BPM Newsletter

Volume 3, Issue 2 August, 2014

BPM 2014: One Month to Go

This newsletter provides an full research and industry pa- registration deadline has been update on the BPM 2014 pro- pers, and 10 short papers. The extended until 15 August to gram. BPM will take place organizers and chairs are close- give participants more time to in , ’s beauti- ly monitoring the situation in register. Contact the BPM 2014 ful seaport on the Mediterra- Southern Israel and Gaza. We organizers if you have any nean. The program features 3 hope and expect that a firm concerns relating to registra- keynotes, 2 tutorials, 10 work- cease-fire will be reached be- tion and other arrangements shops, and presentations of 21 fore the conference. The early ([email protected]).

Interview with

In this newsletter you will also the area of model-checking. In find an interview with Turing 2007 he received the winner Professor Jo- Award (the "Nobel Prize of seph Sifakis on process model- computing") with Clarke and ing and verification and the Emerson, for his contributions relation between his work and to model-checking. Although BPM. Sifakis is well-known for Joseph did not work on BPM his pioneering work in theo- himself, his techniques have retical and practical aspects of been applied in the context of concurrent systems specifica- business process analysis (e.g. tion and verification, notably in workflow verification).  BPM 2014 high- Survey By the BPM 2015 Program Chairs lights  BPM survey BPM 2015 will take place in ducted a survey with present  Joseph Sifakis Innsbruck. Barbara Weber and past attendees and sub- will be the general chair of mitters to the BPM conference.  BPM Roundtable this event. The event will be The survey was intended to  “Procesje”: Fun hosted by the University of search for possible points of with BPM Innsbruck. improvement and to gather  News from the The Program Committee feedback on the general per- community Chairs of BPM 2015 (Jan ception of the conference. The Recker, Matthias Weidlich, results are included in this and Hamid Motahari) con- newsletter. P AGE 2 B P M N EWSLETTER

12th International Conference on Business Process Management, 7 -12 September 2014, Haifa, Israel

BPM 2014 will take place in Haifa. Haifa Given the recent developments in is situated on the Carmel Mountain, Southern Israel and Gaza, the organiz- overlooking the Haifa bay and the ers and chairs are closely following the mountains of Galilee, and has panoram- situation and will update as things un- ic views as well as beautiful sandy fold. They urge participants, and in par- beaches. Haifa is also an industrial cen- ticular presenters in the main confer- ter, housing the R&D labs of interna- ence and the workshops, to contact tional corporations. Israel's rich history them at [email protected] with and cultural heritage attracts millions of any concerns relating to registration tourists each year, with sacred places to and other arrangements. three religions. Some of these sites, such as Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, are The following social events are planned: in the vicinity of Haifa. The conference  A tour in the unique and spectacu- will be held at the University of Haifa, lar Bahai Gardens whose beautiful campus is at the top of  Workshops reception at IBM Haifa Mt. Carmel. Online registration can be Research Lab done via:  An evening on Haifa beach http://bpm2014.haifa.ac.il/practical-  A Banquette and a tour in Rosh details/registration. Hanikra - the spectacular limestone

grottoes (or sea caves) situated on the Mediterranean water front. I SSUE 2 / 2 0 1 4 P AGE 3 BPM 2014 Program Highlights

BPM 2014 will feature 3 keynotes by re-  3rd Workshop on Security in  International Workshop on Deci- nowned experts: Rob High (IBM), Yuval Business Processes (SBP'14) sion Mining & Modeling for Busi- Shahar (Ben Gurion University), and Keith  4th International Workshop on ness Processes (DeMiMoP’14) Swenson (Fujitsu). There will be two tuto- Process Model Collections: Man- rials one on “Describing Services through agement and Reuse But there is more: USDL” and one on “Flexible Business Pro-  International Workshop on Busi-  A Doctoral Consortium, devoted to cess Modelling through the Dynamic ness Processes in Collective fresh PhD research in the BPM area Condition Response Graphs paradigm”. Adaptive Systems (BPCAS'14)  An exciting demo session hosted See http://bpm2014.haifa.ac.il for details.  3rd Workshop Data- & Artifact- by IBM Haifa Research lab centric BPM (DAB'14)  A panel on the past and future of  10th International Workshop on BPM research Business Process Intelligence  An event in honor of Peter Dadam (BPI'14) and his contribution to BPM  2nd International Workshop on  The 11th International Workshop Business Process Management on Web Services and Formal Meth- in the Cloud (BPMC'14) ods  3rd International Workshop on Theory and Applications of Pro- Moreover, the main conference track The following 10 workshops will take cess Visualization (TaProViz'14) will feature presentations of 21 full re- place at BPM 2014:  7th Workshop on Business Pro- search and industry papers, and 10  7th International Workshop on Pro- cess Management and Social short papers. cess-oriented Information Systems in Software (BPS'14) Healthcare (ProHealth’14) Hope to see you in Haifa! P AGE 4 B P M N EWSLETTER

Accepted papers tics, Massimiliano de Leoni, Wil sion of BPMN, Martin Schultz and van der Aalst and Marcus Dees Michael Radloff

Full research and industry papers  Hierarchical Declarative Model- Short papers  Chopping Down Trees vs. Sharpen- ling with Refinement and Sub- processes, Søren Debois, Thom- ing the Axe – Balancing the Devel- as Hildebrandt and Tijs Slaats  DRain: A Novel Framework for opment of BPM Capabilities with QoR-driven Dynamic Data- Process Improvement, Martin  Dealing with Changes of Time- Intensive Analytics Processes, Aitor Lehnert, Alexander Linhart and Aware Processes, Andreas Lanz Murguzur, Johannes M. Schleicher, Maximilian Roeglinger and Manfred Reichert Hong-Linh Truong, Salvador Trujil-  Crowd-Based Mining of Reusable  Discovering Target-Branched lo and Schahram Dustdar Process Model Patterns Carlos Ro- Declare Constraints, Claudio Di  Use Your Best Device! - Enabling driguez, Florian Daniel and Fabio Ciccio, Fabrizio Maggi and Jan Device Changes at Runtime, Den- Casati Mendling nis Bokermann, Christian Gerth  Behavioral Comparison of Process  Temporal Anomaly Detection in and Gregor Engels Models Based on Canonically Re- Business Processes, Andreas  The Automated Discovery of Hy- duced Event Structures, Abel Ar- Rogge-Solti and Gjergji Kasneci brid Processes, Fabrizio Maria Mag- mas-Cervantes, Paolo Baldan, Mar-  Listen to me: Improving Process gi, Tijs Slaats and Hajo A. Reijers lon Dumas and Luciano García- Model Matching through User Bañuelos Feedback, Christopher Klink-  Declarative Process Model Mining:  A Recommender System for Pro- müller, Ingo Weber, Henrik Leo- an Approach to Reduce Complexi- ty by Preprocessing Event Logs, cess Discovery, Joel Ribeiro, Josep pold, Jan Mendling and Andre Pedro Richetti, Fernanda Baião Carmona, Mustafa Misir and Ludwig and Flávia Santoro Michele Sebag  Implicit BPM: a Business Process  Monitoring Framework for Process  Monitoring Business Metacon- Platform for Transparent Work- Discovery Based on Dynamic Con- straints Based on LTL & LDL for f l o w W e a v i n g , R u b e n text Hierarchy Associations, Mari Finite Traces, Giuseppe De Giaco- Mondejar, Pedro Garcia Lopez, Abe and Michiharu Kudo mo, Riccardo De Masellis, Marco Carles Pairot and Enric Brull Grasso, Fabrizio Maria Maggi and  Analysis of Operational Data for  SECPI: Searching for Explanations Marco Montali Expertise Aware Staffing, Re- for Clustered Process Instances,  Beyond Tasks and Gateways: Dis- nuka Sindhgatta, Gaargi B. Das- Jochen De Weerdt and Seppe Vanden Broucke covering BPMN Models with Sub- gupta and Aditya Ghose processes, Boundary Events and  A genetic algorithm for process  Strategies for Specifying Flexible Multi-Instance Markers, Raffaele discovery guided by complete- Human Behavior in Interaction- Conforti, Marlon Dumas, Luciano ness, precision and simplicity, Intensive Process Environments, García-Bañuelos and Marcello La Borja Vázquez-Barreiros, Ma- Christoph Dorn, Schahram Dust- Rosa nuel Mucientes and Manuel dar and Leon Osterweil  Where did I go wrong? - Explaining Lama  Assessing the Need for Visibility of errors in business process models,  From a family of state based Business Processes, Enrico Graup- Niels Lohmann and Dirk Fahland PAIS to a configurable and pa- ner, Martin Berner, Alexander  Mining Resource-Scheduling Proto- rameterized business process Maedche and Harshavardhan Jegadeesan cols, Arik Senderovich, Matthias architecture, Andreas Rulle and Weidlich, Avigdor Gal and Avishai Juliane Siegeris  Predictive Task Monitoring for Busi- Mandelbaum  Constructs Competition Miner: ness Processes, Cristina Cabanillas,  User-Friendly Property Specification Process Control-flow Discovery Claudio Di Ciccio, Jan Mendling and Anne Baumgrass and Process Verification – a Case of BP-domain Constructs, David Study with Vehicle-Commissioning Redlich, Thomas Molka, Gordon  Separating Execution and Data Processes, Richard Mrasek, Jutta Blair, Awais Rashid and Wasif Management: A Key to Business- Mülle, Michael Becker, Klemens Gilani Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS), Yutian Böhm and Christian Allmann  Modeling Concepts for Internal Sun, Jianwen Su and Jian Yang  A General Framework for Correlat- Controls in Business Processes – See the BPM 2014 website for the full ing Business Process Characteris- an Empirically Grounded Exten- program. I SSUE 2 / 2 0 1 4 P AGE 5 Interview with Joseph Sifakis

Professor Joseph Sifakis is a leading tory in the area of critical embedded been applied to the analysis of business computer scientist, well-known for his systems. In 2007 he received the Turing processes and services. Joseph Sifakis and pioneering work in theoretical and Award (the "Nobel Prize of computing") Wil van der Aalst were both invited to practical aspects of concurrent systems with Clarke and Emerson, for his contri- speak at a conference in Rehovot (Israel) specification and verification, notably butions to model-checking. Although to celebrate thirty years of statecharts and the area of model-checking. Joseph is a Joseph did not work on BPM, many of David Harel’s 26th birthday. Wil used this professor at EPFL and the founder of the techniques developed for system opportunity to interview Joseph. Verimag, a well-known research labora- analysis (e.g., ) have

Thanks for your willingness to share your views with the BPM community. You have been working with many well-know people like Amir Pnueli, Ed Clarke, and Thomas Henzinger. More- over, in your role as director of Verimag you were also in close contact with many people in industry. Which indivi- duals have influenced your work most? Joseph: Definitely, Amir Pnueli has been the most influential. In the au- tumn of 1983, I met Amir Pnueli for the first time at a workshop on “The Analy- sis of Concurrent Systems”, organized in Cambridge. This was the beginning of a continuous interaction and collabora- tion for more than 25 years. The collab- oration concerned both theoretical research and applied research devel- oped in the framework of European projects on system modelling and verifi- cation. We jointly organized with Ed Clarke the Workshop on the “Verification of Finite State Systems” in Grenoble in 1989. This workshop is considered as the first edition of the CAV Conference. Amir Pnueli opened my horizons and contributed to the visibility and recognition of our work at Verimag through his international net- work of connections and collabora- tions. He brought me into contact with leading researchers and teams working on timed and hybrid systems. One of them was Thomas Henzinger who visit- ward Lee, Alberto Sangiovanni Vincen- Verimag was motivated by industrial ed my team in 1992. We have jointly telli and Janos Sztipanovits. applications, in particular the verifica- developed the first symbolic verification What are the real-world industry prob- tion of communication protocols, in techniques for timed and hybrid mod- lems that you encountered during your the framework of a collaboration with els. career that inspired you most? France Telecom. I have also learned a lot being involved in projects on criti- Over my career, I also had very interest- Joseph: I have always been concerned cal system design, through collabora- ing interactions with on with the application of my results. I have tions with companies such as Airbus, process algebras as well as with Leslie considered that collaboration with in- Thales and Astrium. Over the past ten Lamport on temporal logics. More re- dustry and contact with real-life prob- years, my team has tightly collaborat- cently, my work on system design has lems can be a source of inspiration. All ed with STMicroelectronics in projects been influenced by people such as Ed- our work on model-checking at on embedded systems design, in par- P AGE 6 B P M N EWSLETTER

ticular to develop a rigorous sys- As such, it can be very useful for sup- The application of model checking has tem design flow leading from ap- porting business process manage- been in many ways been a success story. plication software to correct-by- ment, for both technical users and However, today's mainstream information construction implementations. business users. I think, a key issue for systems develop and evolve organically. all domain-specific languages is how Often it is impossible to verify systems In the BPM community many peo- to establish a rigorous connection because of their fuzzy context. At the ple are using Petri nets for model- with the underlying constructs of same time we are collecting lots of infor- ing processes and analyzing them. execution languages. This is still a mation on running systems. How is this Also notations like BPMN and UML problem. BPEL is a language hard to going to influence the field? Will model use token-based semantics. I be- formalize and some of its constructs checking become less relevant? lieve you visited Carl Adam Petri are very intricate. several times in the 1970-ties and Joseph: My point of view about verifica- as I PhD student I used your work It seems that few computer scientists tion and its relevance have drastically on performance evaluation using are working on both embedded sys- changed over the past fifteen years. Of Petri nets (e.g., Petri nets with time tems and information system. How- course, model-checking has been and still in places). Can you tell a bit about ever, in both areas the modeling, is a success. It is widely used for hardware your experiences with Carl Adam? analysis, and realization of complex verification and the verification of abstrac- dynamic behavior is a key issue. Why tions of complex software. Most useful Joseph: In 1974, I met Carl Adam are these worlds so separated? Is it techniques are algorithmic, e.g. model- Petri and then visited him and his the human dimension? checking, static analysis, abstract interpre- colleagues in Bonn several times. I tation. They are all applicable to global was really impressed by his erudi- Joseph: This separation is easy to models and they all suffer from well- tion and his vision. But I could not understand. For embedded systems known complexity limitations. Attempts to really understand why “true con- we do care about the interaction develop modular (compositional) verifica- currency” was such a big idea. In between application software and tion techniques, have failed. Another ad- contrast to the prevailing ap- the underlying execution platform. ditional obstacle is formalization of re- proach, I considered in my papers Resource management, real-time quirements. If we know how to formalize that Petri nets are merely transi- aspects and time predictability be- global generic properties by using logics tion systems. come very important. Currently, infor- e.g. deadlock-freedom, liveness or fair- mation systems design is not so Why did you shift from perfor- ness, the logical formalization of security much concerned with these aspects. mance evaluation to verification in or performance properties seems to be It focuses mainly on platform- the early 1980-ties? more problematic. independent behavior. Performance Joseph: In 1977, I definitely left is sought after implementation, by My opinion is that verification is a stopgap Petri nets for program semantics tuning experimentally system param- until other alternatives for achieving cor- and verification. Dijkstra’s papers eters. I believe that there the conver- rectness work. It is a “specialty” of Compu- and books had a deep influence gence between the two areas is inev- ting – no other scientific discipline gives it on my work. Certainly Petri nets itable, especially when the internet of such a prominent place. A discipline lacks are a foundational model for con- things will become a reality. a proper scientific tradition if predictability current systems, but not expres- sive enough for modeling real-life systems. I wanted to deal with real software and systems. In recent years the Business Pro- cess Model and Notation (BPMN) became very popular in the BPM domain. Most of the vendors are now supporting some dialect of BPMN and various BPM research- ers have developed verification techniques for BPMN-like nota- tions. What do you think of lan- guages like BPMN? Have you ap- plied your verification techniques on BPMN models? Joseph: I am not very familiar with BPMN. I understand that this is a domain-specific graphical notation for specifying business processes. I SSUE 2 / 2 0 1 4 P AGE 7

devices by applying control-based tech- niques. The application of such tech- niques makes sense only if data analysis is fast enough and the resulting com- putational overhead is compensated by commensurable gains in quality con- trol. I believe that currently we are very far from achieving this. We are now in Rehovot. Later this year BPM 2014 will be in Haifa. Relative to its population, Israel has been remarka- bly successful in computer science (Amir Pnueli, David Harel, Michael Rab- in, , , etc.). Why do you think Israeli computer sci- entists are so successful? Joseph: Having closely followed the evolution of the country, I am im- pressed but not really surprised by the success of Israel in Communication and Information Sciences and Technolo- gies. I think scientific success should can be achieved only through their validation. As I said, we should not be dissociated from technological verification. We should study tech- develop techniques that translate mod- achievements and innovation. This is niques that guarantee correctness- el specifications into executable lan- the result of a continuous and lengthy by-construction. This is a key direc- guages from which code can be gener- process involving high quality educa- tion of my research program for ated. This may involve some technical tion, basic research, technology trans- more than ten years, and I would difficulties, especially if specifications are fer, strong take-up industry, investment like to say that we have already high level e.g. declarative. and risk capital. Innovation and tech- obtained very interesting results in What is your vision on the development nology is not the privilege of economic the BIP project. We can guarantee of computer science as a discipline also giants. Ideas, creative workforce, the by construction certain properties considering new developments such as capability to transform them into high- such as state invariants and dead- Big Data, Cloud, and the Internet of tech products and services count more lock-freedom. The techniques are Things? that physical resources, oil, rough mate- scalable and do not suffer from rials, etc. Israel has built its develop- state explosion limitations. Joseph: The Internet of Things is the ment and supremacy on immaterial grand challenge. Currently this is merely economy. This was a very clairvoyant a vision that is not technically substanti- Whereas database technology has choice. ated. It will not be reached unless we become an integral part of any make significant progress in many areas information system, workflow and including the convergence toward a BPM technology are mostly used Joseph, thanks for this wonderful inter- unified network infrastructure that is for modeling and analysis and not view! secure, safe and predictable. In particu- for developing information sys- lar, time predictability and responsive- Wil van der Aalst tems. Can you explain why there is ness are very important for ensuring no widely used standard software controllability and trustworthy interac- for implementing "processes"? tion between devices. The Cloud pro- Joseph: The key issue is to develop vides the Intelligence responsible for design flows that lead from specifi- driving the behavior of the nodes of the cations to code generation and Internet of Things. Thus, it plays a cen- implementation. Currently, there is tral role in its hierarchical organization. a gap between modeling/analysis It receives huge quantities of infor- and implementation. Models are mation provided by the networked de- not used for implementation pur- vices and users. The information is even- poses and that’s really a pity espe- tually analyzed using data analytics cially if a lot of effort is spent for techniques. Commands are sent to the P AGE 8 B P M N EWSLETTER

2nd European BPM Round Table in Liechtenstein

The second European BPM Round Ta- round tables in Europe, see ble took place on May, 15th, 2014 at www.bpmroundtable.eu for more the University of Liechtenstein in Vaduz. information and to join this intiative. Over 160 people participated in this The theme of the second European wonderful event featuring speakers BPM Round Table was “Business from all over Europe. Process Management – Driving In- The first European BPM Round Table novation in a Digital World”. The was organized in Eindhoven in 2012. roundtable was organized by Jan The idea of a BPM Round Table at a vom Brocke, Theresa Schmiedel, and European Level emerged from several Nadine Reuter. local BPM Round Tables that were es- See bpm-roundtable2014.eu for tablished in Europe in the last years. slides, videos and more information Currently there are 21 national BPM on the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVvc6NUeoHo

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Survey on BPM Conference Impressions

by Jan Recker, Matthias Weidlich, and Hamid Motahari

In May/June 2014, the Program Com- mittee Chairs of BPM 2015 conducted a survey with present and past attendees and submitters to the BPM conference to gather feedback on the general per- ception of the conference. The survey is available at http://survey.qut.edu.au/ f/180586/6bb1/. In particular, the sur- vey included questions about the repu- tation of the conference, the reasons why survey participants submitted pa- pers, whether they plan to submit to BPM 2015, and soliciting input on a number of suggested changes and ad- ditions to the conduct of the confer- ence series.

144 members of the community re-

sponded, including 80 academics, 48 research students, 9 research practition- Figure 1. Distribution of survey respondents by primary research field ers and corporate scientists and 7 BPM practitioners. The respondents came from various research fields. In particu- interpreted by the participants. It may survey participation from IS com- lar, 49% of respondents reported that well be that participants feel they be- munity to gather their feedback. their research field is Information Sys- long to many disciplines (e.g., Infor- Even though this may have tems (IS), followed by Computer Science mation Systems and Computer Sci- skewed the results somewhat, the (30%) and Software Engineering (14%). ence). Secondly, we note that we survey respondents’ distribution We note, firstly, that we only captured made a dedicated effort to increase shows that the BPM community is the primary research field affiliation as

Figure 2. Top three reasons to attend BPM conference, by research field P AGE 10 B P M N EWSLETTER

Figure 3. Bottom three reasons to attend BPM conference, by research field

both large and diverse (see Figure spondents stated for attending the by research fields of the respond- 1). BPM conference are: ents, and Figure 3 shows the re- ported scores for the bottom three Overall, 46% of respondents stat- 1) the reputation of the confer- reasons. ed that they intend to submit a ence in the community, paper to BPM 2015, and a further Looking at ways in which the BPM 42% were unsure at this stage. By 2) the opportunity to connect to conference series could be made research field, the strongest sub- fellow BPM colleagues, and even more attractive to the com- mission intentions were from soft- munity, Table 1 lists the sugges- ware engineering (60%) and com- 3) the possibility to get fast- tions that were rated particularly puter science (55%). Researchers t r a c k e d to Elsevier’s high or low. from Information Systems were “Information Systems” journal. mostly unsure (45%), so were A top journal fast-track opportuni- management and organizational By contrast, panel discussions, ty was particularly of interest to scientists (50% and 33%, respec- BPM tutorials and the availability the software engineering and tively, reportedly will not submit) – of different paper formats were information systems community. albeit the absolute number of re- rated as significantly lower priority The top-rated recommendation of spondents these two fields were reasons for attending BPM. Figure computer scientists was to in- much lower. 2 shows reported scores for the crease the recognition of the BPM top three reasons on a scale from conference as a top publication The top three reasons the re- 1 (unimportant) to 7 (important) outlet. We interpret this data as

Table 1: Recommendations for improvements to the BPM conference series 3 most highly rated recommendations 3 lowest rated recommendations Provide a fast-track opportunity to a top- Publish papers in proceedings without assign- ranked journal (e.g., AIS Top-8, IEEE or ACM). ment of copyright. Increase the recognition of the BPM confer- Add alternative workshops to the conference. ence as a publication outlet in the institutions and wider community. Select cost-effective locations for the confer- Allow research-in-progress papers without full ence. publication in the proceedings.

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highlighting the relevance of jour-  While maintaining an interest in sions with the rest of the organ- nal fast-tracks to the community the core BPM theory and prac- izing committee, in particular and the question whether more tice as the heart of the confer- the Industry Chairs, to introduce targeted journal venues with high ence, we plan to expand the changes to stimulate industry esteem to different communities topic areas, for which BPM participation and input to the could be found. A possible way 2015 will be soliciting submis- conference beyond an industry would be to have special issues sions, into a broader scope that paper track. appear in a different journal each includes interdisciplinary re- year. Finally, choosing a cost- search involving processes, and  We also are contemplating sev- effective location was particularly also puts more emphasis on eral other minor changes to the highly rated by the management emerging areas of BPM, as its structure of the program com- and organizational science mem- own topic area, to encourage mittee and the reviewing pro- bers. broader linkage between the cess, in an effort to maintain the state of the art (academia) and high quality standards the com- Finally, the survey also elicited open the state of the practice munity is expecting from BPM feedback from the respondents, (industry) in the BPM space. 2015 and also welcoming novel which provided additional deep and original research to the insights into standing and motiva-  We will expand our outreach to community. tion of the BPM community. Select- other areas of interdisciplinary ed comments, ranging from critical, research by inviting PC mem-  Finally, in order to support first- suggestive to supportive categories, bers who are doing research in time-submitters to BPM, we in- are listed in Table 2. closely related areas but have tend to offer an early feedback not necessarily been at the core round in which PC members Based on the results of this survey, of the BPM field. can comment on potential sub- as Chairs of BPM 2015 we are plan- missions before the actual dead- ning to implement the following  Together with the General line. suggestions and changes: Chair, we have ongoing discus-

Table 2: Comments by participants Why or why not submit to BPM The reputation of the conference The focus is increasingly on journal papers, not The conference is not ranked in most institutions conference papers. or countries. The acceptance rate is too low and the accepted The overall visibility in the wider community is papers are not of high quality. low. The conference is missing what is happening in The feedback in the review process is hard but industry. of high quality. What is important Variations to the conference Feedback is provided from esteemed and repu- Make journal fast-track opportunities competi- table BPM scholars, for papers and junior re- tive and rewarding. searchers. Conference locations allow for attendance by Provide travel grants and cheap accommodation most. for some groups. Providing awards (e.g., for best student papers). Include “meet the expert” sessions or speed- dating opportunities. How submissions should be handled Improving the community Maintaining different topic areas is attractive. Actively address and connect to other communi- ties. Switching to a double-blind reviewing process. Invite researchers from other fields. Select reviewers that have methodological ex- Make access to tools, demos and data obligato- pertise rather than domain expertise. ry. Open up the conference to other types of re- Create a well-known journal specific to BPM. search (e.g., behavioral studies). Limit number of submissions per author. Market to practitioner outlets.

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Procesje: Another playful view on BPM

Inspired by the “daily astonishment in page shows some example ‘procesjes’. If "Procesje" reports on the irrational the BPM world”, an anonymous Dutch you want to see more funny BPM posts, behavior of organizations and BPM practitioner started to make please visit Procesje.nl or follow people thus putting BPM technol- ‘procesjes’ (little processes) to reflect on @Procesje (occasionally also in English) ogy in perspective. BPM trends in a playful manner. This on twitter.

Special Issue of BISE on BPM Use Cases

Business Process Management (BPM) BPM 2013. Although the initial BPM Use be edited by Wil van der Aalst, efforts resulted in a plethora of ap- Cases triggered insightful discussions, Marcello La Rosa, and Flávia Maria proaches, methods and tools to support they are just a starting point for system- Santoro. Please submit papers for the design, analysis, improvement, en- atically identifying, clarifying, and or- the sections BISE – Research Paper actment and management of opera- ganizing BPM requirements. Moreover, and BISE – BPM Use Cases via the tional business processes. As the BPM many alternative approaches to rigor- journal’s online submission system: discipline is maturing, there is a need to ously structure the BPM discipline can http://www.editorialmanager.co provide more structure and show "how, be envisioned. Therefore, a special issue m/buis/. where, and when" BPM can be used. of the BISE (Business & Information Sys- Contact the editors at BPM 2014 An example of an attempt to structure tems Engineering) journal will be devot- for more information. the BPM discipline is the collection of ed to original contributions structuring twenty BPM Use Cases, also discussed at the BPM discipline. The special issue will PUBLISHED BY THE STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE BPM CONFERENCE SERIES

Wil van der Aalst (chair), Boualem Benatallah, Jörg Desel, Marlon Dumas, Schahram Dustdar, Michael zur Muehlen, and Mathias Weske.

For contributions and comments, contact the Editor (Wil van der Aalst), WWW: vdaalst.com, The goal of this newsletter is to further strengthen the BPM E-mail: [email protected]. community that has been formed over the last decade. The newsletter appears twice per year. Input for the next news- Visit letter is welcome (e.g. activities related to the BPM confer- bpm-conference.org ence, interviews, contests, new datasets, tools, etc.).

Events and Activities of the Community

conference in Haifa. A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on process mining will start in October 2014. The title is Process Mining: Data Science in Action and the course will be hosted by Coursera. Remember to upload information to the BPM Tool Database if there is new soft- ware that you would like to share with the community. Currently 50 BPM Tools are registered. See http://bpm- conference.org/bpt-resource- Springer's Lecture Notes in Business The IEEE Task Force on Process Mining management/. Information Processing series provides will have its annual meeting at the end of the possibility to turn excellent PhD the 10th International Workshop on Busi- theses on BPM topics into published ness Process Intelligence (BPI'14) also monographs. See the call for exception- organized by the Task Force. The goal of al theses which also describes the re- this Task Force is to promote the research, quirements. development, education and understand- BPM 2015 will take place at the Univer- ing of process mining. sity of Innsbruck in the center of Inns- See http://www.win.tue.nl/ieeetfpm/ for bruck. Innsbruck is the capital city of more information. the federal state of Tyrol in west- ern Austria. Barbara Weber will be the general chair of this event. The call for papers will be distributed at the BPM