Ricardo Martinho

A Two-Step Approach for Modelling Flexibility in Software Processes

In this paper, we present a two-step approach for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes: (1) senior process engineers express which, where and how changes can be applied onto process elements, (2) other process participants can easily identify which changes they are allowed to perform, and act accordingly. To support this, we propose a flexibility meta-model and modelling language, and a software process modelling tool called FlexEPFC. Finally, we compare FlexEPFC with three other prominent process-aware tools: SPADE, JIL/Juliette and Jazz.

Healthcare information systems promotion: from an improved management of telemedicine processes to home healthcare processes

Crucial advancements in science education and information technology provide promising resources that require many academic disciplines to work together. Innovations of Information Systems (IS) and Technology (IT) offer major potential to improve quality and efficiency of care delivery, enable new forms of healthcare organizations, enhance interactions between patients and healthcare providers, and transform care delivery. Closely linked to the integration into a global world, our work is focusing on electronic health (e-Health). Worldwide, there have been some pilot projects on Telemedicine and e-Health and researchers are working to advance and support e-Health services. Unfortunately, this still suffers from problems of understanding, lack of techniques and legal texts, huge costs, and it is still rarely used especially in Tunisia. Accordingly, fully exploiting the power of IS/IT within the healthcare sector requires overcoming significant challenges. To tackle these issues and following some previous works, our research aims at identifying the main challenges behind home healthcare processes, and to find better ways of improving them through the use of BPM-related technologies. We briefly describe our experience in this kind of processes by presenting our experience with telemedicine processes and the use of Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0 process models. We have tested our telemedicine processes through the Activiti BPMS, which proved its usefulness to enhance the design and therefore the implementation of telemedicine processes. From this experience, we derive the main challenges of using a BPM approach to implement home healthcare processes, and propose also the research questions that can enhance this implementation.

Using the semantic web to define a language for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes

Software processes and corresponding models are dynamic entities that must evolve to cope with changes occurred in the enacting process, the software development organisation, the market and the methodologies used to produce software. However, in the everyday practice, software team members do not want total flexibility. They rather prefer to learn about and follow previously defined controlled flexibility, that is, advices on which, where, how and by whom process models and related instances can change/adapt. Process engineers can express these advices within a process model with a domain-specific language (DSL), which complements the core process modelling language with additional controlled flexibility information. Then, software team members can browse and learn on this information in process models and instances, and be guided when performing changes. In this study, the authors propose the use of the semantic web and associated ontology-based technologies to develop and evolve their controlled flexibility DSL for software processes. They use an ontology-based format to define the controlled flexibility-related concepts, descriptions and axioms that specify the formal semantics of their DSL. In addition, the authors provide concrete mappings between these ontology concepts and a unified modelling language class-based DSL metamodel and describe how it supports changes made in the ontology.

FlexSPMF: A Framework for Modelling and Learning Flexibility in Software Processes

Software processes are dynamic entities that are often changed and evolved by skillful knowledge workers such as software development team members. Consequently, flexibility is one of the most important features within software process representations and related tools. However, in the everyday practice, team members do not wish for total flexibility. They rather prefer to learn about and follow previously defined advices on which, where and how they can change/adapt process representations. In this paper we present FlexSPMF: a framework for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes. It comprises three main contributions: 1) identifying a core set of flexibility concepts; 2) extending a Process Modelling Language (PML)s metamodel with these concepts; and 3) providing modelling resources to this extended PML. This enables process engineers to define and publish software process models with additional (textual/graphical) flexibility information. Other team members can then visualise and learn about this information, and change processes accordingly.

Evaluating the Reliability of Ambient-Assisted Living Business Processes

Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL) systems provide a wide range of applications in order to improve the quality of life of patients. These systems commonly gather several components such as sensors, gateways, Information Systems or even actuators. Reliability of these components is of most importance, mainly due to the impact that a failure can have on a monitored patient. In spite of the existing reliability evaluations and countermeasures that can be associated with an AAL system component, we need to take into account the overall reliability for the several activities and interactions that exist between all the AAL system components, for each time a certain value is registered or a certain alert is triggered. In this paper, we propose a new approach to calculate the overall reliability of an AAL system. We take a Business Process Management (BPM) approach to model the activities and interactions between AAL components, using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard. By extending the BPMN standard to include reliability information, we can derive the overall reliability value of a certain AAL BPMN process, and help healthcare managers to better allocate the appropriate resources (including hardware or health care professionals) to improve responsiveness of care to patients.

Modelling and learning controlled flexibility in software processes

Software processes are dynamic entities that are often changed and evolved by skilful knowledge workers such as software development team members. Consequently, flexibility is one of the most important features within software process representations and related tools. However, in the everyday practice, team members do not wish for total flexibility. They rather prefer to learn about and follow previously defined advices on which, where and how they can change/adapt process representations. In this paper, we present FlexSPMF: a framework for modelling controlled flexibility in software processes. It comprises three main contributions: 1) identifying a core set of flexibility concepts; 2) extending a process modelling languages (PML) metamodel with these concepts; 3) providing modelling resources to this extended PML. This enables process engineers to define and publish software process models with additional (textual/graphical) flexibility information. Other team members can then visualise and learn about this information and change processes accordingly.

Towards a Business Process Management Governance Approach Using Process Model Templates and Flexibility

Organizations that include several organizational units with similar business processes often suffer, with time, from the proliferation of processes variant models that significantly deviate from the original (to be followed) one. Take, for instance, student enrolment processes on distinct faculties of the same university, or healthcare processes of a National Health Service across distinct health centers. This can lead to poor global (process) management, since measuring and improving processes can be difficult with too many variants of the same business process. Related works analyse the generalisation and flexibility aspects of process models and related variants, but do not deal with the overall process model lifecycle, especially for this kind of organizations. This paper introduces a novel approach for the Governance and continuous improvement of process models for this kind of organizations. The approach is based on the general Business Process Management (BPM) cycle for process models, proposing concrete techniques for the phases of evaluation, classification and analysis between real and concrete variant models from each organizational unit. It includes the use of similarity metrics and flexibility in business processes, and the main output is a continuously improved template process model. This template foresees a common process part (best practice-based) including process elements collected from the process model variants verified in organizational units, and a flexible part, referring to possible (controlled) deviations that can be tolerated by the organizations headquarters. This approach enhances overall business process management and associated resources by enforcing uniform (good) behavior across similar organizational units. We present the results of our approach applied to a real-world case study of home-healthcare related business process models.

Text Mining Applied to Electronic Medical Records: A Literature Review

The analysis of medical records is a major challenge, considering they are generally presented in plain text, have a very specific technical vocabulary and are nearly always unstructured. It is an interdisciplinary work that requires knowledge from several fields. The analysis may have several goals, such as assistance on clinical decision, classification of medical procedures, and to support hospital management decisions. This work presents the concepts involved, the relevant existent related work, and the main open issues for future research within the analysis of electronic medical records, using data and text mining techniques. It provides a comprehensive contextualization to all those who wish to perform an analytical work of medical records, enabling the identification of fruitful research fields. With the digitalization of medical records and the large amount of medical data available, this is an area of wide research potential.

Quality Management: Concepts and Approaches for Software Projects

In a world of growing competitiveness, ”quality” is a main subject. On recent years, there has been a trend towards the improvement of software projects’ quality. This means improving not only the final software products, but especially the quality of leadership and of project management. It is now recognized that the quality of software products and services can be improved if quality management is accomplished according to the unique characteristics and complexity of each project. In this paper we present the main concepts of quality management, as also some approaches of software quality assurance.

Ad-hoc changes in IoT-aware business processes

The Internet of Things makes it possible to adapt the behaviour of business processes in response to real-time context updates. In addition, physical items can run and validate parts of the business processes and optimise their execution, while reducing message transmissions. State-of-the-art event-driven, service-oriented architecture approaches contribute to enabling inter-organisational collaboration and interoperability of heterogeneous hardware, but their applicability is limited to preplanned, well-structured processes. We take a step forward by supporting ad-hoc changes within business processes, considering changes in the state of the Things; likewise, whenever needed, the software controlling the behaviour of sensors may be dynamically reconfigured as a result of changes in the functional specifications of business processes.