Browsing by Author "Domingos, Dulce"
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- Ad-hoc changes in IoT-aware business processesPublication . Domingos, Dulce; Martins, Francisco; Martinho, Ricardo; Silva, MárioThe 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.
- CF4BPMN: A BPMN Extension for Controlled Flexibility in Business ProcessesPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Domingos, Dulce; Varajão, JoãoThe need for flexibility in business process languages and tools has evolved over the past few decades, from totally rigid approaches, to totally flexible ones. The need to allow process designers to control this flexibility has risen due to the fact that, in the everyday practice, people do not wish for total flexibility. They rather prefer to be guided, even when they feel the need to change some part of business process. In this paper we propose CF4BPMN, a BPMN language extension to allow modeling and execution of controlled flexibility in business processes. Using this extension, process designers can express how a certain process element can or cannot be changed in execution time, taking into account their experience or other organizational restriction. Then, other process participants can visually learn and follow the advised changes onto a business process in a controlled manner.
- Evaluating the Reliability of Ambient-Assisted Living Business ProcessesPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Domingos, Dulce; Respício, AnaAmbient-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.
- FlexSPMF: A Framework for Modelling and Learning Flexibility in Software ProcessesPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Varajão, João; Domingos, DulceSoftware 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.
- Goals and Requirements for Supporting Controlled Flexibility in Software ProcessesPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Domingos, Dulce; Varajão, JoãoSoftware processes are dynamic entities that are often changed and evolved by software development team members. Consequently, flexibility is one of the most important features within software processes and related tools. However, in the everyday practice, team members do not wish for total flexibility. They prefer to learn about and follow controlled flexibility advice, that is, previously defined information on which, where, how and by whom they can change software process representations to match real-world situations. In this paper, the authors define a set of goals and requirements for a language and supporting software tool to control the flexibility within software processes. They follow a two-step approach, where 1) process engineers use the language constructs and supporting tool to define controlled flexibility-related information within software process models, and 2) software team members browse and learn from this information, and perform changes accordingly.
- Goals for an IoT Context-Based Process Modelling Language Regarding LogisticsPublication . Ferreira, Pedro Henrique; Martinho, Ricardo; Domingos, DulceThe Internet of Things (IoT) aims at bridging the gap between real-world business processes and information systems. When attached to physical items, the IoT technologies such as sensor networks transform objects of the supply chain into smart items. These items have the ability to capture context data and provide business process management systems (BPMSs) with a representation of things. To adequately describe a business process, process engineers commonly use Business Process Modelling Languages (BPMLs). However, in a larger scope, BPMLs differ according to the application area they are used in, and there is no current language solution to represent IoT context data within a process model. In this paper we introduce the goals for a BPML to represent these data. The language will enable process engineers to model business process behaviour taking into account IoT context data.
- Modelling and learning controlled flexibility in software processesPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Varajão, João; Domingos, DulceSoftware 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 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.
- Similarity Based Approach for Comparing Home Healthcare Processes Models in PortugalPublication . Ilahi, Latifa; Martinho, Ricardo; Ghannouchi, Sonia Ayachi; Domingos, Dulce; Rijo, Rui, Rui Pedro Charters LopesSimilarity metrics applied to business processes are used to compare and assess the similarities and differences between a set of process models. The results of this comparison can then serve as input to take management decisions, such as to prevent the proliferation of process variants. This is particularly useful in large (enterprise or governmental) organizations with multiple organizational units that share the same business processes. Examples include faculties of a university and their student enrollment process, hospitals or primary care centers of National Health Services and their medical appointment process, or even the pick and pack process across several warehouses of a large company. Due to many aspects (i.e. local policies, resources, socio-technical aspects, culture), a certain business process is individually evolved and refined across the multiple organizational units of the same organization. Organizations have then to deal with several process variants, which hampers the collection of performance indicators, optimization procedures and business process management overall. In this paper, we perform a similarity based approach to assess the similarities and differences that exist between home healthcare processes for two public primary healthcare centers in Portugal. We will achieve this by eliciting business process models according to best practices. Then, we lead a similarity based comparison between the elicited models. This is in order to show how much models are different in the same organization.
- Towards a Business Process Management Governance Approach Using Process Model Templates and FlexibilityPublication . Ilahi, Latifa; Martinho, Ricardo; Ghannouchi, Sonia Ayachi; Domingos, Dulce; Rijo, Rui, Rui Pedro Charters LopesOrganizations 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 organization’s 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 homehealthcare related business process models.
- Using Resource Reliability in BPMN ProcessesPublication . Domingos, Dulce; Respício, Ana; Martinho, RicardoBusiness Process reliability refers to the probability of a certain process task to be executed during a predefined timeframe. It is one of the Quality of Service aspects of business processes that can be calculated and simulated, in order to support decision making regarding Business Process Management activities such as redesign, execution and improvement of business processes. Nevertheless, existing research focuses only on task reliability, without considering how a certain human or non-human resource assigned to that task can affect its overall reliability. In this paper, we propose the use of the relyBPMN extension to include resource reliability information on business processes modeled with the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) language. We illustrate this by providing two use case examples involving sensors and human resources, and including their reliability information to be used on resource assignments. This way, process engineers can conditionally assign resources to a task based on their reliability information and requirements.