Abstract
Object-aware processes enable the data-driven generation of forms based on the object behavior, which is pre-specified by the respective object lifecycle process. Each state of a lifecycle process comprises a number of object attributes that need to be set (e.g., via forms) before transitioning to the next state. When initially modeling a lifecycle process, the optimal ordering of the form fields is often unknown and only a guess of the lifecycle process modeler. As a consequence, certain form fields might be obsolete, missing, or ordered in a non-intuitive manner. Though this does not affect process executability, it decreases the usability of the automatically generated forms. Discovering respective problems, therefore, provides valuable insights into how object- and process-aware information systems can be evolved to improve their usability. This paper presents an approach for deriving improvements of object lifecycle processes by comparing the respective positions of the fields of the generated forms with the ones according to which the fields were actually filled by users during runtime. Our approach enables us to discover missing or obsolete form fields, and additionally considers the order of the fields within the generated forms. Finally, we can derive the modeling operations required to automatically restructure the internal logic of the lifecycle process states and, thus, to automatically evolve lifecycle processes and corresponding forms.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Note that PHILharmonicFlows allows for the concurrent processing of multiple lifecycle process instances (of same or different type) in the context of a multi-object business process. The concurrent processing is controlled by a coordination process.
- 2.
Event log provided: https://www.researchgate.net/project/CoopIS-Phoodle-Data.
References
van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Process Mining: Data Science in Action. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-49851-4
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Weske, M., Grünbauer, D.: Case handling: a new paradigm for business process support. DKE 53(2), 129–162 (2005)
Andrews, K., Steinau, S., Reichert, M.: A tool for supporting ad-hoc changes to object-aware processes. In: Demo Track of the 22nd International EDOC Conference (EDOC 2018), pp. 220–223. IEEE Computer Society Press, October 2018
Andrews, K., Steinau, S., Reichert, M.: Enabling runtime flexibility in data-centric and data-driven process execution engines. Inf. Syst. 101, 101447 (2021)
Armas Cervantes, A., van Beest, N.R.T.P., La Rosa, M., Dumas, M., GarcÃa-Bañuelos, L.: Interactive and incremental business process model repair. In: Panetto, H., et al. (eds.) OTM 2017. LNCS, vol. 10573, pp. 53–74. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69462-7_5
Ballambettu, N.P., Suresh, M.A., Bose, R.P.J.C.: Analyzing process variants to understand differences in key performance indices. In: Dubois, E., Pohl, K. (eds.) CAiSE 2017. LNCS, vol. 10253, pp. 298–313. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59536-8_19
Bargas-Avila, J., Brenzikofer, O., Roth, S., Tuch, A., Orsini, S., Opwis, K.: Simple but crucial user interfaces in the world wide web: introducing 20 guidelines for usable web form design. In: User Interfaces. IntechOpen, Rijeka (2010)
Breitmayer, M., Arnold, L., Reichert, M.: Enabling conformance checking for object lifecycle processes. In: Guizzardi, R., Ralyté, J., Franch, X. (eds.) 16th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2022). LNBIP, vol. 446. Springer, Cham (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05760-1_8
Burattin, A., Sperduti, A., Veluscek, M.: Business models enhancement through discovery of roles. In: 2013 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining (CIDM), pp. 103–110 (2013)
Cohn, D., Hull, R.: Business artifacts: a data-centric approach to modeling business operations and processes. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 32(3), 3–9 (2009)
Corea, C., Nagel, S., Mendling, J., Delfmann, P.: Interactive and minimal repair of declarative process models. In: Polyvyanyy, A., Wynn, M.T., Van Looy, A., Reichert, M. (eds.) BPM 2021. LNBIP, vol. 427, pp. 3–19. Springer, Cham (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85440-9_1
Das, S., McEwan, T., Douglas, D.: Using eye-tracking to evaluate label alignment in online forms. In: Proceedings of the 5th Nordic Conference on HCI, NordiCHI 2008, pp. 451–454. Association for Computing Machinery (2008)
Fahland, D., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Model repair - aligning process models to reality. Inf. Syst. 47, 220–243 (2015)
Hassenzahl, M.: User experience (UX): towards an experiential perspective on product quality. In: Proceedings of the 20th Conference on l’Interaction Homme Machine, IHM 2008, pp. 11–15. Association for Computing Machinery (2008)
Künzle, V., Reichert, M.: PHILharmonicFlows: towards a framework for object-aware process management. J. Softw. Maintenance Evol. Res. Pract. 23(4), 205–244 (2011)
Maggi, F.M., Westergaard, M., Montali, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Runtime verification of LTL-based declarative process models. In: Khurshid, S., Sen, K. (eds.) RV 2011. LNCS, vol. 7186, pp. 131–146. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29860-8_11
Reichert, M.: Process and data: two sides of the same coin? In: Meersman, R., et al. (eds.) OTM 2012. LNCS, vol. 7565, pp. 2–19. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33606-5_2
Reichert, M., Weber, B.: Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems: Challenges, Methods, Technologies. Springer, Cham (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30409-5
Steinau, S., Andrews, K., Reichert, M.: The relational process structure. In: Krogstie, J., Reijers, H.A. (eds.) CAiSE 2018. LNCS, vol. 10816, pp. 53–67. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91563-0_4
Steinau, S., Marrella, A., Andrews, K., Leotta, F., Mecella, M., Reichert, M.: DALEC: a framework for the systematic evaluation of data-centric approaches to process management software. Softw. Syst. Model. 18(4), 2679–2716 (2019)
Acknowledgment
This work is part of the SoftProc project, funded by the KMU Innovativ Program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (F.No. 01IS20027B).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Breitmayer, M., Arnold, L., Reichert, M. (2022). Data-Driven Evolution of Activity Forms in Object- and Process-Aware Information Systems. In: Sellami, M., Ceravolo, P., Reijers, H.A., Gaaloul, W., Panetto, H. (eds) Cooperative Information Systems. CoopIS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13591. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17834-4_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17834-4_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-17833-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-17834-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)