Erik Perjons

Design principles for process modelling in enterprise application integration

There is a growing need for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies, which align the applications of an organisation to its business processes. Such technologies require an adequate methodological support so that well-structured and easily understandable models can be constructed. In this paper, such a methodological support is proposed by introducing principles for the design, validation and presentation of process models and associated data models. By applying these principles, we obtain different views of the models, and thereby facilitate the use of common models for different stakeholders, e.g. business managers, designers and operators.

Towards a Framework for Comparing Process Modelling Languages

The increasing interest in process engineering and application integration has resulted in the appearance of various new process modelling languages. Understanding and comparing such languages has therefore become a major problem in information systems research and development. We suggest a framework to solve this problem involving several instruments: a general process meta-model with a table, an analysis of the event concept, and a classification of concepts according to the interrogative pronouns: what, how, why, who, when, and where. This framework can be used for several purposes, such as translating between languages or verifying that relevant organisational aspects have been captured. To validate the framework, three different process modelling languages have been compared: Business Modelling Language (BML), Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) and UML State Diagrams.

Towards a formal definition of goal‐oriented business process patterns

Purpose - Organizations of today are becoming ever more focused on their business processes. This has resulted in an increasing interest in using best practices for business process re-engineering. ...

Value and Goal Driven Design of E-Services

E-services are used as the cornerstones for modeling interaction points of cooperating IT systems, within and between enterprises. So far, research and development of e-services have mainly focused on an operational perspective, such as the development of standards for message exchanges and service coordination. However, on a strategic level, the success of e-services depends on its ability to work as a catalyst for the business values that are being exchanged. In this paper, we present an approach that utilize value and goal models as the foundation for designing e-services. The approach can be used to strategically ensure that the developed e-services support the desired business values for involved actors. A case study from the Swedish health sector is used to ground and apply the presented approach.

Design Science Research as Movement Between Individual and Generic Situation-Problem–Solution Spaces

Design science is an emerging research paradigm in the Information Systems area. A design science project typically includes the activities of problem analysis, requirements definition, artifact development, and evaluation. These activities are not to be seen as sequential but can be carried out in any order. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptualization and formalization of design science research that show the possible ways in which a design science project can be carried out. The proposal is based on the state oriented view on business processes and suggests that design science research can be viewed as movements in a space of situations, problems and solutions.

Introducing a process manager in healthcare: an experience report

To be efficient and patient focused, healthcare units need to be process oriented and integrated with the processes and IT systems of other healthcare units. A process manager facilitates integration of different systems by using graphical and executable process models. The process manager also communicates directly with healthcare personnel via desktop computers and mobile devices. This article reports on a Swedish project where a prototype system was developed and tested with several healthcare units. The experience shows several advantages and opportunities. For example, current information about patients can be transferred automatically between healthcare units; resource intensive manual tasks can be replaced with automated tasks; and long-term process monitoring and quality assessment can be enabled. However, introducing a process manager requires attention to issues of security, ethics and legality. Healthcare units may also show differences in security awareness and IT maturity, which could obstruct the introduction of a process manager.

Design Principles for Application Integration

Application integration is a major trend in information technology today. In this paper we present a number of principles for the design, validation and presentation of process models which align the applications of an organisation to its business processes. The design principles are divided into two groups. The first group consists of guidelines that obtain different views of the models and thereby facilitate for different stakeholders, e. g. business managers, designers and operators, to use common models and process languages. The second group of principles consists of guidelines to check the completeness of the process models. The paper also presents a process description language, BML (Business Model Language), which is tailored for modelling application integration.

In Search of the Holy Grail: Integrating social software with BPM Experience report

The paper is devoted to finding a view on business processes that helps to introduce into business process support systems a notion of shared spaces widely used in social software. The paper presents and analyses the experience of the authors from a number of development projects aimed at building business process support systems. The authors define a role that shared spaces can play in business process support and set some requirements on the shared space structure based on this role. They then analyze their projects in order to show how these requirements can be met and describe what practical results have been achieved in each project.

Process Oriented Information Systems Architectures in Healthcare

In order to create value for customers efficiently and to avoid unnecessary or redundant activity, organizations need IT support that interacts well with their business processes. In addition, healthcare organizations require transparent communication between the various actors and between IT systems. A new type of process oriented integration architecture has been developed using software devices known as process managers. These use simple graphical models to visualize business process integration and facilitate its management and monitoring. This article discusses the benefits and difficulties of introducing process manager technology into healthcare, based on a project to integrate IT systems over the patient process and across several organizations. Particular problems are caused by communication across organizational boundaries, e.g. due to security issues. However, the technology is able to manage and monitor processes and to make communication simpler and saf

Modeling an Agile Enterprise: Reconciling Systems and Process Thinking

Selection of an enterprise modeling paradigm depends on the practical task the modeling project is trying to achieve. For example, modeling in the frame of Enterprise Architecture paradigm is, usually, aimed at alignment of the enterprise components, such as mission, vision, business processes, services and IT systems. Modeling in the frame of Business Process Management is aimed at process improvement/optimization, and modeling in the Systems Thinking paradigm is aimed at getting a holistic view on the dynamic behavior of the enterprise. This paper suggests a new approach to enterprise modeling that combine these approaches in order to reveal and improve enterprise agility. It is based on the systemic view of business processes, and it presents an enterprise as a three-layered model consisting of assets, sensors and business process instances. Elements of this model can be recursively decomposed, which allows for different levels of details when modeling an enterprise.