper):

• Actors ?

• Activities/Events ?

• Starting (triggering) and Ending (goals) events ?

• Data & Resources used/produced ?

• Ordering of Activities/Events ?

• Put A3 paper on the black-board (with group name)13





Summary & Discussion

14

• Easy to identify activities/events ?

• What is the right level of detail ?

• Is there a relation between data dependencies and ordering of events ?

• Can (some of) the activities/events be repeated/skipped ?

• How do we represent the dependencies ?





Time for a break!

15



Process-aware Information Systems (PAIS)

What ?

Why ?

How ?




What are PAIS & why bother?

17

• Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS) = Information systems that are aware of the (business/workflow) processes they support

• The motivations & goals are typically to improve efficiency, quality, agility and document compliance





Process characterisFcs

18

• Long-running (from seconds to years)

• Persisted state

• Sleeps most of the time

• Orchestrates system and/or human actors

• Understood (and managed) by business analysts

• Adaptable

• Reusable

a domain specific architecture and languages for business processes execution (and management) ?





How to make a PAIS ?

19

• PAIS introduce an extra architectural layer, separating the process logic from the application code

• Typical examples include Business Process, Workflow and Case Management Systems (BPMS, WfMS & CMS)

• Often used with a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)





Process & Service Oriented Architecture

20

offerworkenactment

service

man

agem

ent

tool

s

design tools

run-time data

processdata

organizationaldata

performwork worker

management

designerhistoricaldata

casedataapplications

Figure 9: The architecture of a PAIS.

ing a simple workflow process. Work is offered through so-called work queues.One worker can have multiple work queues and one work queue can be sharedamong multiple workers. The window in the middle shows the set of availablework queues (left) and the content of one of these work queues (right). The bottomwindow shows an audit trail of a case. The three windows show only some of thecapabilities offered by contemporary workflow management systems. It is fairlystraightforward to map these windows onto the architecture. In other processes-aware information systems such as for example enterprise resource planning sys-tems, one will find the architecture shown in Figure 9 embedded in a larger archi-tecture.

The architecture shown in Figure 9 assumes a centralized enactment service.Inside a single organization such an assumption may be realistic. However, in across-organizational setting this is not the case. Fortunately, most vendors nowsupport the SOA mentioned earlier. In a SOA tasks are subcontracted to otherparties, i.e., what is one task for the service consumer may be a complex processfor a service consumer. The web-services stack using standards such as WSDLand BPEL facilitates the development of cross-organizational workflows.

Despite the acceptance of PAISs, the current generation of products leavesmuch to be desired. To illustrate this, we focus on the current generation ofWFMSs. We will use Figure 9 to identify five problems.

18

Process-Aware Information Systems:Design, Enactment, and AnalysisWil M.P. van der AalstDepartment ofMathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Tech-nology, P.O. Box 513, NL-5600 MB Eindhoven, [email protected]

Abstract. Process-aware information systems support operational business pro-cesses by combining advances in information technology with recent insightsfrom management science. Workflow management systems are typical examplesof such systems. However, many other types of information systems are also“process aware” even if their processes are hard-coded or only used implicitly(e.g., ERP systems). The shift from data orientation to process orientation has in-creased the importance process-aware information systems. Moreover, advancedanalysis techniques ranging from simulation and verification to process miningand activity monitoring allow for systems that support process improvement invarious ways. This article provides an overview of process-aware informationsystems and also relates these to business process management, workflow man-agement, process analysis techniques, and process flexibility.

Keywords: Process-Aware Information Systems, Workflow Management, Busi-ness Process Management, Petri Nets, Process Mining, Process Verification, Sim-ulation

1 IntroductionInformation technology has changed business processes within and between enter-prises. More and more work processes are being conducted under the supervisionof information systems that are driven by process models. Examples are work-flow management systems such as FileNet P8, Staffware, WebSphere, FLOWerand YAWL and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as SAP andOracle. Moreover, many domain specific systems have components driven by(process) models. It is hard to imagine enterprise information systems that areunaware of the processes taking place. Although the topic of business processmanagement using information technology has been addressed by consultants

1

Web-services internal services (e.g. database)

e.g. electronic forms or case

management tool

However, the focus is not on data but on process-related information (e.g., theordering of activities). Process mining is also related to monitoring and businessintelligence [41].

8 ConclusionProcess-aware information systems (PAISs) follow a characteristic life-cycle. Fig-ure 13 shows the four phases of such a life-cycle [7]. In the design phase, theprocesses are (re)designed. In the configuration phase, designs are implementedby configuring a PAIS (e.g., a WFMS). After configuration, the enactment phasestarts where the operational business processes are executed using the system con-figured. In the diagnosis phase, the operational processes are analyzed to identifyproblems and to find things that can be improved. The focus of traditional work-flow management (systems) is on the lower half of the life-cycle. As a result thereis little support for the diagnosis phase. Moreover, support in the design phase islimited to providing an editor while analysis and real design support are missing.

Figure 13: PAIS life-cycle.

In this article, we showed that PAISs support operational business processesby combining advances in information technology with recent insights from man-agement science. We started by reviewing the history of such systems and thenfocused on process design. From the many diagramming techniques available, wechose one particular technique (Petri nets) to show the basics. We also emphasizedthe relevance of process analysis, e.g., by pointing out that 20 percent of the morethan 600 process models in the SAP reference model are flawed [24]. We also

26





Example: Financial BPM on top of SOA

21

• Customer packet: Business process for creating financial products (credit cards, internet bank access,etc)

• 10 different systems, 30 sub processes, 200 service calls/human tasks.

• From 200 packets a day to 1800 a day

• 80% automation

Steen Brahe, Industrial PhD, Danske Bank & IT University of CopenhagenBest

Industry Paper

“BPM on Top of SOA: Experiences from the Financial Industry”, BPM 2007





Three trends...

• From Programming to Orchestration

• From Data orientation to Process orientation

• From Design to Re-design and dynamic growth

22





Not an enFrely new idea

Early research in Office Automation

Describing office work as flow-graphs (Petri Net)

23

z c :=

Computer Science and Office Information Systems

By Clarence A. Ellis and Gary J. Nutt

• Zisman & Hammer 1977

• IBM Business Definition Language (BDL)

• Information Control Net [Ellis 1979 Xerox]





InformaFon Control Net

24

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12

used by SCOOP are document generators; electronic mail senders and receivers; file services, and

media schedulers.

Although the complexity and number of the special purpose systems may grow large as the office

automation area grows, the monitor (or office operating system supervisor) can remain relatively

constant. Zisman provides guidelines and frameworks for a high level non-procedural specifications

language, and that contains a document definition section for declaring all documents needed, an

activity initiation section for describing when each activity can be performed and an activity detail

section. The activity detail section describes the detail tasks to be done when the activity is initiated

by a few basic operations, wen-known to an office analyst. Procedure descriptions in this language

could then be translated into an augmented Petri net and run using the execution monitor, SCOOP.

By considering the specification language, the internal representation, and the design of a prototype

system using one unified model, Zisman has been able to study the office as a system rather than

simply as a collection of isolated tasks and pieces of equipment. Although Zisman suggests the

language and the model need refinement, his basic notions will probably have great impact on the

office of the future.





Business Process Model and NotaFon (BPMN) 2.0

25

Business Process Model and Notation, v2.0 47

Figure 7.8 - An example of a stand-alone Process (Orchestration) diagram

Figure from the BPMN 2.0 Final Specification, 2011





30 years: What happened?• Optimism in late 70ties and early 80ties

• Not any real success... lack of standards and too rigid

• 90ties to now:

• Graphical User Interfaces

• Internet, Service and Process standards

26

(but still too rigid...)





Workflow Management CoaliFon (WfMC) 1993

27

Workflow Engine(s)

Process Definition Tools

Other Workflow Engines

Workflow Client Applications

Invoked Applications

(e.g. Webservices)

Administration and Analysis Tools

WfMC Workflow Reference Model 1995

(IBM, HP, Fujitsu, ..Graphical process

notations/ languages (BPMN, EPCs, UML Activity

Diagrams, Petri Net, ...)Export language

(BPMN-XML,XPDL,WSFL, WS-BPEL,..)

Service access, addressing and description languages

(WSDL, abstract WS-BPEL, ..)

Human Task languages (BPEL4PEOPLE, BPMN2.0)

DB

Instance run-time & persistence

format

Query languages





Many modelling standards -‐ converging to BPMN

28

R. Shapiro, WfMC, 2010

IBM WSFL 1.0

MS XLANG 1.0

BPEL4WS 1.0

BPEL4WS 1.1 WS-BPEL 2.0OASIS

CMMN 1.0 (BETA)

2013





An example BPMN process

29

A pre-specified process for planning a surgery:

(Example 2.3, Fig 2.2, page 13-14)





Zooming in on OutpaFent Dept

30





Different perspecFves

31

Business Function 1

... Business Function

2

Business Function

3

Business Function 4

Business Function n

..

.

!

business functions

Function Perspective

EXECUTABLE PROCESS MODEL

control flow: order & execution

constraints

Behavior Perspective

data objects & data flow

Information Perspective

time constraints (e.g., activity deadlines)

Time Perspective

organizational model (actors, roles,

organizational units)

Organization Perspective

activity implementations & application services

Operational Perspective





FuncFon PerspecFve

32

atomic

complex





Behavior PerspecFve

33

Alternative/choice

Sequence

Parallel





Behavior as constraints

34

A constraint based (declarative) model describes what & why rather than how

(Declare)





Behavior as constraints

35

A constraint based (declarative) model describes what & why rather than how

(Declare)





Constraints as DCR Graphs

36





Data-‐centric/OO behavior

37

In a data-driven/centric process the behavior is described by state of data attributes

(belonging to objects/business entities)





InformaFon/InteracFon

38





OrganizaFonal

39





OperaFonal PerspecFve

40

COBOL PL1

.NETSAPJava

service

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

service service

Risk Department Credit Department Customer Department

Task

Sub Process

Sub Process

Data interoperability standards, e.g. HL7 for healthcare data and XBRL for business/finance

(Time perspective)



Components of a PAIS

offerworkenactment

service

man

agem

ent

tool

sdesign tools

run-time data

processdata

organizationaldata

performwork worker

management

designerhistoricaldata

casedataapplications

Figure 9: The architecture of a PAIS.

ing a simple workflow process. Work is offered through so-called work queues.One worker can have multiple work queues and one work queue can be sharedamong multiple workers. The window in the middle shows the set of availablework queues (left) and the content of one of these work queues (right). The bottomwindow shows an audit trail of a case. The three windows show only some of thecapabilities offered by contemporary workflow management systems. It is fairlystraightforward to map these windows onto the architecture. In other processes-aware information systems such as for example enterprise resource planning sys-tems, one will find the architecture shown in Figure 9 embedded in a larger archi-tecture.

The architecture shown in Figure 9 assumes a centralized enactment service.Inside a single organization such an assumption may be realistic. However, in across-organizational setting this is not the case. Fortunately, most vendors nowsupport the SOA mentioned earlier. In a SOA tasks are subcontracted to otherparties, i.e., what is one task for the service consumer may be a complex processfor a service consumer. The web-services stack using standards such as WSDLand BPEL facilitates the development of cross-organizational workflows.

Despite the acceptance of PAISs, the current generation of products leavesmuch to be desired. To illustrate this, we focus on the current generation ofWFMSs. We will use Figure 9 to identify five problems.

18


Components of a PAIS




Build vs. Run-‐Fme

43

(may be combined if we allow adaptation)





Build-‐Fme verificaFon

• Functional: Refer to taxonomies (naming) & attributes

• Behavior: Deadlocks? Livelocks? Soundness ?

• Information: Missing, wrong or unnecessary data ?

• Organisation: Missing actors or authorizations ?

• Operation: Assigned application services to all atomic activities ?

44

Verification concerns all process perspectives:





Run-‐Fme Environment

• Process instance life-cycles

• Activity instance life-cycles

• Work-item life-cycles

45





Process-‐instance life cycle

46

(may be extended to allow adaptation)





Process-‐instance state

47

When an instance is running it is in a particular state






48

DCR Graphs can also represent instance state






49







50







51






AcFvity-‐instance life-‐cycle

52

Each individual activity has a life-cycle too





Human acFviFes

53

Enabled, human activities create work items to work lists

Depends on actor assignment and organizational model





Work-‐item life-‐cycle

54





Summary• Process-aware Information Systems

• Know the logic of the supported processes

• Ensure ordering constraints are satisfied

• Controls flow of data

• Knows application services and work-items assigned to automated and human activities

• Enables end-users to monitor and trace executions

• Future: Allow run-time, verified adaptation

55





Exercises• Do exercise 2.1-2.4 in your groups and write down

your answers. Use your own process examples or the one below

56


it and business process modelling course at it university of copenhagen (lecture 1+2)

Education

enda business process

gbi business process

process examples

analysis dbma

process constraint model

lecture ofit

lecture slides ch

compliance ch