Vanessa Tavares Nunes

A context-based model for Knowledge Management embodied in work processes

Knowledge Management has become a prominent subject for organizations, but often the information that flows in a well-defined design work process is not characterized and treated in such a way as to promote its reuse. We argue that context is a fundamental information resource for improving how activities and interactions are understood and carried on. Our premise is that it is important for organizational learning that decisions, solutions, discussions and actions executed in work processes should be retrievable. We describe an environment that supports the cycle of creating and dealing with information about activities and interactions, focusing on their context. A formal ontology-based representation of context is presented to support the use of this environment. Two case studies are described and their results analyzed. The goal of this paper is to discuss and specify mechanisms that can be used to collect contextual information within such an environment.

Dynamic process adaptation: A context-aware approach

Dynamism of day-to-day activities in organizations is inextricably linked and there is a variety of information, insight and reasoning being processed between people and systems, in carrying out a business process. We argue that flexibility in processes could be managed in real time, using context information collected in the work environment. This paper proposes a context management architecture approach that aims to improve and automate dynamic process adaptation. We explain how process adaptation may occur in real time and discuss a scenario for this proposal

A formal representation for context-aware business processes

Abstract A business process is a set of activities performed in a coordinated manner within an organizational and technical environment that is aimed toward a business goal. The flexibility of a process is related to an understanding of the unexpected events that occur when people, systems and resources interact and require adjustments. Thus, business processes must be designed to respond to information about different events and their specificity. This information defines what the literature calls “context”. To broaden the perception of context in the case of a business process, this work proposes an approach to characterize the context of a business process activity in a given domain through conceptual models structured in layers. A case study was conducted to evaluate the proposal, which provided evidence of the applicability of the model.

Formalizing the situation of a business process activity

Business processes are dynamic and constantly evolving. Contextual elements that had not yet been identified and represented can arise and influence the execution of each process instance in diverse manners. In this scenario, the identification of these elements is considered of great importance. This paper proposes a formalism for context associated with business processes that intends to identify the situation of an activity in order to subsidize decisions to be taken within the execution of a process.

Capturing Context about Group Design Processes

Knowledge management has become a prominent subject for organizations, but often characterization and treatment of the information that flows in a well-defined design work process are muddled. We argue that context is the fundamental information resource for better understanding and carrying on activities and interactions. We propose an environment to support the cycle of creating and dealing with information about activities and interaction, focusing on their context. The goal of this paper is to discuss and specify mechanisms that can be used to collect context information within this environment.

Context in Knowledge-Intensive Collaborative Work

Knowledge management has become a prominent subject for organizations, but often characterization and treatment of information are still chaotic or even left aside. We argue that context is the fundamental information resource for better understanding and carrying out of activities and interactions. The goal of this paper is to propose the architecture of an environment supporting the cycle of organizing and using knowledge through context

Learning context to adapt business processes

Dynamic adaptation is the customization of a business process to make it applicable to a particular situation at any time of its life cycle. Adapting requires experience, and involves knowledge about various, internal and external, aspects of business. Thus, we argue for the application of adaptation rules, considering the context of a particular process instance. Furthermore, we state that a context-based adaptation environment should go beyond, and learn from decisions, as well as continuously identify new unforeseen situations (context definitions). The aim of this paper is to present a computational engine that infers the need to update situations and adaptation rules, suggesting changes to them. An application scenario is presented to discuss the usage of the proposal.

Mediating process adaptation through a goal-oriented context-aware approach

Complexity and dynamism of day-to-day activities in organizations are inextricably linked, one impacting the other, increasing the challenges for constant adaptation on the way to organize work to address emerging demands. Market is demanding systems that are aware of organizations processes and able to evolve and adapt to new situations in everyday working activities. We argue that flexibility in processes could be managed in real time, by PAIS (Process-aware Information Systems), using context information collected in the work environment. This paper proposes CGAdapt, a context management architecture approach that aims to improve and automate dynamic process adaptation. We explain how process adaptation may occur in real time through an existent scenario using this proposal and discuss the value of context-awareness to reason about process alternative adaptations in a goal oriented approach.

Increasing Flexibility in Process Deployment with the Process Beans Composer

Organizations are increasingly interested in improving their business processes. One strategy for achieving this improvement has been to model their business processes and to automate them using workflow technology. One of the difficulties in this approach is that organizations must adapt their defined processes to each different situation and that workflow systems are yet not flexible enough to allow changes for each new process instance to be enacted. This work proposes a strategy for defining process components or building blocks already implemented in workflow systems which will assist process definition, adaptation and use in organizations. A tool called Beans Composer was implemented to achieve this objective

E-gov Transparency Implementation Using Multi-agent System: a Brazilian Study-Case in Lawsuit Distribution Process

Electronic government (e-gov) processes need transparency in order to allow citizens to access, understand and verify valuable information in a democratic society. As a crosscutting characteristic, transparency should be present in different e-gov perspectives, such as business processes, information, business rules and information systems. Thus, in this article, we present a multi-agent system (MAS) to implement transparent lawsuit distribution process. We demonstrate that the MAS paradigm emphasizes the organizational operating environment and the information systems alignment, being adequate to implement process transparency under a Brazilian study-case in lawsuit distribution that used real data from the Superior Labor Court of Brazil. The Tropos agent-oriented software development methodology is used to define the hard and soft goals of agents. The MAS architecture and the prototype were defined and implemented using JADE Framework.