Instantiation and Enactment

• Performing the modeled process using the environment by a process engine that guides or enforces specified users or user roles to enact the process as planned.
• Processes can provide guidance, monitoring and control
• Process “link” types: decomposition, precedence and available-tasks
• Links (relations) are first-class objects
• Relations can have attributes, values, and attached (computational) methods
• Methods are automatically invoked when the link/relation is traversed
• Process link server (cf. Sun Link Service)
• Manages multiple concurrent process instantiation threads
• Each process instance has an "enactment status" that is part of its "state"
• Process enactment as navigation
• Process guidance example visualization with decomposition and precedence links, and corresponding process navigation enactment with available-tasks indicated
• Another example display of a modeled process during execution.
• We provide a process enforcement policy variable that allows progressive relaxation of process enactment constraints (e.g., relax process step or product pre-conditions).
• This supports process maturation and override of immature process guidance/control
• Increases end-user control over process enactment and monitoring
• Relaxing enforcement policy increases likelihood of process breakdowns

Monitoring and Measurement

• Collecting and measuring process enactment history data needed to improve subsequent process enactment iterations, as well as documenting what process actions actually occurred in what order.
• Experience: Another feature found very attractive by managers.
• Experience: Key source of data for process improvement, optimization, or evolution.
• Experience: Process monitoring and measurement are most effective when end-users control and directly benefit from process enactment improvement analyses.
• Experience: Process monitoring and measurement are least effective when managers control and directly benefit from process enactment improvement analyses.

 

 
 
 

A paper describing different types of process measurements of interest can be found at M. Nissen, Valuing IT through Virtual Process Measurement, Proc. Intern. Conf. Information Systems, (1994).

Enactment History Capture and Replay

• Capture can collect data on who (agent instance) consumed/produce what resources (I/O resource instances), how (process task/action instance using which tool (instance)), when (timestamps and duration), where (Internet address, organizational locale), and why (process model or planned instance).
• Replay entails graphically simulating the re-enactment of a process, in order to more readily observe process state transitions or to intuitively detect possible process enactment anomalies.
• Experience: Visualizing and replaying process enactment histories is well-received by managers and executives.
• Experience: Supports "organizational drill-down" when process anomalies are observed.

An image file that shows a user interface display of (a) process enactment event history and timing measurements and (b) a Web-based process enactment history (lower right frame) can be viewed when selected.

Articulation

• Diagnosing, repairing, and rescheduling actual or simulated process enactment instances that have unexpectedly broken down due to some unmet process resource requirement, contention, availability, or other resource failure.
• Articulation problem space
• Process failure or breakdown type
• Broken or failed resource type
• Intra-task or inter-task breakdown
• Articulation solution space
• Experience: Not the same an workflow exception handling which require a priori workflow failure enumeration
• Experience: Most commonly overlooked aspect of process modeling or process life cycle engineering.
• Experience: A research result that is ahead of its time

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) software specification process enactment, breakdown, and articulation, (b) a class hierarchy of articulation diagnosis and repair mechanisms, and (c) an architectural framework for supporting process articulation which can be viewed when selected.

A paper describing the design and implementation of the process articulation support system can be found in the paper P. Mi and W. Scacchi, Articulation: An Integrated Approach to the Diagnosis, Replanning, and Rescheduling of Software Process Failures, Proc. 8th. Annual Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference, IEEE Computer Society, Chicago, IL (1993).

Evolution: Continuous Improvement and Asset Repository Management

• Incrementally and iteratively enhancing, restructuring, tuning, migrating, or reengineering process models and process life cycle activities to more effectively meet emerging user requirements, and to capitalize on opportunitistic benefits associated with new tools and techniques.
• Formalized process descriptions or models are intellectual property that can be protected through copyright or patent.
• Formalized process assets can be reused, distributed, and tailored for business practices within a corporate setting or  industrial sector.
• Experience: One of the few process model repositories, which also accomodates process formalization and knowledge-based operations.
• Experience: Another research result ahead of its time.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a process class hierarchy for organizing related process models, and (b) a early scheme (pre-Web, but Internet-based) for process asset/resource management which can be viewed when selected.

A paper describing the design and implementation of a knowledge-based process repository supporting these capabilites can be found in P. Mi, M.J. Lee, and W. Scacchi, A Knowledge-based Software Process Library for Process-Driven Software Development , Proc. 7th. Annual Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference , IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp. 122-131, (September 1992). An early scheme for process asset/resource management across the Internet is described in J. Noll and W. Scacchi, Integrating Diverse Information Repositories: A Distributed Hypertext Approach , Computer, 24(12):38-45, December 1991, while a more current, Semantic Web compatible approach is described in J. Noll and W. Scacchi, Specifying Process-Oriented Hypertext for Organizational Computing, Journal of Network Computing and Applications , 24(1):39-61, 2001.

Advanced Topics and In-Progress Efforts

• Modeling and Simulation of Process Architectures for Virtual Software Acquisition
• Process Technology for Virtual Enterprises
• Process-based Interactive Teleradiology Consultation Support
• Reengineering Procurement Process Architectures and Acquisition and Management of Research Grants for the U.S. Navy
• Knowledge Web Management Systems
• (Re)Engineering Open Source Software Development Processes and Work Practices

Conclusions

• Software/business process engineering is a dynamic team-based endeavor that can lead to mature processes through process modeling, visualization, prototyping, incremental development, iterative refinement, and the reengineering of ad hoc process task instances and models.
• Process/capability engineering may be most likely to succeed when focused on high frequency or short cycle-time processes.
• New techniques for rapid process design, trade-off analysis, and customization are needed.
• There are "pathological" software/business processes that are resistant to systematic (re)engineering, and thus should be avoided.
• These processes are characterized by:
• lack of frequent enactment repetition
• ad-hoc process structure or flow
• highly creative, non-recurring activities
• long-duration process enactment cycle times
• processes whose modeling or formalization overwhelms their simplicity.