Annotation of Business Process Models with Regulatory Controls (2009) A number of diverse approaches for business process modelling have been proposed, out of which the graphical approach has had the most dominant uptake. In particular the Business Process Modelling Notation (or BPMN) has been widely adopted. In this project, a tool will be developed to annotate the graphical BPMN models with regulatory controls based on a formal language for control modelling. Students who are interested in practical industry driven research, with good programming skills, and ability to work in a team, should apply.
A Transformation Technique for Business Process Models (2009) A number of diverse approaches for business process modelling have been proposed, out of which the graphical approach has had the most dominant uptake. In particular the Business Process Modelling Notation (or BPMN) has been widely adopted. In this project, a tool will be developed to transform the graphical BPMN models into a particular XML format. This format is dictated by the requirements for various analysis functions to be used in a process engine prototype being developed simultaneously by other members of the research team on the BPM topic. Students who are interested in practical industry driven research, with good programming skills, and ability to work in a team, should apply.
Factor Analysis of Business Process Management Issues and Challenges (2009) Issues and challenges facing the Business Process Management research and industry are viewed rather differently from different stakeholder groups (vendors, users, experts). This project will undertake a consolidation of data collected during a previous study from a number of sources. The project will also require a deep literature review of current contributions from BPM research community, in order to align the results of the study with BPM research directions and perspectives on open quesitons. This is a joint project with UQ Business School and will benefit from the input of Dr. Marta Indulska from UQ Business School.
Compliance Checking in Business Process Models (2008) The aim of this project is to investigate business process models as a vehicle for driving compliance. A detailed investigation of existing literature as well as compliance products and solutions will be undertaken, and functionality related to business process modelling identified. Based on this knowledge, as well as analysis of data collected in a previous study through from compliance professionals, an innovative conceptual modelling approach will be developed to suit the needs of compliance requirements within business process models.
Hybrid approach to business process modelling (2008) A number of diverse approaches for business process modelling have been proposed, out of which the graphical approach has had the most dominant uptake. Previous research in business process modelling has demonstrated the limited capability of specific graphical approaches to meet certain complex business requirements leading to poorly constructed and misleading process models. Microsoft Workflow Foundation is a new development platform that provides the capability to specify process activities and constructs using a range of options e.g. rule based, state based, flow based etc. This project will firstly create a classification of activity types supported by the platform with respect to business requirements, and secondly it will investigate the feasibility of a hybrid approach to process models by developing a prototype using MS Workflow Foundation that demonstrates the mapping between the different types of specifications.
Fuzzy similarity matching in large datasets (2008) The aim of this project is to develop an advanced system which improves the fuzzy similarity matching in large database systems. Along with advances towards e-commerce, e-health and e-science, the problem of data quality persists, and continues to be widely recognised. A common data quality issues is that the same object may be represented differently in two data sources. Fuzzy similarity match is the task to identify records referring to the same object. This functionality has become increasingly important for various database management tasks such as data integration , advanced analytics and data mining. This project will develop a pilot-tool which implements advanced algorithms and index structures. Working on this project will require skills in database design and programming and a good understanding of advanced data indexing methods will be helpful.
Modeling Internal Controls in Business Processes (2007)
The importance of compliance has dramatically increased over the last few
years for businesses in several industry sectors. Essentially, compliance is
ensuring that business processes, operations and practise are in accordance with
a prescribed and/or agreed set of norms. The boost in business investment is
primarily a consequence of regulatory mandates that emerged as a result of
recent events that led to some of the largest scandals in corporate history such
as Enron and more locally HIH. In light of the heavy socio, economic and
environmental costs of non-compliance, apriory embedding of requisite checks and
triggers into the enterprise applications is clearly desirable but also
extremely difficult given the technology landscape of today’s organizations.
In this project, you will undertake the formal modeling of internal controls by
studying the relationship/correspondence between normative/compliance rules and
business process models. A comprehensive analysis of a real life scenario will
be utilized for the above. Students with interest in business software,
conceptual modeling and requirements engineering are invited to apply. This
project may be supported by a top-up of up to AU$2000 from industry.
Similarity Matching of Business Process Variants (2007)
Variance in business process execution can be the result of several situations,
such as disconnect between documented models and business operations, work
arounds in spite of process execution engines, dynamic change and exception
handling, flexible and ad-hoc approaches, and collaborative and/or knowledge
intensive work. It is imperative that effective support for managing process
variance be extended to organizations mature in their BPM uptake so that they
can ensure organization wide consistency, promote reuse and capitalize on their
BPM investments.
In this project, formal modeling of business process variants will be undertaken
in order to conduct structural similarity matching. Research already exists that
outlines the various structural relationships between process descriptions,
however, finding a degree of structural similarity is an open and interesting
question. Students with interest in formal modeling and business applications
are invited to apply. Knowledge of graph theory will be useful.
Temporal Feasibility in Workflow Evolution (2005)
Workflow systems have been extensively studied in the recent past. One of
the main interests in this technology from the research community has been on
the ability to effectively model the business process in a machine interpretable
language. Several proposals have been made which address various aspects of
workflow modeling, including the control, data, resource and temporal
constraints.
At the same time, several limitations of existing workflow solutions have been
identified, both from modeling and design perspectives as well as
post-deployment difficulties. Managing of workflows in dynamic business
environments is well known to be a significant difficulty in several workflow
solutions, and correspondingly substantial work can be found which attempts to
address this problem. However, there is a subtle interplay between time and
change which must be considered in solutions for management of workflow
evolution. Current studies do not address the temporal aspect in dynamic
workflow management satisfactorily.
This project will focus on the analysis of the temporal aspect in workflow
evolution. A thorough investigation of the state of the art in the
specification and enforcement of time constraints will be required as a
prerequisite, and should result in a very well defined model for time
constraints (e.g. deadline, duration and timer constraints) and a good
understanding of the management of these constraints during workflow execution.
Based on this, the impact on time of multiple options to handle active instances
during workflow evolution will be studied and conclusions drawn regarding the
interplay between time and change.
Worklist Handler for Instance Batching in Workflows (2005)
The notion of an instance in workflow systems is simple and quite well defined
and understood. However this notion can prove to be too restrictive in certain
scenarios. In fact this restriction forces the process models to be constructed
in a format, which will contradict the way work is actually practiced in the
organization.
Current features of typical state-based workflow management systems do not
provide the functionality to support scenarios in which multiple instances have
to be batched. For example batching together items ordered in multiple purchase
orders, or batching together assignments from multiple students. There is a need
to manage activity instances at multiple levels e.g. approval function is
applied at the purchase request level, but a cancellation function can be
applied at the item level. To manage the process requirements of such scenarios,
we need to redefine the notion of a process instance.
This points towards a solution that provides the capability to work with
multiple process views. At any given time, the user may choose the appropriate
view to work with, or it may be determined by the system. For example, an item
within a purchase request, or all items within a shipment order, or all invoices
for a given customer. Clearly, all views need to maintain a consistent state of
progress for the process. There are several questions in this regard. How do we
present such multi-faceted data, what tools (e.g. query, filter, order etc.) we
can provide the user to enable effective definition of batches, what
restrictions must be imposed on the composition of batches? The work list
handler provides the front end for the invocation and specification of these
functions. This project will investigate these advanced features for the work
list handler component of the WFMS.
Transactional Model for Collaborative Processes (2004)
Collaborative business processes are composed of several business transactions.
These transactions represent interactions between trading partners, and are
undertaken to accomplish a common goal. Business Transactions (BTs) are
fundamental to reliable e-business applications, and hence are mostly addressed
in the context of transactional coordination of participating web services
[OASIS Business Transaction Protocol and W3C Tentative Hold Protocol]. Typical
examples of business transactions (BTs) are payment processing, shipping and
tracking, order fulfillment etc. Underlying assumption is that BTs are
automated. However, BTs are distinct from traditional transactions. BT behavior
is characterized by long duration, heterogeneous sources, and dynamic change.
BTs themselves may be composed from atomic sub-transactions, where the
composition may take many forms (nested, concurrent, sequential). Atomicity of
BTs is unconventional, and rather domain specific. There are several open and
interesting questions about BT functionality. What characteristics distinguish
BTs, and how BT behaviour impacts on its transactionability? What constitutes a
BT? If the ACID properties of flat transactions are insufficient and/or
inappropriate for BTs, then are there any existing advanced transaction models
that lend well to this concept? Is this a new problem especially in the context
of interacting web services, or BTP is merely a transaction monitor on the web?
This project will investigate the above questions in general, and in particular
will explore the characteristics of business transactions and target a generic
definition for BT atomicity in this new role. This project may also be supported
by SAP Australia. The selected student will be awarded with a stipend of $5000
for the project as well as a work experience certificate. SAP will also provide
the student with the facility to spend one day a week at the SAP premises, thus
providing an opportunity to interact with their corporate research team.
Data Validation for Workflow Processes (2004)
Traditionally, process modeling methodologies focus on structural aspects of
processes, mainly indicating the order of execution of the component
activities in the process, using specification languages. However, the syntactic
correctness of a process model does not necessarily indicate that the underlying
business requirements have been satisfactorily captured by that process model.
There is a need for joint data and structural analysis to provide a means of
validation of the designed workflow process. Several shortcomings may be
identified during validation, such as missing, lost or redundant data, temporal
inconsistencies, refresh requirements for workflow relevant application data,
hidden activity dependencies and so on. At the very least, process validation
may identify sub-optimal specifications within the process model. An outcome of
the validation may trigger a series of refinements to the process structure as
well as to the applications invoked by the local activities, in order to achieve
desired effects of the overall process implementation. This project will build
upon significant existing work in this area. An meta-model for data
requirements of workflow processes, and a set of data validation problems will
be given. This project will require the design of a validation algorithms and
the development of a validation tool that implements algorithms and provides
'smart' visualization to communicate potential deficiencies in the examined
design. This project may also be supported by SAP Australia. The selected
student will be awarded with a stipend of $5000 for the project as well as a
work experience certificate. SAP will also provide the student with the facility
to spend one day a week at the SAP premises, thus providing an opportunity to
interact with their corporate research team.
Validation and Optimization of Workflow Processes (2003)
Traditionally, process modeling methodologies focus on
structural aspects of processes, mainly indicating the order of execution of the
component activities in the process, using specification languages. However, the
syntactic correctness of a process model does not necessarily indicate that the
underlying business requirements have been satisfactorily captured by that
process model. There is a need for joint data
and structural analysis to provide a means of validation of the designed
workflow process. Such a validation technology would help to achieve mutual
completeness by cross-comparison of process structure and data requirements to
support the execution of individual activities at the right time on the right
data. Several shortcomings may be identified during validation, such as missing,
lost or redundant data, temporal inconsistencies, refresh requirements for
workflow relevant application data, hidden activity dependencies and so on. At
the very least, process validation may identify sub-optimal specifications
within the process model, for example, execution paths that are under utilized
due to original choice structure behavior. An outcome of the validation may
trigger a series of refinements to the process structure as well as to the
applications invoked by the local activities, in order to achieve desired
effects of the overall process implementation. This project will require the
design of a comprehensive meta-model to capture the properties of process
activities over and above control flow dependencies. The selected meta-model
will set a scope of the validation support. In addition, this project may
include development of a dedicated workflows validation tool for automatic
simulation of the process with 'smart' visualization to communicate potential
deficiencies in the examined design. This project is
also supported by SAP Australia. The selected student will be awarded with a
stipend of $5000 for the project as well as a work experience certificate. SAP
will also provide the student with the facility to spend one day a week at the
SAP premises, thus providing an opportunity to interact with their corporate
research team.
Context Sensitive Data Modeling for Processes (2003)
Process modeling has mostly been dominated by the control flow or structural
aspect. The informational aspect of processes relates to data requirements on
individual activities that constitute the process, the data flow between
activities, as well as the mapping of process data to underlying application
databases which are often external to the process management system. Capturing
the data flow requirements for processes is conventionally approached as either
an implicit data flow model, where activities read/write to a common repository,
or an explicit data flow model where the flow of process data is represented as
links between activity I/O. Several problems such as missing and lost data have
been identified and studied in literature. With the movement towards richer and
flexible process definition languages, the need for an advanced data modeling
approach is also emerging. One approach is to provide context sensitive data
models, where context represents the data requirements for a group of related
activities with a common reference. This approach presents a mid-ground between
the implicit and explicit approaches. For example, all data relating to hotel
accommodation within a travel booking, constitutes a context. This finer grained
repository promotes ease of maintenance and transactionability. This project
will commence with a comprehensive investigation of existing data modeling
approaches for processes and an analysis of recent trends in business process
modeling. As a result of this investigation, a proposal will be given for an
advanced data flow model under the general principles given above. This proposal
will address at least the issue of maintenance of context states, mapping of
context data to underlying application data, and refresh strategy for context
data. This project is also supported by SAP Australia.
The selected student will be awarded with a stipend of $5000 for the project as
well as a work experience certificate. SAP will also provide the student with
the facility to spend one day a week at the SAP premises, thus providing an
opportunity to interact with their corporate research team.
Instance Handling for Flexible Processes (2002)
Workflow technology is being used in several domains. However, these
domains are mostly characterized by pre-determined processes. These so-called
“Production” or “Prescriptive” processes (typically processes such as
procurement, loan processing, insurance claims etc) have been considered good
candidates for deployment of workflow technology because they are functionally
complex, predictable and repetitive. At the same time, there is substantial
evidence of business processes, for which trying to define (or prescribe) every
step may compromise the process goal. In many cases, the work practices
themselves would not fit into a prescriptive framework and introducing a
technology which imposes it, would result in decreased productivity.
Nonetheless, these processes are not totally devoid of coordination and control
requirements. In other words, these do not exclusively belong to the “ad-hoc”
class of processes, which are generally not repetitive, and either represent an
administrative level of complexity (e.g. document routing) or a very high level
complexity (e.g. strategic planning). Certain domains have increased likelihood
of business processes that have both ad-hoc and prescriptive process
requirements. Generally, organizations implement the prescriptive requirements
of such process through a production workflow management system and manage the
ad-hoc requirements outside the workflow management system. This approach leads
to the partial automation of business processes because of the inability of the
workflow systems to effectively model and coordinate these ad-hoc requirements.
We have proposed a process modeling and enactment approach that allows capturing
both ad-hoc and prescriptive process requirements within the same framework.
This framework is based on the concept of “Pockets of Flexibility” [Sadiq et al,
2001], [Mangan and Sadiq, 2002]. We have
defined flexibility as the ability of the workflow process to execute on the
basis of a loosely, or partially specified model, where the full specification
of the model is made at runtime, and may be unique to each instance. To provide
a modeling framework that offers true flexibility, we need to consider the
factors, which influence the paths of (unique) instances together with the
process definition. We advocate an approach that aims at making the process of
change part of the workflow process itself. In the Pocket's framework, we have
introduced the notion of an open instance that consists of a core process and
several pockets of flexibility. A pocket is a special structure within
the workflow model, that consists of workflow fragments, which can represent a
single business activity, or a complex sub-process; and a special activity
called the Build Activity, which carries the rules and constraints under which
these fragments can be composed for a given instance. Thus the
build activities provide the functionality to
integrate the process of defining a change, into the open workflow instance.
This framework does not introduce any additional, or non-standard modeling
constructs, since the dynamic compositions can be mapped to core (standard)
modeling constructs. Thus the impact on the functionality of the underlying
scheduler is minimal. However, the issue of dynamic modification of running
instances is obviously required, since instance templates are partially composed
at runtime.
There are several complex issues, both conceptual and engineering, in the
context of runtime instance handling for flexible workflows. This project will
explore these issues in depth. Contributions to an ongoing project to develop a
light weight workflow engine "Chameleon" (Part of the Praxis project at DSTC
http://www.dstc.edu.au/praxis/) can also be expected.
Building flexible workflows for tertiary degree programs (2001)
The degree programs at tertiary education institutes generally offer a diverse
collection of courses that allow specialization on various aspects of the
program. Understanding and evaluating the course structure and available options
is often considered too complex without academic advisors. Workflow systems
provide exciting and innovative ways of modeling and providing automated
coordination for long duration processes such as these degree programs. This
project will explore the use of workflow concepts for capturing course
dependencies at a low (module/topic) level. In addition, it will provide an
opportunity to design and possibly implement a real life web based application
that provides extensive query and search functions off the graphical workflow
model.