Udo Kannengiesser

Exception Handling Patterns for Process Modeling

Process modeling allows for analysis and improvement of processes that coordinate multiple people and tools working together to carry out a task. Process modeling typically focuses on the normative process, that is, how the collaboration transpires when everything goes as desired. Unfortunately, real-world processes rarely proceed that smoothly. A more complete analysis of a process requires that the process model also include details about what to do when exceptional situations arise. We have found that, in many cases, there are abstract patterns that capture the relationship between exception handling tasks and the normative process. Just as object-oriented design patterns facilitate the development, documentation, and maintenance of object-oriented programs, we believe that process patterns can facilitate the development, documentation, and maintenance of process models. In this paper, we focus on the exception handling patterns that we have observed over many years of process modeling. We describe these patterns using three process modeling notations: UML 2.0 Activity Diagrams, BPMN, and Little-JIL. We present both the abstract structure of the pattern as well as examples of the pattern in use. We also provide some preliminary statistical survey data to support the claim that these patterns are found commonly in actual use and discuss the relative merits of the three notations with respect to their ability to represent these patterns.

A function–behavior–structure ontology of processes

Abstract This paper presents how the function–behavior–structure (FBS) ontology can be used to represent processes despite its original focus on representing objects. The FBS ontology provides a uniform framework for classifying processes, and includes higher level semantics in their representation. We show that this ontology supports a situated view of processes based on a model of three interacting worlds. The situated FBS framework is then used to describe the situated design of processes.

Subject-Oriented Modeling and Execution of Multi-agent Business Processes

This paper addresses a gap in handling multi-agent business processes that has prevented their larger-scale adoption in practice: the lack of a conceptual modeling approach that is easily understandable by business domain experts and sufficiently formal for direct transformation into executable systems. The emerging paradigm of subject-oriented business process management (S-BPM), which has been evaluated through academic research and is increasingly deployed in commercial applications, has the potential to augment multi-agent system (MAS) models with a process-centric layer that preserves autonomy and concurrent interaction of agents as essential system characteristics. In this paper we provide an aligned meta-model and illustrate its operational benefits with examples from business process applications.

A Process Framework of Affordances in Design

Introduction One of the many goals of design research is to better understand the ways in which end users interact with the products of designing. This focus is not surprising—the ultimate measure of success for any design is the adoption by the user. The concept of affordance recently has been the focus of increased interest in the design research community because it captures well the relationship between human users and designed artifacts. It has been imported from cognitive science, where it was first introduced by the perceptual psychologist, James Gibson:1 The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.2

Commonalities Across Designing: Empirical Results

This paper presents empirical evidence of commonalities across designing that appear to be independent of the designers’ geographical location, expertise, discipline, the specific design task, the size and composition of the design team, and the length of the design session. Our evidence is founded on thirteen highly heterogeneous design case studies that differ along these dimensions but exhibit some commonalities. We analysed the results from protocols of these case studies produced by a variety of researchers, using a method that is based on the FBS framework and is independent of any domain- or situation-specific parameter. We found commonalities across all thirteen case studies, related to the first occurrence of design issues in the design process, and to the continuity and the rate with which design issues are generated. Our findings provide preliminary support for the claim that designing can be studied as a distinct human activity that appears in different expressions but shares the same fundamental characteristics.

The Function-Behaviour-Structure Ontology of Design

This chapter commences by introducing the background to the development of the Function-Behaviour-Structure (FBS) ontology. It then proceeds with an elaboration of the FBS ontology followed by the situated FBS framework which articulates a more detailed cognitive view. A series of exemplary empirical studies that use a coding scheme based on the FBS ontology is presented that demonstrates both the empirical support for the ontology and its applicability. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the role of this ontology and possible developments.

An architectural style for process-intensive web information systems

REpresentational State Transfer (REST) is the architecture style behind the World Wide Web (WWW), allowing for many desirable quality attributes such as adaptability and interoperability. However, as many process-intensive Web information systems do not make use of REST, they often do not achieve these qualities. This paper addresses this issue by proposing RESTful Business Processes (RESTfulBP), an architectural style that adapts REST principles to Web-based business processes. RESTfulBP views processes and activities as transferrable resources by representing them as process fragments associated with a set of standard operations. Distributed process fragments interoperate by adhering to these operations and exchanging process information. The process information contains basic workflow patterns that are used for dynamic process coordination at runtime. We validate our approach through an industry case study.

An ontology of situated design teams

Abstract This paper presents an ontological framework for situated design teams in which the team is both the subject and the object of designing. Team designing is modeled using the set of processes provided by the situated function–behavior–structure framework. This is a formal basis for understanding the drivers for change in the product to be designed and in the design team. We specifically focus on changes in a teams structure that emerge from interactions among individual team members and subteams.

Modelling Expertise Of Temporary Design Teams

This paper proposes a model of expertise of temporary design teams. We start by outlining a situated view of expertise as being grounded in individual experience, which emphasises its applicability and teleology. We use the construct of a computational agent to model the individual expert. We then show the advantages of the function-behaviour-structure (FBS) schema to represent the knowledge of a situated agent, which includes its knowledge about other agents. The ability of an agent to construct knowledge about the behaviour and parts of the knowledge of other agents has been found to be needed to allow social interaction among agents. Based on individual agents and their FBS views of one another, we then develop a model of expertise of temporary design teams that emerges from the interaction of individual experts. This bottom-up model is sensitive to changes in the composition of the team: some experts might leave the team while others join. However, the team members can usually establish the expertise of the new team without much effort as they can build upon their generalised knowledge gained from previously working in similar teams. We claim that our model provides a better understanding of team expertise and a basis for computational simulations of design teams.

Locating creativity in a framework of designing for innovation

This paper focuses on creativity in the process of designing as the foundation of potential innovations resulting from that process. Using an ontological framework that defines distinct stages in designing, it identifies the locations for creativity independently of their embodiment in human designers or computational tools. The paper shows that innovation, a consequence of creativity, can arise from a large variety of processes in designing.