BPM Newsletter Puts in on the Background and the People Who Make BPM the Center the Host City and Content of the ERC Grant 2020 Happen

Issue 1/ 2020 February 2020

Editorial

Seville is calling! As a tradi- Stefanie Rinderle-Ma has research group in Seville, so tion, the February edition of interviewed Marlon Dumas that you are introduced to the BPM Newsletter puts in on the background and the people who make BPM the center the host city and content of the ERC grant 2020 happen. everything you need to that he was awarded recent- Let me also point you to the know about this year’s con- ly. ERC grants are among second edition of our sister ference. Take-home messag- the most competitive re- conference, the Internation- es are an open science prin- search grants in Europe; it is 1st BPM 2003 Eindhoven al Conference on Process ciple in the main conference, a huge success for Marlon 2nd BPM 2004 Potsdam Mining, ICPM 2020, which excellent keynote speakers, for which we congratulate takes place in Padua, Italy, in 3rd BPM 2005 Nancy a diverse set of workshops him warmly. To some extent, October. Looking forward to 4th BPM 2006 Vienna with different perspectives the award is also an an exciting conference year 5th BPM 2007 Brisbane on BPM, a new forum on acknowledgement of the 2020! 6th BPM 2008 Milan robotic process automation relevance of BPM research in and the charming atmos- general. Thanks for supporting the 7th BPM 2009 Ulm phere of the historic city of BPM newsletter, and happy 8th BPM 2010 Hoboken Barbara Weber has pre- Seville. reading! 9th BPM 2011 Clermont-Ferrand pared a report about the ISA Mathias Weske 10th BPM 2012 Tallinn 11th BPM 2013 Beijing 12th BPM 2014 Haifa/Eindhoven 13th BPM 2015 Innsbruck 14th BPM 2016 Rio de Janeiro

15th BPM 2017 Barcelona 16th BPM 2018 Sydney 17th BPM 2019 Vienna 18th BPM 2020 Seville 19th BPM 2021 Rome P AGE 2 B P M N EWSLETTER

Welcome to BPM 2020 — Welcome to Seville!

According to legend, Seville was found- ed by Hercules and its origins are linked with the Tartessian civilisation. It was called Hispalis under the Romans and Isbiliya with the Moors. The high point in its history came following the discovery of America in 1492, when the House of Trade was established in Se- ville to monopolize all trade with Ameri- ca. In Seville, you will breathe history in every corner. Visitors will not want to miss the Giralda tower and the Cathe- dral, which is the largest Gothic church in the world. Very close by are the royal Foto: Jan Mendling Mudejar palace known as the Alcazar with marvellous gardens, and the Gen- eral Archive of the Indies, where the historical records of the American conti- nent are kept. These three UNESCO Guadalquivir River, will delight us with cipal green area in the city center and World Heritage Sites and many other avant-garde Andalusian cuisine with home to many monuments like the corners of the old town have fascinated traditional flavours and touches of inno- magnificent Plaza de España and to people for centuries. This is one of the vation, while we enjoy stunning views numerous ponds and fountains. reasons that Seville has inspired many of the river and some landmarks of Se- operas like Carmen, Don Giovanni or Finally, if you want to extend your visit ville as the Torre del Oro, the Giralda for a few days , you have plenty of op- Figaro. and the Maestranza bullring. tions like visiting one of the fantastic One of these corners is the BPM venue: Daily meals won't go unnoticed either. beaches that are within one and a half the former Royal tobacco factory. It's a We will have the pleasure of taking a hour driving from the city, a sherry bo- building made of stone during the 18th break and having lunch in La Raza res- dega, or the Roman city of Italica. century as the first tobacco factory es- taurant, located inside the María Luisa tablished in Europe. It is one of the most Manuel Resinas (BPM’20 General Co- Park, just 3 minutes walking from the Chair) splendid representations of the industri- conference venue. This park is the prin- al architecture of the Old Regime. In- side, there are a number of small, but often beautifully decorated courtyards with marble fountains. In the middle of the 20th century it was decided to use the historic building, after a transformation, as the headquarters of the Uni- versity of Seville. For those of you who are curious about the social events, here are some highlights to get you started. We will be delighted with a guided visit to the Real Alcazar of Seville, originally developed by Moorish Muslim Kings and re- nowned as one of the most beautiful in Spain. Its upper levels are still used by the royal family as the official Seville residence, making it the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe. The Alcazar palace complex also boasts beautiful, extensive gardens: from Moorish, to Renaissance style, with many ponds, exotic trees, shady footpaths and pavil- ions. We will not be disappointed with the conference dinner. Abades Triana res- taurant, located on the banks of the I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 0 P AGE 3

A message from the BPM 2020 PC Chairs

The BPM 2020 main conference is orga- of the artifact introduced. Where appli- alongside the main conference. The nized in three complementary tracks, cable, artifacts should be compared to BPM Forum is a venue for research pa- covering different perspectives into the state-of-the-art in a reproducible man- pers that explore innovative research BPM discipline and different research ner. directions, which need time to reach methods. the level of maturity of more established Track III invites papers that aim to ad- research topics. Track I invites papers that follow com- vance our understanding of how BPM puter science research methods. This can deliver business value or competiti- The conference will also feature several includes papers that investigate the ve advantage, for instance by develo- workshops, tutorials, a demo track, an foundational principles of BPM systems, ping capabilities to improve, innovate, RPA Forum, a Blockchain Forum, and theories, algorithms, languages, and or transform organizations or to tackle an Industry Forum, altogether offering methods for modeling and analyzing the challenges and opportunities of a rich, diverse, and exciting program. business processes. This track also digitalization. Papers that study process Keep in mind the following deadlines: covers papers on novel architectures thinking, organizational routines, pro- and concepts underlying process-aware cess innovation, and the application  16 March 2020 — Paper submissi- information systems, as well as papers and impact of BPM methods and tools ons to main conference tracks that use conceptual modeling techni- in use contexts based on empirical ob- (strict) ques to investigate problems in the de- servation are highly welcome, too.  6 April 2020 — Tutorial submissions sign and analysis of BPM systems. Pa- Areas of interest include a wide range  10 April 2020 — Submissions to pers in Track I are evaluated according of capability areas that are relevant for Industry Forum to computer science standards, inclu- BPM. Papers will be evaluated accord- ding sound formalization, convincing  4 May 2020 — Nominations for ing to management and information argumentation, and, where applicable, BPM Dissertation Award systems research standards. proof of concept implementation,  24/31 May 2020 — Abstract/Paper which shows that the concepts can be Authors of selected papers will be in- submissions to Blockchain Forum implemented as described. vited to submit an extended version of and RPA Forum their papers to special issues in Elsevier’s  29 May 2020 — Submissions to Track II invites papers that focus on en- Information Systems (Tracks I and II) BPM workshops gineering aspects of information sys- and in Springer’s Business & Informati- tems research. The focus is on the inves-  1 June 2020 — Submissions to doc- on Systems Engineering (Track III). tigation of artifacts and systems in busi- toral consortium ness environments. Papers in this track This year, the BPM conference will expli-  15 June 2020 — Submissions to are expected to have a strong empirical citly encourage authors of research Demo Track evaluation that critically tests criteria like papers to follow the principles of trans-  13-18 September 2020 — BPM usefulness or added value of the propo- parency, reproducibility, and replicabili- 2020 Conference and Co-Located sed artifact. This track covers business ty. In particular, the conference will en- Events process intelligence, including process courage authors to disclose anony- mining techniques, and the use of pro- mized and curated datasets in order to Further details can be found at https:// cess models for enactment, model- increase reproducibility and replicability. congreso.us.es/bpm2020/ driven engineering, as well as deploy- The conference will continue with its ment architectures. Empirical evalua- tradition of hosting the BPM Forum Marlon Dumas (BPM 2020 Consolidati- tions are important to show the merits on Chair) I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 0 P AGE 4

BPM 2020 Workshops: Now it’s up to you!

Also in 2020, the BPM conference fea- main conference. We are happy to an- tures a number of workshops dedicated nounce that BPM 2020 can again offer to particular areas of business process a rich spectrum of workshops reaching management. While the main con- out into neighboring domains: ference focuses on finished and mature work, workshops aim to attract papers  Workshop on Security and Privacy- that present novel ideas and prelimina- enhanced Business Process Ma- ry research. The idea is to engage a nagement (SPBP’20) select community and to provide a fo-  Workshop on Social and Human rum for interesting discussions and in- Aspects of Business Process Ma- spiring new research. nagement (BPMS2’20)

 Workshop on Business Processes A large number of workshop organizers Meet the Internet-of Things (BP- have made the effort of proposing a Meet-IoT) workshop for the BPM conference. This year we deliberately limited the number  Workshop on Artificial Intelligence of workshops in order to increase the for Business Process Management participation and level of interaction per (AI4BPM) workshop. For you, as a researcher in  Workshop BPM in the era of Digital the area of BPM, this is the ultimate op- Submission deadline is May 29, 2020. Innovation and Transformation portunity to submit, present, and dis- (BPMinDIT-2020) More details can be found on cuss your preliminary work in an a https://congreso.us.es/bpm2020/wor focused and interactive session. What is  Workshop on Business Process kshops/. We are looking forward to more, it will enable you to further deve- Intelligence (BPI’20) your submissions! lop your ideas together with fellow re-  Workshop on DEClarative, DECisi- searchers from around the world. on and Hybrid approaches to pro- Adela del Río Ortega, Flavia Santoro, The workshops will take place on cesses (DEC2H 2020) Henrik Leopold (BPM 2020 Workshop Monday, September 13, right before the Chairs)

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Exciting Keynotes at BPM 2020

In the tradition of our conference series, Avigdor Gal is a Professor of Informati- poses new challenges to this research BPM 2020 features three top-notch on Systems, Technion – Israel Institute field. In this talk Avi will position process keynotes with different perspectives on of Technology. His research interests in mining along modern data life cycle, business process management. the world of process management and highlighting the challenges and sugges- mining include the use of low-level data ting directions in which AI in general, Rama Akkiraju is an IBM Fellow, Master and machine learning in particular may Inventor and IBM Academy Member, interact with a renewed process mining and a Director in IBM’s Watson Division agenda. where she leads the AI operations team with a mission to scale AI for Enterpri- Jan vom Brocke is the Hilti Chair of Busi- ses. Rama also heads the AI mission of ness Process Management, University of enabling natural, personalized and Liechtenstein. compassionate conversations between computers and humans. Rama has been named by Forbes as one of the Top 20 Women in AI Research in May 2017, has been featured in A-Team in AI by Fortune magazine in July 2018 and named Top 10 pioneering women in AI and Machine Learning by Enterprise Management 360.

signals to process discovery, process matching, and improvements to the performance of processes with scarce resources. He co-authored the paper Jan has more than 15 years of experi- "Complex Event Processing over ence in IS research, teaching and prac- Uncertain Data", which received the tice and has published more than 200 test-of-time award in DEBS 2018. Prof. papers in, among others, MIS Quarterly Gal serves in various editorial capacities (MISQ), Journal of Management Infor- for periodicals and has helped organize mation Systems (JMIS) and Information professional workshops and con- & Management (I&M). He is author and ferences. He has won IBM, Accenture, editor of 19 books, including the Inter- In her career, Rama has worked on and JP Morgan Faculty Awards, the national Handbook on Business Process agent-based decision support systems, 2011-13 Technion-Microsoft Electronic Management (together with M. Rose- business process management, electro- Commerce Research Award, and the mann). He serves on the editorial re- nic market places, and semantic Web 2012 Yanai Award for Excellence in view board of the Journal of the Associ- services, for which she led a World- Academic Education. ation for Information Systems (JAIS) and Wide-Web (W3C) standard. Rama ser- is an associate editor of Business & In- He will talk about „Perspectives in Pro- ved as the President for ISSIP, a Service formation Systems Engineering (BISE) cess Mining: Closing the Big Data Gap“. Science professional society for 2018 and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of The discipline of process mining was and continues to actively drive AI pro- Information Technology Theory and inaugurated in a world of small(er) da- jects through this professional society. Application (JITTA). He will talk about ta, with roots in the communities of She will talk about „How to infuse AI „Towards Process Science: Embracing software engineering and databases. into Business Processes? A practitioner's Interdisciplinary Research Opportunities The introduction of big data, with its perspective on best practices“. for BPM in the Digital Age“. volume, velocity, variety, and veracity Marlon Dumas I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 0 P AGE 6

Interview with Marlon Dumas

The European Research Council (ERC) The PIX project, hence, aims at sifting portant problem, and not a surrogate of provides significant funding schemes through vast volumes of process execu- it. Improving processes is an important for excellent and groundbreaking re- tion data and to automatically finding problem. The topic must have a direct search (https://erc.europa.eu/). For ways of process improvement based on impact. The high-risk aspect means that experienced researchers with an excel- identifying the root causes of issues and the problem is challenging from a scien- lent scientific track record of 10 years providing algorithmic versions of pro- tific perspective and results are not and more, ERC Advanced Grants offer cess improvement heuristics. guaranteed. In PIX, four research vec- up to 2.5 Mio Euros of funding for high tors were defined. Each of these vectors risk, high gain research projects of 5 To achieve this, PIX follows four re- is very risky, but also is promising to years. search vectors: i) robotic task automa- achieve a fundamental breakthrough tion, ii) control-flow optimization, iii) with an immediate impact. Maybe we In 2019, Prof. Marlon Dumas from Uni- cost-sensitive decision rule refinement, will not come up with satisfactory solu- versity of Tartu, Estonia, received an and iv) optimization of resource alloca- tions to all four problems, but a break- ERC Advanced Grant for his project tion. through along one of the four research “The Process Improvement Explorer: vectors would already be a significant PIX will be designed as an open-source Automated Discovery and Assessment advance, which could inspire research- system where users can interactively of Business Process Improvement Op- ers and developers to go further. portunities (PIX)”. explore the state space of possible process optimizations based on different What are the main challenges in posi- We are happy that Marlon agreed to performance heuristics. tioning the topic in the ERC thematic share his ERC Advanced Grant success framework? story in the following interview. There might be a focus on theoretical What are the goals and challenges of projects, but if you look at past granted the PIX project? projects, there are also lots of ERC grants in the fields of database technol- The PIX project is an opportunistic pro- ogy, software engineering and ject. It starts from the opportunity to (applied) machine learning. There is no improve business processes beyond reason why there shouldn’t be more how it is currently done, i.e., manually ERC grantees in the fields of information by process analysts based on interviews systems and BPM. and expert knowledge in order to de- rive changes to the business process The PIX project was submitted to PE6: that address the causes of the issues. Computer Science and Informatics. A However, this way, the issues can only BPM proposal focusing on Track III top- be detected if they are sufficiently large, ics of the BPM conference could be also i.e., detectable by the analysis. Hence, submitted to SH1: Individuals, Markets nowadays, mature BPM companies and Organisations. It is important to detect the most obvious issues, opti- highlight the cross-disciplinary nature of mized for the happy paths of the busi- What are in your experience the main the BPM field. Our cross-disciplinarity is ness processes. Typically, numerous challenges in defining a suitable topic one of our key strengths. exceptions happen that are quite rare for an ERC proposal? and hence do not attract the attention How did you experience the process of of the analysts, but in sum can have a A suitable topic marries the ERC key- writing the proposal? How did you find large impact. In addition, an increasing words of “high risk” and “high gain”. time amongst all other duties? How did number of more fine-grained data The first thing to keep in mind is not to you experience the pressure/mental sources of business process execution propose a project that addresses a sur- load? data become available. This holds true rogate problem, i.e., a problem that for data that is collected at the process contributed to solving some other According to my experience, preparing level, i.e., by an Enterprise Information “important” problem. Surrogate prob- an ERC Advanced Grant proposal takes System, and at the task level. lems have indirect impact. In ERC pro- at least 300 hours of work. And often jects one should try to address the im- being successful with an ERC grant P AGE 7 B P M N EWSLETTER

takes more than one shot. The develop- when I wrote the ERC grant confirms proposal at the national level such as, ment of the ideas is crucial and takes its that this problem is relevant in the long for example, Estonia has “consolation” time, i.e., developing the hierarchy of term. Another advice from my side is: grants in case an ERC grant is not ac- ideas starting from the overall goal. The better go with two really good ideas cepted but it goes above the threshold. proposal must be dense in ideas, along than with two really good ideas and each of the research vectors. I would one bad one (“let the good ideas And even if you don’t get funding, hav- recommend to start 6 – 12 months prior shine”). ing a clear long-term five-years vision is to the deadline by accumulating ideas very valuable on its own. in a notebook. For PIX that was submit- Overall, I think we as a community have Eight months into PIX – what are your ted in 2018, the seed idea occurred in to get into applying for ERC grants, and experiences in starting and running a 2015 when preparing a keynote that I not be afraid of it. Working on such a project of this scale? delivered. The main message of the proposal pays off. It helps you defining a research agenda for the next 3 – 4 keynote talk was “improve the process, PIX has been successfully started and years. Also the proposal – if not success- not the process model”. The fact that has already created very promising re- ful at the ERC level – can make a strong this problem was still prevalent in 2018 sults. We have developed some preliminary techniques for discovering robotic process automation scripts from noisy User Interaction logs. We have also developed a data-driven simulator, which builds accuracy-optimized simulation models from nothing else than an event log as input. These are building blocks for the rest of the project. Until now, the main challenge we have encountered is finding people and time.

Nothing surprising about this, people, and time are the most valuable resources one can hope to have.

Thank you, Marlon, for sharing these highly interesting and inspiring insights.

Stefanie Rinderle-Ma (Interview Editor)

BPM 2018 Special issue available

The Special Issue „BPM 2018 selected logic over finite traces is presented and networks, and simultaneously handles papers in foundations and enginee- an effective algorithm for checking the the control flow and data perspectives ring“, edited by Marco Montali, Ingo consistency of CopModL models is intro- reflected in the logs. In Aligning Obser- Weber, Mathias Weske, and Manfred duced. In Formalising and Animating ved and Modelled Behaviour by Maxi- Reichert, is currently in press at Elsevier‘s Multiple Instances in BPMN Collaborati- mizing Synchronous Moves and Using Information Systems and has been ons, Corradini et al. provide a formal Milestones, Bloemen et al. push forward available online since November 2019. semantics of cross-organizational busi- the boundaries of conformance che- It contains the revised and extended ness processes expressed in terms of cking. The authors introduce a dedica- versions of four papers out of the 18 BPMN collaborations. The semantics ted data structure for conformance che- accepted papers in the BPM 2018 foun- captures the interplay of control-flow, cking, with the twofold objective (1) to dations and engineering tracks. message exchanges, and data, in a set- tackle the performance issues that align- ting where multiple instances of the ment-based techniques show when The article CoPModL: Construction Pro- involved pools are present. applying them to large event logs and cess Modeling Language and Satisfiabili- models and (2) to improve the diagnos- ty Checking by Marengo et al. intro- The article BINet: Multi-perspective Busi- tics for nonconforming traces. duces CopModL--a multi-perspective ness Process Anomaly Classification by doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2019.101477 language dedicated to the modeling of Nolle et al. deals with real-time anomaly construction processes. A formal langu- detection in business process event age semantics based on linear temporal logs. The approach is based on neural Manfred Reichert (IS Liaison for the SC) I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 0 P AGE 8

Group Column: focus on Seville

For the second time the BPM Newslet- Post-doc Researcher. Their research stream of research focuses on the appli- ter features a group column that has focuses on the development and application of methodologies to improve the goal to introduce different BPM cation of software tools to improve the personal productivity. Another rese- groups with their specific research focus performance and human resource ma- arch stream is focused on the configura- and highlights. This group column int- nagement of business processes with a tion and use of workstream collaborati- roduces the Applied Software Enginee- particular emphasis on unstructured on tools and other related technologies ring Group at the University of Seville knowledge-intensive processes. to improve the collaboration of people that will organize BPM 2020 in Seville, in a context of digital transformation. Spain. In the field of performance manage- Finally, the third research stream tackles ment, the group has a strong experi- the organisational perspective of busi- The Applied Software Engineering (ISA) ence in the monitoring of business pro- ness processes pursuing the optimisati- Group at the Universidad de Sevilla is cesses based on process performance on of the management of human re- led by Antonio Ruiz-Cortés and compo- indicators (PPIs). The current interests sources along with process modelling, sed of 21 members. Its research has involve improving the modelling, moni- execution and analysis. always aimed at finding ways to auto- toring and prediction of PPIs. Concern- mate activities that are usually perfor- ing monitoring, new techniques and These research lines are supported by med by hand. Currently, it spans six methodologies for the definition and research projects, which currently invol- areas of interest, including Business monitoring of decisions and unstruc- ve “HAMLET: Technologies to improve Process Management, Service Gover- tured processes are being devised. Fi- the reliability, customisation and opera- nance, Metaheuristics, Experiments Sup- nally, in the area of predictive monito- ting costs of applications based on soft- port, Search-based Software Enginee- ring of PPIs, the research targets prob- ware-based services and knowledge- ring and Software Testing. lems that appear when a predictive based services”, and “CONFLEX: Integra- model is deployed in a production sys- tion of context-aware resource manage- The research on BPM aspects is led by tem, such as the reliability of the models ment into flexible process-oriented or- Manuel Resinas and Antonio Ruiz- or the evolution of the predictive model. ganisations”. Cortés, and it occupies 9 group members including 1 Professor, 2 Associate The research on human resources Barbara Weber (Group Column Editor) Professors, 5 Assistant Professors and 1 covers several different angles. One PUBLISHED BY THE STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE BPM CONFERENCE SERIES

Wil van der Aalst, Boualem Benatallah, Jörg Desel, Marlon Dumas, Jan Mendling, Manfred Reichert, Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, Michael Rosemann, Shazia Sadiq, Barbara Weber and Mathias Weske (chair). http://bpm-conference.org

This newsletter is an activity of the BPM conference series. The goal is to further strengthen the BPM community. This newsletter will appear twice per year. Input for the next newsletter is welcome (e.g. activities related to the BPM conference, interviews, contests, new datasets, tools, etc.); please contact [email protected] Activities of the Community

The Steering Committee of the BPM The Second International Conference ICPM 2020 will again be supported by Conference series announces the Best on Process Mining (ICPM 2020) will take the leading vendors in process mining: BPM Dissertation Award 2020. You are place in October in the city of Padua, a Nine companies already expressed their eligible, if you have officially completed picturesque city in the northeast of Italy, interest in sponsoring, and more will your PhD on a BPM related topic after 40km west of Venice. ICPM 2020 will be likely follow. January 1st, 2019. You can only be no- chaired by Dr. de Leoni and Prof. Sper- ICPM 2020 will feature a diversified pro- minated by your primary supervisor. duti (University of Padua). The first edi- gram, whose quality is testified by the This is a prestigious award and will defi- tion in Aachen in 2019 was a huge suc- technical IEEE co-sponsorship. ICPM nitely be a cornerstone in your acade- cess with over 420 participants of 2020 will include exciting scientific talks, mic career. And, by the way, the winner whom 23% were representatives of tool tool demonstrations, contests, lots of vendors and 43% were end-users and will be awarded a prize of €1000 and a workshops and co-located events, and consultants. All signs indicate that ICPM free registration to the BPM 2020 con- various awards. The program is greatly 2019 was only the prelude to a very ference. Details on the submission pro- enhanced by an Industry Day, where successful new conference series. ICPM cedure can be found at thought leaders from industry will re- provides a platform where process mi- https://congreso.us.es/bpm2020/calls/ port on the application of process mi- ners from academia and industry meet. dissertation. ning and join a panel on emerging to- Moreover, ICPM nicely complements Matthias Weidlich was appointed Edi- pics. https://icpmconference.org/2020/. BPM and the timing allows people to tor-in-Chief of Elsevier‘s Information attend both events. Wil van der Aalst, Massimiliano de Leoni Systems Journal. Together with Dennis Shasha and Gottfried Vossen, he heads

that excellent journal, which has been an outlet of an impressive number of well-cited BPM papers over the years.