Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems

"The book is written by two renowned BPM experts and a must-read for anyone interested in flexible process support within information systems. It shows that BPM is not just about making diagrams. The real challenge is to realize information systems that support processes without jeopardizing flexibility. The authors present a wide range of powerful techniques to support this." Wil van der Aalst, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands "Comprehensive coverage of flexibility in PAIS, clear explanation of concepts and their practical applications, and easily understandable examples - this book is an excellent choice for students, computer scientists, and practitioners." Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, University of Vienna, Austria "If there would be any doubt left, this book annihilates the picture of workflow systems as being rigid, unyielding types of information systems. The authors draw from their deep knowledge of the field to explain the state-of-the-art with respect to flexibility mechanisms: A rich and highly readable treatise." Hajo Reijers, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands "The book provides an excellent description of recent advancements in the area of business process flexibility. It is well-organized, comprehensive, and comprehensible. A highly recommended text book, both for BPM researchers and advanced courses." Pnina Soffer, University of Haifa, Israel

Manfred Reichert is a professor at the University of Ulm (Germany). Prior to this, he was working as associate professor at the University of Twente (UT). At UT he was also leader of strategic research orientations on e-health and on service-oriented architectures, and member of the Management Board of the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT), which is the largest ICT research institute in the Netherlands (with more than 400 researchers). His major research interests are next generation process management technology, service-oriented architectures, and advanced applications for flexible process-aware information systems. Manfred is co-founder of the industrial spin-off AristaFlow GmbH, and he has been participating in numerous research projects in the BPM area and contributed more than 200 scientific papers on related topics. Barbara Weber is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where she is a member of the Quality Engineering (QE) research group and head of the research cluster on business processes and workflows at QE. She has published more than 80 research papers at international conferences and articles in prestigious journals. Her research interests include integrated process life cycle support, change patterns, process flexibility, process modeling, user support in flexible, process-aware information systems, recommendations to optimize process execution, and empirical research in BPM..

Part I Basic Concepts and Flexibility Issues.- Introduction.- Process-Aware Information Systems.- Flexibility Issues in Process-Aware Information Systems.- Part II Flexibility Support for Pre-Specified Processes.- Process Modeling & Flexibility-by-Design.- Process Configuration Support.- Exception Handling.- Ad-hoc Changes of Process Instances.- Monitoring and Mining Flexible Processes.- Process Evolution and Instance Migration.- Business Process Compliance.- Part III Flexibility Support for Loosely-Specified Processes.- Concretizing Loosely-Specified Processes.- Constraint-based Process Models.- Part IV User- and Data-driven Processes.- User- and Data-driven Processes.- A Framework for Object-Aware Processes.- Part V Technologies Enabling Flexibility Support in Process-Aware Information Systems.- AristaFlow BPM Suite.- Alaska Simulator Toolset.- Existing Tool Support for Flexible Processes.- Part VI Summary, References, Appendices.- Epilogue.- Overview of BPMN Elements.