Conferences on Business Process Management

In this book, Mathias Weske details the complete business process lifecycle from process modeling to process enactment and process evaluation. After starting with the general foundations and abstractions in business process management, he introduces process modeling languages and process choreographies, as well as formal properties of processes and data. Eventually, he presents both traditional and advanced business process management architectures, covering, for example, workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures, and data-driven approaches. The 4th edition of his book contains significant updates, including a new section on directly follows graphs that play a crucial role in process mining. In addition, the core of declarative process modeling is introduced. The increasingly important role of data in business processes is addressed by a new section on data objects and data models in the data and decision chapter. To cover a recent trend in process automation, the enterprise systems architecture chapter now includes a section on robotic process automation.

Mathias Weske argues that all communities involved need to have a common understanding of the different aspects of business process management. Hence his textbook is ideally suited for classes on business process management, information systems architecture, and workflow management alike. The accompanying website accompanying website contains further information and additional teaching material.

This textbook introduces the basis for modelling and analysing discrete dynamic systems, such as computer programmes, soft- and hardware systems, and business processes. The underlying concepts are introduced and concrete modelling techniques are described, such as finite automata, state machines, and Petri nets. The concepts are related to concrete application scenarios, among which business processes play a prominent role.

The book consists of three parts, the first of which addresses the foundations of behavioural modelling. After a general introduction to modelling, it introduces transition systems as a basic formalism for representing the behaviour of discrete dynamic systems. This section also discusses causality, a fundamental concept for modelling and reasoning about behaviour. In turn, Part II forms the heart of the book and is devoted to models of behaviour. It details both sequential and concurrent systems and introduces finite automata, state machinesand several different types of Petri nets. One chapter is especially devoted to business process models, workflow patterns and BPMN, the industry standard for modelling business processes. Lastly, Part III investigates how the behaviour of systems can be analysed. To this end, it introduces readers to the concept of state spaces. Further chapters cover the comparison of behaviour and the formal analysis and verification of behavioural models.

The book was written for students of computer science and software engineering, as well as for programmers and system analysts interested in the behaviour of the systems they work on. It takes readers on a journey from the fundamentals of behavioural modelling to advanced techniques for modelling and analysing sequential and concurrent systems, and thus provides them a deep understanding of the concepts and techniques introduced and how they can be applied to concrete application scenarios.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the field of Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on Business Process Automation. It achieves this by covering a wide range of topics, both introductory and advanced, illustrated through and grounded in the YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) language and corresponding open-source support environment. In doing so it provides the reader with a deep, timeless, and vendor-independent understanding of the essential ingredients of business process automation.

The BPM field is in a continual state of flux and is subject to both the ongoing proposal of new standards and the introduction of new tools and technology. Its fundamentals however are relatively stable and this book aims to equip the reader with both a thorough understanding of them and the ability to apply them to better understand, assess and utilize new developments in the BPM field.

As a consequence of its topic-based format and the inclusion of a broad range of exercises, the book is eminently suitable for use in tertiary education, both at the undergraduate and the postgraduate level, for students of computer science and information systems. BPM researchers and practitioners will also find it a valuable resource. The book serves as a unique reference to a varied and comprehensive collection of topics that are relevant to the business process life-cycle.

Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most widely used approaches for the design of modern organizational and information systems. The conscious treatment of business processes as significant corporate assets has facilitated substantial improvements in organizational performance but is also used to ensure the conformance of corporate activities. This Handbook presents in two volumes the contemporary body of knowledge as articulated by the world’s leading BPM thought leaders. This first volume focuses on arriving at a sound definition of BPM approaches and examines BPM methods and process-aware information systems. As such, it provides guidance for the integration of BPM into corporate methodologies and information systems. Each chapter has been contributed by leading international experts. Selected case studies complement their views and lead to a summary of BPM expertise that is unique in its coverage of the most critical success factors of BPM.

The second edition of this handbook has been significantly revised and extended. Each chapter has been updated to reflect the most current developments. This includes in particular new technologies such as in-memory data and process management, social media and networks. A further focus of this revised and extended edition is on the actual deployment of the proposed theoretical concepts. This volume includes a number of entire new chapters from some of the world’s leading experts in the domain of BPM.

Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most widely used approaches for the design of modern organizational and information systems. The conscious treatment of business processes as significant corporate assets has facilitated substantial improvements in organizational performance but is also used to ensure the conformance of corporate activities. This Handbook presents in two volumes the contemporary body of knowledge as articulated by the world’s leading BPM thought leaders. This second volume focuses on the managerial and organizational challenges of BPM such as strategic and cultural alignment, governance and the education of BPM stakeholders. As such, this book provides concepts and methodologies for the integration of BPM. Each chapter has been contributed by leading international experts. Selected case studies complement their views and lead to a summary of BPM expertise that is unique in its coverage of the most critical success factors of BPM.

The second edition of this handbook has been significantly revised and extended. Each chapter has been updated to reflect the most current developments. This includes in particular new technologies such as in-memory data and process management, social media and networks. A further focus of this revised and extended edition is on the actual deployment of the proposed theoretical concepts. This volume includes a number of entire new chapters from some of the world’s leading experts in the domain of BPM.

This is the second edition of Wil van der Aalst’s seminal book on process mining, which now discusses the field also in the broader context of data science and big data approaches. It includes several additions and updates, e.g. on inductive mining techniques, the notion of alignments, a considerably expanded section on software tools and a completely new chapter of process mining in the large. It is self-contained, while at the same time covering the entire process-mining spectrum from process discovery to predictive analytics.

After a general introduction to data science and process mining in Part I, Part II provides the basics of business process modeling and data mining necessary to understand the remainder of the book. Next, Part III focuses on process discovery as the most important process mining task, while Part IV moves beyond discovering the control flow of processes, highlighting conformance checking, and organizational and time perspectives. Part V offers a guide to successfully applying process mining in practice, including an introduction to the widely used open-source tool ProM and several commercial products. Lastly, Part VI takes a step back, reflecting on the material presented and the key open challenges.

Overall, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in process mining. It is intended for business process analysts, business consultants, process managers, graduate students, and BPM researchers.

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 website 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 textbook covers the entire Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle, from process identification to process monitoring, covering along the way process modelling, analysis, redesign and automation. Concepts, methods and tools from business management, computer science and industrial engineering are blended into one comprehensive and inter-disciplinary approach. The presentation is illustrated using the BPMN industry standard defined by the Object Management Group and widely endorsed by practitioners and vendors worldwide.

In addition to explaining the relevant conceptual background, the book provides dozens of examples, more than 230 exercises – many with solutions – and numerous suggestions for further reading. This second edition includes extended and completely revised chapters on process identification, process discovery, qualitative process analysis, process redesign, process automation and process monitoring. A new chapter on BPM as an enterprise capability has been added, which expands the scope of the book to encompass topics such as the strategic alignment and governance of BPM initiatives.

The textbook is the result of many years of combined teaching experience of the authors, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as in the context of professional training. Students and professionals from both business management and computer science will benefit from the step-by-step style of the textbook and its focus on fundamental concepts and proven methods. Lecturers will appreciate the class-tested format and the additional teaching material available on the accompanying website.

This book introduces readers to the field of conformance checking as a whole and outlines the fundamental relation between modelled and recorded behaviour. Conformance checking interrelates the modelled and recorded behaviour of a given process and provides techniques and methods for comparing and analysing observed instances of a process in the presence of a model, independent of the model’s origin. Its goal is to provide an overview of the essential techniques and methods in this field at an intuitive level, together with precise formalisations of its underlying principles.

The book is divided into three parts, that are meant to cover different perspectives of the field of conformance checking. Part I presents a comprehensive yet accessible overview of the essential concepts used to interrelate modelled and recorded behaviour. It also serves as a reference for assessing how conformance checking efforts could be applied in specific domains. Next, Part IIprovides readers with detailed insights into algorithms for conformance checking, including the most commonly used formal notions and their instantiation for specific analysis questions. Lastly, Part III highlights applications that help to make sense of conformance checking results, thereby providing a necessary next step to increase the value of a given process model. They help to interpret the outcomes of conformance checking and incorporate them by means of enhancement and repair techniques.

Providing the core building blocks of conformance checking and describing its main applications, this book mainly addresses students specializing in business process management, researchers entering process mining and conformance checking for the first time, and advanced professionals whose work involves process evaluation, modelling and optimization.

Further details about the book including hands-on tutorials can be found at http://www.conformancechecking.com