Frank Dengler

Key challenges for enabling agile BPM with social software

Business Process Management is called agile when it is able to react quickly and adequately to internal and external events. Agile Business Process Management requires putting the life cycle of business processes on a new paradigm. It is advocated in this paper that social software allows us to satisfy the key requirements for enabling agile BPM by applying the four features of social software: weak ties, social production, egalitarianism and mutual service provision. Organizational and semantic integration and responsiveness (of the business processes engineering, execution and management activities) have been identified as the main requirements for implementing an agile BPM life cycle. Social software may be used in the BPM life cycle in several manners and using numerous approaches. This paper presents seven among them and then analyzes the ‘support’ effects between those approaches and the underlying social software features, and the three requirements for Agile BPM. Copyright

Social Software for Coordination of Collaborative Process Activities

Recently, a trend toward collaborative, on-line business process modeling can be observed that is also emphasized by several initiatives. Social software has the potential satisfying such a collaborative modeling. It provides tools to collaboratively exchange and share information resources among peers. Despite of the potential that social software has, it is insufficiently used as work resource (e.g., for help requests or partner search) due to a low integration of social software into the workflow management system. The aim of this paper is to exploit Wikis and social networks for the coordination of collaborative process activities. Wikis are suggested in order to reduce the model design phase. A technique will be introduced that allows visualizing a process model from Wiki pages. The connection of process activities with social networks supports browsing for suitable process collaborators. A coordination model will be introduced that governs the collaboration.

Co-creation of Value in IT Service Processes Using Semantic MediaWiki

Enterprises are substituting their own IT-Systems by services provided by external providers. This provisioning of services may be done in an industrialized way, separating the service provider from the consumer. However, using industrialized services diminishes the capability to differentiate from competitors. To counter this, collaborative service processes based on the co-creation of value between service providers and prosumers are of huge importance. The approach presented shows how the co-creation of value in IT-service processes can profit from social software, using the example of the Semantic MediaWiki.

Comparison of wiki-based process modeling systems

As traditional process elicitation methods are expensive and time consuming, a trend toward collaborative, user-centric, on-line business process modeling can be observed. A common proposal in this area is the use of a semantic wiki-based light-weight knowledge capturing tool for collaborative process development. Although different frameworks have been proposed, nobody has compared the systems against existing requirements for collaborative maturing of processes. To address this issue we provide a comparison framework on the basis of these rewquierments, which we used to compare existing approaches.

Wiki-based maturing of process descriptions

Traditional process elicitation methods are expensive and time consuming. Recently, a trend toward collaborative, user-centric, online business process modeling can be observed. Current social software approaches, satisfying such a collaborative modeling, mostly focus on the graphical development of processes and do not consider existing textual process description like HowTos or guidelines. We address this issue by combining graphical process modeling techniques with a wiki-based light-weight knowledge capturing approach and a background semantic knowledge base. Our approach enables the collaborative maturing of process descriptions with a graphical representation, formal semantic annotations, and natural language. Existing textual process descriptions can be translated into graphical descriptions and formal semantic annotations. Thus, the textual and graphical process descriptions are made explicit and can be further processed. As a result, we provide a holistic approach for collaborative process development that is designed to foster knowledge reuse and maturing within the system.

Increasing Predictability and Sharing Tacit Knowledge in Electronic Design

The chapter reports on the use of knowledge process learning, articulation and sharing technologies developed in the ACTIVE project for increasing the performance and decreasing the ramp-up efforts of knowledge workers in engineering design projects. Attention is paid to the specific characteristics of knowledge processes in microelectronic engineering design, of which one of the most important is the absence of predefined workflows. Instead of following rigid working patterns, the knowledge workers exploit their tacit knowledge and experience for finding the most productive way through the “terrain” of the possible process continuations. The knowledge workers in this domain are design project managers, designers, and design support engineers. Process knowledge is mined from distributed heterogeneous datasets, fused, and used for visualizing the design project plan and execution information. The visualization suggests optimized performance, points to the bottlenecks in executions, and fosters collaboration in development teams. A project navigation paradigm is developed that helps knowledge workers more easily accomplish their work. We describe the software prototype architecture and implementation. Validation results are presented which indicate that the solution is helpful in providing expert assistance to design project managers performing their typical tasks of project planning and execution control.

Articulation and Sharing of Distributed Design Project and Process Knowledge

The paper reports on the work in the case study of the ACTIVE project on the use of the combination of knowledge process learning, articulation and sharing technologies for increasing the performance and decreasing the ramp-up efforts in engineering design projects. This knowledge is mined from distributed heterogeneous datasets, fused, and further used for visualizing design project plan information in a way that suggests optimized project plans and fosters collaboration on these knowledge structures in development teams. Software demonstrator architecture, implementation and validation are presented. Validation results indicate that the solution is effective in providing expert assistance to design project managers in performing their typical planning tasks.

Managing, Sharing and Optimising Informal Knowledge Processes

In the last recent years, as a consequence of the increasing exchange of information and collaborative decision among knowledge workers, the interest on informal knowledge-based processes has risen. Those processes are part of the hidden intelligence in companies which is formed by the tacit knowledge of individuals. This intelligence marks the productivity of knowledge workers and critically determines the eventual success or failure of a corporation in the knowledge society. Unfortunately, knowledge processes cannot be managed following the current tools and standards from other related fields (e.g. business process management paradigm) because the nature of both kinds of processes is dramatically different.

Wikiing pro: semantic wiki-based process editor

Recently, a trend toward collaborative, user-centric, on-line process modeling can be observed. Unfortunately, current social software approaches mostly focus on the graphical development of processes and do not consider existing textual process description like HowTos or guidelines. We address this issue by combining graphical process modeling techniques with a wiki-based light-weight knowledge capturing approach and a background semantic knowledge base. Our approach enables the collaborative maturing of process descriptions with a graphical representation, formal semantic annotations, and natural language. By translating existing textual process descriptions into graphical descriptions and formal semantic annotations, we provide a holistic approach for collaborative process development that is designed to foster knowledge reuse and maturing within the system.

International workshop on semantic technologies for information-integrated collaboration (STIIC 2011)

The workshop provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss their ideas related to the usage of semantic technologies for information-integrated collaboration. We address a wide array of questions concerning two fundamental design problems arising when realizing integrated collaboration solutions, namely semantic inaccessibility and logical disconnectedness. The submitted papers show that semantic technologies tackle these problems, and provide an important collaboration-enabling mechanism for the emerging net-centric systems and the information grid.