Marielba Zacarias

Approaching process mining with sequence clustering: experiments and findings

Sequence clustering is a technique of bioinformatics that is used todiscover the properties of sequences by grouping them into clusters and assigningeach sequence to one of those clusters. In business process mining, the goal is alsoto extract sequence behaviour from an event log but the problem is oftensimplified by assuming that each event is already known to belong to a givenprocess and process instance. In this paper, we describe two experiments wherethis information is not available. One is based on a real-world case study ofobserving a software development team for three weeks. The other is based onsimulation and shows that it is possible to recover the original behaviour in a fullyautomated way. In both experiments, sequence clustering plays a central role.

A Role-Based Framework for Business Process Modeling

Business objects are object-oriented representations of the concepts of interest in an organization, such as activities, resources and actors. Business objects collaborate with one another in order to achieve business goals, showing different behavior and properties according to each specific collaboration context. This means the same business object may be perceived differently depending on the business objects it is collaborating with. However, most approaches to business process modeling do not separate the collaborative aspects of a business object from its internal aspects. To cope with such issues, this paper makes use of role modeling to separate these concerns while increasing the understandability and reusability of business process models. This approach makes use of object-oriented concepts to separate a business process model into a business object model and a role model. The business object models deals with specifying the structure and intrinsic behavior of business objects, while the role model specifies its collaborative aspects.

Modeling contexts for business process oriented knowledge support

In this paper, we propose an organizational model to describe the execution of business activities. The model offers a dynamic, actor centered, context based and business process oriented perspective of the organization that explicitly addresses the information and collaboration requirements derived from human multi-tasking capabilities. Actors are approached as a network of contexts managed by an “operating system”. Three kinds of actors are defined; human, business process and organization actor. Two context types are introduced. An action context defines the specific behavior and information needs of a human actor performing a task under a given role, at particular time intervals. Interaction contexts support and regulate activity-related interactions among action contexts. This modeling approach seeks to facilitate a personalized, proactive and timely knowledge support to human business actors. We illustrate these ideas with working examples.

Adding a Human Perspective to Enterprise Architectures

Enterprise modeling, commonly supported by enterprise architecture frameworks, has proved to be an effective communication tool that facilitates the development of applications aligned with the business. These modeling frameworks are concerned with organizations design rather than its actual implementation. We argue that modeling the actual implementation of organizations can be a valuable communication tool not only for systems development but also for organizational analysts, managers and workers. However, this kind of usage requires the inclusion of a human perspective in current enterprise architectures. In this paper, we propose to extend the CEO enterprise architecture with a human view based on a conceptual model consistent with contemporary paradigms of organizational science. The proposal is illustrated with examples drawn from a case study.

Collaborative maintenance of business process models

Enterprise modelling helps improving individual and organisational self-awareness by allowing sharing knowledge about the organisation among its human actors through graphical representations. In order to achieve this goal, enterprise models must not only offer a trustworthy and reliable representation of different enterprise concerns, but such representation must be up-to-date. The work presented in this paper defines a collaborative ‘as-is’ business process model updating process that uses the annotation mechanism to create interaction contexts and enable business actors to communicate their knowledge about organisational processes turning it explicit and to discuss existing process representations in order to update them. The proposed approach allows actors to act as active updaters and modellers of the as-is business process model by comparing modelled with actually executed activities. The benefits of this approach have been gathered through several case studies in real organisational environment where a collaborative enterprise modelling tool was deployed to support the defined process.

Business Alignment Methodology: The Discovery Phase

Current business process modeling methodologies offer little guidance regarding how to discover and maintain business process models aligned with their actual execution. This paper describes how to achieve this goal by uncovering, supervising and improving business process models based on actual work practices, using the Business Alignment Methodology BAM. BAM aims at enabling business process modeling, supervision and improvement through the distinction of two dimensions; 1 business processes and 2 work practices. BAM encompasses three phases; 1 Business Process Discovery, 2 Business Process Supervision and 3 Business Process Assessment and Improvement. This paper illustrates the business discovery phase of BAM with a case study in a real organizational setting.

PROASIS: As-Is Business Process Model Maintenance

Business process modeling must offer a trustworthy, reliable and updated representation of different enterprise concerns. Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that model maintenance is a difficult task and most of the times modeling efforts in companies are limited to specific projects occurring at a particular time. After that, models just “sit on the shelf”. This paper defines an “as-is” model continuous updating process that uses the annotation mechanism to create interaction contexts enabling business actors (1) to communicate and explicit their knowledge about processes and about their own work, and (2) to discuss existing process representations. To support the as-is model updating process in real organizational environment a prototype tool has been developed. This approach has demonstrated that organizational actors, since provided with a process and supporting tool, can act as active updaters of business process models by comparing the modeled with actually executed activities, becoming themselves organizational modelers.

Improving accessibility of mobile devices with EasyWrite

This paper describes the development process of EasyWrite, a text-entry method for mobile devices that allows people with hand coordination problems to use small computer devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs, or other touchscreen machines. This text-entry method aims at improving typing accuracy and reducing frustration of people affected by this motor disability when using small devices. EasyWrite was developed following an iterative and user-centred process. Starting from requirements elicited from observing potential users with mild and moderate motor disabilities and information provided by a literature review, a low-fidelity prototype was built and evaluated. This early prototype was refined throughout several design and evaluation iterations. Its current state is a functional prototype that works on Android phones. The functional prototype usability was evaluated through user tests. The result of this process is a small virtual keyboard for mobile devices that has less and bigger keys as compared to other onscreen keyboards. The concept of EasyWrite is largely based on the notion of scanning group systems, but it allows users to navigate directly through groups and subgroups of characters by tapping on directional keys in order to find the desired character rather than waiting for a visual cursor to advance through the options, one at a time, at a specific time rate. Though at its current stage the method proposed by EasyWrite shows some limitations, it appears to be appropriate for users with moderate motor disabilities. For this group of people, user test results indicate that EasyWrite could be a more adequate text-entry method than the one provided by standard keyboards, both physical and onscreen, commonly found in mobile devices.

Integrating engineering, cognitive and social approaches for a comprehensive modeling of organizational agents and their contexts

Organizational models produced within computer science fields have proved to be effective communication tools in developing shared understandings of the design of organizations and systems. We argue that these models can also be valuable in capturing the actual implementation of organizations. However, this kind of usage requires the development of enterprise representations that (1) acknowledge the complexity of organizations and its agents and (2) are able of capturing the situated and dynamic behavior of organizational agents. This paper describes how engineering, cognitive and social approaches to context are integrated in a conceptual framework to model organizational agents and their contexts of interaction to address these issues. This integration is illustrated with examples from a case study.

BAM - Business Alignment Methodology

Information flows across the organization are complex and procedures employed to understand, share and control organizational knowledge and experiences should be properly supported by collaborative environments. Nevertheless, few collaborative methodologies had been proposed to describe and evolve business processes. In the future, business processes models should be the result of cross-team and cross-departmental collaboration, with involved business people sharing their personal knowledge and formalizing it. This paper focuses on a methodology for business process discovery and the importance to integrate local information into coherent and sound process definitions. Business Alignment Methodology (BAM) is a methodology that provides guidance about how organizational practices and knowledge are gathered to contribute for business process improvement against current BPM approaches.