=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-109/paper-1
|storemode=property
|title=Original call for participation
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-109/call.pdf
|volume=Vol-109
}}
==Original call for participation==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-109/call.pdf
www.dsv.su.se www.ibissoft.se
GBMP'02 Call for Participation
Ilia Bider and Paul Johannesson
Motivation
We live in the era of globalization of economy, which means that companies and
organizations are forced to compete not only locally, but in wider communities, e.g., on the
EU or world level. This situation came up partly because of new regulations that allow free
movement of capital, goods, and labor, partly due to new technologies, e.g., Internet. The
global economy affects not only the competition when selling goods and services, but also the
competition for skill labor, and investment capital. The new situation affects not only private
sector, but public sector as well, e.g., local communities compete for investors.
To survive and grow in the global economy, companies and organizations need to undertake
measures aimed at increasing their efficiency. One way to increase efficiency is via lowering
operational costs. Operational costs may be roughly divided into two categories: production
costs, and administrative costs. The latter include sales, marketing, personnel, etc. The ratio
between these two types of costs is approximately fifty-fifty.
In the last 50 years, a lot of research work has been done in the mathematical system theory
and theory of control. Introduction of the results from this research in practice has drastically
decreased the production costs. Most production processes are highly automated, and the use
of robots in industry is growing. Usually, there are not much reserves left to lower the
production costs.
For the administrative costs, the situation is quite different. Though the office workers and
sales personnel have got a lot of help from the modern computers, the office and sales
processes are far beyond the production process in the level of automation. The computers are
used in the office mainly to help in performing various activities, e.g. to write a letter, to print
an invoice, to complete a transaction, etc. The control of the office processes remains, to a
large extent, manual. There is a lot to gain if the control over administrative processes could
be automated, at least partially. Approaching the level of automation of the production
processes will drastically decrease administrative costs, thus making a company or
organization better equipped for competition in the global economy.
In order to automate an administrative process, otherwise called business process, we need to:
1. First, analyze and reengineer this business process. Reengineering is a mandatory step
because in the current practice, business processes are so unstructured that they do not
worth automation, or it is not possible to automate them at all. In many cases a process
should be engineered rather than reengineered.
2. Introduce a control system that ensures that the process is driven according to the
reengineered definition
The first step requires (1) formal methods of representing business processes (business
process modeling), and (2) methods for extracting information from the processes’
participants (to fill the formal model). The second step requires (3) formalization of methods
for business process control.
1
Workshop on Goal-Oriented Business Process Modeling
Currently, business process modeling, reengineering and control is being studied in the frame
of two research fields: BPR -Business Process Reengineering, and WFMS – Workflow
Management Systems. A lot of valuable research and practical work has been done in both
fields in the last 15 years. However, the focus in this research is mostly concentrated on
ordering the flow of activities, i.e., workflow. As a result:
1. A business process is represented as sequence of activities with brunches, loops, etc.,
i.e., some form of a graph.
2. The main questions asked when extracting information from the process’s participants
are: “What do you do next?”, “What happens next?”, “Who gets the work next?”.
3. Process control is focused at not allowing deviation from the predefined activities
flow.
The focus on activities ordering has its roots in modeling production processes where each
process is aimed at producing more or less the same physical product in a (relatively) large
quantity. The deviation from the standard pattern in such a process often results in discarding
an erroneous product. The theories, practical methods, and software tools based on the
workflow view work quite well for the production-like processes. However, application of
these methods and tools to the less structured processes (that does not have a standard pattern
of behavior, or often deviate from the standard pattern) gives rise to the famous problem of
workflow flexibility. So far, this problem has not been solved in a general way.
We believe that the solution of the flexibility problem lies in focusing on achieving the goals
of business processes rather than on activities ordering. Goal-oriented approach is less
common in research and practice, however, it gains more and more attention, see, for
example, [1,2,3].
Topics for discussion
The objective of the workshop is to discuss the main issues of business process analysis,
modeling, (re)engineering, and control from the goal-oriented point of view. The following
topics are of particular interest:
• Conceptual and formal representation of goals
• How to measure were we are (how long is to the goal?)
• How to track the movement to the goal
• Goal-oriented business process patterns – abstraction of goals rather than of sequences
of activities/events
• What questions to ask when doing business process-analysis
• Goal-oriented scenario techniques
• How to steer a business process to its goal
• How to deal with deviations due to unpredictable events or errors in measurements of
current position
2
However any other topics connected to the goal-oriented business process modeling are also
of interest.
In this workshop we do not focus on any particular method or technology. All possible
approaches (be it object-oriented, agent-oriented, based on Petri nets, etc.) to exploitation of
goal-oriented view on business processes are very welcome.
Note: Some useful definitions that concern business process modeling can be found in the
materials for discussions for our previous workshop on Practical Business Process Modeling:
http://www.ibissoft.se/pbpm/Concepts.htm
Submissions
Prospective workshop participants are invited to submit a position paper related to one (or
more) of the main topics. The submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee.
The selection will consider relevance to the main topics as well as potential to generate
relevant discussions.
We would very much like to see among the attendees not only technicians but also
professionals in business processes analysis and development. Both researches and
practitioners are welcome.
Two kinds of position papers would be accepted. The first kind is a submission for making a
presentation. Such submission should be devoted to a practical or theoretical topic that reveals
some type of connection between the notion of goal and the notion of business process. The
second kind is a submission for participating in the discussions. Such submission should
describe the relevant experience of the participant, and it should explain in what topics the
submitter is interested in and why.
Submissions (no more than 5 pages, please, make it short) should be sent by e-mail to
ilia@ibissoft.se in any of the following formats: HTML, PDF, ASCII, MSWord (please
mention version and platform). HTML and PDF submissions are preferred. Position papers
for making presentations should be received by June 21. We expect to receive position papers
with experience description by June 30. Papers that arrive after that will be considered based
on the room available.
Form
The aim of the workshop is discussions, rather than presentations. A position paper does not
necessarily need to include the answers to the problems of business process analysis,
reengineering, or control. A position paper that raises the relevant questions, describes
successful or unsuccessful practice, or experience will be welcome as well.
All position papers will be published on our website before the workshop, so that everybody
can get some knowledge about the problems that are important for other participants.
To facilitate interaction between the participants, the organizes will try to compile a list of
questions that are of common interest for the group. The list will be published on our website
well in advance of the workshop. Any proposals of what should be included in the list will be
Workshop on Goal-Oriented Business Process Modeling
appreciated. Participants who would like to answer those questions before the workshop will
have the possibility to do it in writing. The written answers will be added to the workshop
site.
Expected Results
Based on the discussions, a working document will be produced to summarize the results and
outline the promising directions in the field.
After the workshop, the workshops materials together with a selection of the best papers will
be considered for publishing in a special issue of an international journal.
Previous workshops
The current event continues the series of international workshops started in 1998:
First workshop - Workshop on Object-Oriented Business Process Modeling (OOBPM'98) at
ECOOP’98, see: http://www.ibissoft.se/ooworkshop.htm. Organizes: Ilia Bider and Maxim
Khomyakov.
Second workshop – Workshop on Practical Business Process Modeling (PBPM*00) at
CAiSE*00, see: http://www.ibissoft.se/pbpm/pbpm00.htm. Organizes: Maxim Khomyakov
and Ilia Bider
Organizers
Ilia Bider is a cofounder and Director R&D of IbisSoft (Stockholm, Sweden). He has
combined experience of over twenty years of research (in the fields of computational
linguistics, databases, business modeling), and practical work (business analysis, software
design, coding, software sales, and marketing).
Paul Johannesson holds a position as professor at the Royal Institute of Technology, where he
works in the area of information systems. Johannesson has published work on federated
information systems, translation between data models, languages for conceptual modeling,
schema integration, the use of linguistic instruments in information systems, and analysis
patterns in systems design.
Program Committee
Jean Bézivin, Université de Nantes, France
Ilia Bider, IbisSoft, Sweden
Paul Johannesson, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
John Krogstie, SINTEF Telecom and Informatics, Norway
Peter Kueng, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Colette Rolland, Univeristé de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France
Michael Rosemann, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
4
References
1. Kueng, P., and Kawalek, P. “Goal-Based Business Process Models: Creation and
Evaluation”, Business Process Management Journal, 1997, Vol. 3, No.1, pp.17-38.
2. Mylopoulos, J., Castro, J., ”Tropos: A Framework for Requirements-Driven Software
Development”, in Brinkkemper, S. et. al. (Eds), Information Systems Engineering, pp.
261-274, Springer, 2000.
3. Khomyakov M., and Bider I. Achieving Workflow Flexibility through Taming the Chaos.
OOIS 2000 - 6th international conference on object oriented information systems.
Springer, 2001. Reprinted in the Journal of Conceptual Modeling, August 2001:
http://www.inconcept.com/JCM/August2001/bider.html