2.Week

Objective: Establishing a basic understanding for the e-business context. Introducing the vocabulary required for communicating with business analysts and consultants.

2.1.Lecture Content

• Name: Organizational matters ,fundamentals of BPA and BOAT
• Commence with organizational matters about the course structure, dates, expectations with respect to exercises, and so on.
• Discuss with students their backgrounds that could relate to this course. Let individual students talk about their relevant experience so that all students develop
• Give elaborate definition for e-commerce and correlate to related terminology
• Show some examples to allow students the building of a solid mind model about e-business so that it is easier for them to follow.
• Introduce an analysis framework (BOAT) for e-business cases that allows students to understand the requirements for
• Introduction of e-business relevant classification dimensions, i.e., classification dimension (time, parties, objects)

2.2.Lecture Content

• Name: BOAT (continued) in detail
• Explain in detail the business and organization classes of the BOAT analysis framework in greater detail while only mentioning less the architecture and technology classes. The first two are necessary to understand the process-automation lectures that are the main body of this course. The latter two classes are merely necessary to discuss the first exercise of case specification
• Discussion of the BOAT-business classification: drivers with reach, richness, efficiency; chains with disintegration, reintegration, deconstruction and reconstruction; directions; structures with supply chain, demand chain, hybrid chain, highly dynamic chain; models with e-retailing, integrator, dynamic virtual enterprises, crowdsourcing
• Discussion of the BOAT-organization classification: organizational structures, functions, processes. For processes we introduce first simple activity diagrams as a notation to be used in the second exercise.

2.3.Exercise

Textually specify a case study that may either be a B2C or B2B case. The case should be discussed using the BOAT and related analysis models. It must be clear that the case allows deducing at least 20 tasks and that it has at least 2 parallel branches and one choice-branch construct.

  Literature: MASTERING E-BUSINESS, Paul Grefen, Routledge, 2010, Chapters 1-5

3.Week

Objective: being able to model a business process from a (semi) informal to a formal level

3.1.Lecture Content

• Name: BPM-terminology definitions and BPMN as a visual notation
• Introducing relevant vocabulary with definitions and showing how the vocabulary relates to each other, e.g., process, task ,case, routing, enactment, triggers, conditions, process perspectives like control-flow, data-flow, organizational
• Present BPMN as an example of an informal process modeling technique

3.2.Lecture Content

• Name: Petri nets as a formal notation and patterns
• Introduction of Petri nets as a formal means of presenting business processes, i.e., classical Petri nets, high-level Petri nets, color extensions, time extensions, hierarchy extensions
• Showing pattern catalogues for primarily control-flow and briefly mention the pattern catalogues for data flow, exceptions and the resource perspective
• Mapping workflow concepts onto Petri nets. Explanation of how to map from informal business-process representations like BPMN to a WF-net

3.3.Exercise

Translating the case into a business process in BPMN notation. By using the heuristically expressed rules, translate the BPMN process into a WF-net.

  Literature: WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT: Models, Methods, and Systems, Wil van der Aalst, MIT Press 2004, Chapter 2; From Informal Process Diagrams to Formal Process Models, Debdoot Mukherjee et al., BPM 2001

4.Week

Objective: Specifying the resource perspective of a business process and understanding improvement scopes

4.1.Lecture Content

• Name: The resource perspective of business processes
• Techniques for resource classification and the allocation of resources to activities
• An ontological model for explaining what concepts and properties relate to each other for resource definition

4.2.Lecture Content

• Name: Task-allocation principles and efficiency enhancement through re-design
• More detailed allocation principles for resources and ways of improving the efficiency of business processes, e.g., completion time, capacity utilization flexibility, and so on
• Guidelines for re-designing business processes

4.3.Exercise

Extending the running example with a resource perspective and attempting a paper-based re-design following the methods presented in this lecture

  Literature: WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT: Models, Methods, and Systems, Wil van der Aalst, MIT Press 2004, Chapter 3

5.Week

Objective: Analyzing workflows for detecting errors, injecting patterns, enhancing efficiency.

5.1.Lecture Content

• Name: Analysis techniques and verification of structural properties
• Introducing analysis techniques that aim to verify the structure of a business process.
• Understanding a reachability graph for WF-nets
• Soundness of business processes, deadlocks and livelocks
• Computer-based analysis methods

5.2.Lecture Content

• Name: Performance analysis and capacity planning
• Performance analysis of business processes, Markovian analysis, queuing theory, simulation
• Planning of capacity and capacity calculation

5.3.Exercise

Performing structural analysis of the business process. Performing reachability analysis, soundness check with tool support, Analyzing the process capacity.

  Literature: WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT: Models, Methods, and Systems, Wil van der Aalst, MIT Press 2004, Chapter 4

6.Week

Objective: Understanding the functions and architecture of an enactment system for business processes.

6.1.Lecture Content

• Name: WFMS reference architecture
• Explaining the reference architecture of the Workflow Management Coalition
• Zooming in on the components and interfaces of that reference architecture.

6.2.Lecture Content

• Name: Verification with WofYAWL and YAWL-enactment
• Using YAWL as an ideal example for an enactment environment
• Explaining YAWL and mapping its functionalities to the WFMC reference architecture
• Showing YAWL and and the business-process notation used
• Verification tool WofYAWL for checking business processes

6.3.Exercise

Transferring the running case business process into YAWL notation, verify it is WofYAWL and enact the business process in YAWL.

  Literature: Modern Business Process Automation, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede et al., Springer 2010

7.Week

Objective: Using BPEL for process formulation and a verification tool.

7.1.Lecture Content

• Name: BPEL language with variants and BPELWoflan
• Explaining the history of BPEL and the language elements available.
• Introducing BPEL4Chor, AbstractBPEL, BPEL4People
• Modeling tools for BPEL and enactment environments.
• Using BPELWoflan for verification

7.2.Lecture Content

• Name: Running business process in BPEL and final Q&A
• Demonstration of the BPEL processes and students should discuss their experiences trying to map the running business-process example
• General Q&A session

7.3.Exercise

Mapping the business process to BPEL, verify it and possibly run the process

  Literature: Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0, OASIS Standard, 11 April 2007; Modern Business Process Automation, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede et al., Springer 2010

8.Exam

At the end of the course, an exam will comprise of questions that cover each lecture content respectively.