Agile Process Execution with Kissmir
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AGILE PROCESS EXECUTION WITH KISSMIR1 Andreas Martin Roman Brun Institute for Information Systems Institute for Information Systems University of Applied Sciences Northwestern University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW Switzerland FHNW Riggenbachstrasse 16 Riggenbachstrasse 16 CH-4600 Olten CH-4600 Olten [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT In this paper, we describe an approach for agile business process 1.1 Short overview of KISSmir KISSmir is a process handling and information sharing tool. The execution and its developed prototype. In a rapidly changing objective of it is to transfer and share knowledge and experience environment an enterprise must be flexible and able to quickly among knowledge workers in an organisation and to react. Traditional business process modelling approaches are too collaboratively learn and mature processes by executing them [1]. rigid and inflexible. To achieve more agility, the modelling during build-time must be less strict and more open in a way that It focuses on the modelling of knowledge intensive business users are able to perform individual adaptations during run-time, processes and aims at the following goal The individual which leads to more flexibility. Being able to react fast is also knowledge and experience used when carrying out a process depending on the enterprise knowledge. Employees must be should be shared with other employees in an organisation. In aware of it and able to access it in an easy way. The approach KISSmir, the user should thus be able to add and exchange new proposes to use ontologies to store information and appropriate knowledge and experience at any time. In order to reach these services to receive context-relevant information to tackle these goals, business process models are made agile and open for challenges. changes during execution. The activities of the process models are represented in a way that allows end users to adjust them by attaching resources and experience deemed valuable for others in Categories and Subject Descriptors that specific context [2]. D.2.11 [Software]: Software Architectures - Domain-specific architectures. H.4.0 [Information Systems Applications]: The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 describes the Miscellaneous. application scenario within which KISSmir has been applied and evaluated. Section 3 describes the architecture and Section 4 shows how it has been implemented. Then a scenario describes General Terms the four main parts in more detail before concluding the work and Management, Design. giving an outlook for future work. Keywords 2. Application Scenario Agility, Knowledge-intensive Activity, Process execution, KISSmir is currently being applied in two scenarios – Ontology additional scenarios have already been considered but not yet realised. The first of these scenarios concerns the process of 1. INTRODUCTION selecting students for matriculation in a master’s programme at With the accelerating innovation cycle in a globalised world, the FHNW while the second scenario is still in an early stage and organisations need to adapt their IT solutions to the changed supports the recruitment process at SAP Research. In this paper, business requirements more frequently and unexpectedly. Agility only the first part of the matriculation process will be shown and has emerged as an important common characteristic of successful explained (see Figure 1). businesses. Conventional business process modelling and At the beginning of the process, a student has to send the execution approaches have found themselves overstretched in application to the administration office. First, all of the data such situations due to the lack of flexibility. needed is entered by the administration office into KISSmir Therefore, business process models need to be agile and open for before the process continues with the next activity. Following the changes during execution. To achieve this, the strict distinction sequence flow, the sub-process 'Check Application' has to be between build-time modelling and run-time execution is softened performed with various activities. However, the execution and process activities are represented to the users in a way that sequence of these activities, and which of them is being executed allows for individual adaptations. The implementation of this at all, depends on the specific context of each process instance. approach is described in this work at hand. and makes it adaptive. When finishing an activity, the user is asked whether the requirements for the particular activity are met 1 This work has been conducted within the EU-funded Integrating Project MATURE (grant no. 216346) which investigates knowledge maturing as new form of learning in businesses and organisations, a dynamic view one-learning and knowledge management. 36 or not. As soon as all activities have been performed the process calculation service has been implemented which calculates the goes to the next activity 'Send rejection letter', 'Send acceptance study fee of the applicant based on the given data and influences letter' or 'Check Criteria List' depending on whether the the workflow. These services should not be mixed with the requirements for an application are fulfilled or not. Hence context reasoning services in section 5.3 - they use the ontology for data used and adapted in an activity by a user is relevant for the inferencing. d A so called task pattern [4] is related to each execution of subsequent activities making a process adaptive. The activity. It consists of additional information such as websites that process then would continue with other activities but the could be helpful to execute an activity, the executor of the explained fragment is the most interesting part for KISSmir. activity, a link to the applicants application data or documents (e.g. templates) needed to execute an activity. The task pattern proposes needed resources and steps to perform an activity. However the user does not have to follow or use these suggestions. He/she is able to adapt the task pattern to his/her needs. These adaptations are stored locally so that the execution of the same activity will be proposed in the adapted way. Furthermore, the adaptations can also be shared with colleagues working on the same activities. e The utility web service is responsible for the instance handling and also for the management of property data. f An ontology is used to store necessary and helpful information for the task execution along with a relation to the activity instance, e.g. websites, experts or historical cases which might be useful in the activity execution. This information was earlier collected by web services in step one. Also related is its task pattern which includes the information as described in step two. g The communication web service is triggered. It is a service that sends an e-mail to the user which has to execute the activity. This service was developed by other partners in the MATURE project2. Figure 1: Matriculation process The above application scenario has been used to evaluate the approach of KISSmir. The evaluation consisted of a first phase where the implemented approach had been explained to the end users and a guided walkthrough (including subsequent interviews) had been conducted afterwards. The results were promising and valuable feedback could be received. Based on it, KISSmir has been further developed and evaluated in a second phase, where the system has been used in a productive environment during a period of four weeks. Subsequent interviews have been conducted in order to verify the process support of KISSmir, the practical use of the adaptivity services, personal taks management, knowledge maturing and sharing and to gain new cognitions. The analysis of the interviews is currently in progress. Figure 2: KISSmir Architecture overview 3. ARCHITECTURE h As soon as the user accepts the activity by clicking on a link Figure 2 gives an overview of the architecture. The business provided in the e-mail, it is loaded into the GUI of KISSmir. In process serves as backbone and orchestrator of the whole the current implementation we have used the Kasimir UI [5]. approach. The first activity represents a normal one, whereas we There, the user finds necessary information to execute the call the second activity a Knowledge Intensive Activity (KIA). activity. On the one hand, information which was already defined KIAs can consist of sub-activities for which no sequence is in the task pattern during build-time. On the other hand, this defined and the execution is optional, depending on specific information that has been collected from the previously information for the certain process instance [3]. mentioned services and stored in the ontology during run-time. i From there the information is retrieved. Some queries might not When an instance of an activity in the process is executed, c it be executed until the user accepts the activity. This guarantees calls various services. These can be adaptivity services which that the latest information is provided, for example if it takes two endorse the agility of the process and also provide context weeks until the user accepts the activity, it is useful to search for dependent relevant resources, or application partner services historical cases at the time when the activity is accepted and which have been developed for their specific purposes. The yet executed but not a priori. j When the activity has been finished, implemented adaptivity services have been developed specifically for the application partner but it is intended to implement generic ones reusable in other context. As a first step a study fee 2 MATURE IP: http://www.mature-ip.eu/ 37 the user terminates it by clicking the appropriate button. This Data storage: KISSmir uses the open source framework Sesame7 triggers a return message over the communication web service as semantic repository for the storage and querying of ontological back to the utility handling web service, which communicates data.