Issue 1/ 2021 February 2021

Editorial

After announcing the estab- It is a good time to get ready being founded in the BPM lishment of the BPM Associa- for BPM 2021 in Rome—the space. With the announced tion, I am happy to report deadline for research papers acquisition of Signavio by that hundreds of members passes in a few weeks from SAP, we can expect business have joined already! The now. Massimo Mecella and processes and the respective BPM Association organizes a his team are working hard methods and techniques to BPM Expert Forum series; to organize another out- become more relevant, not BPM heavyweights Wil van standing BPM conference only in enterprise compu- 1st BPM 2003 Eindhoven der Aalst and Michael Rose- experience for you. Hopeful- ting. A person note by Gero 2nd BPM 2004 Potsdam mann will kick off the BPM ly BPM 2021 can be held in Decker can be found in this 3rd BPM 2005 Nancy Expert Forum series in early presence to provide the BPM newsletter. 4th BPM 2006 Vienna March, as detailed below in community atmosphere we Thanks for supporting the 5th BPM 2007 Brisbane this newsletter. Please sup- are all missing. BPM newsletter, and happy 6th BPM 2008 Milan port our activities by joining The success of our commu- reading! the BPM Association, if you 7th BPM 2009 Ulm nity can also be seen by the are not yet a member. Mathias Weske 8th BPM 2010 Hoboken constant flow of companies 9th BPM 2011 Clermont-Ferrand 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 20th BPM 2022 Münster P AGE 2 B P M N EWSLETTER

BPM Expert forum by the BPM Association

We are delighted to announce the inau- Prof. van der Aalst will provide his in- An opportunity-rich environment and gural expert forum to take place on 2 sights on what we missed in the last the changing nature of processes (e.g., March 8am CET, where renowned BPM several decades of BPM research and transformational, scalable, entrepre- thought leaders Wil van der Aalst and development. He states that neurial, socially responsible) require Michael Rosemann will provide their “Traditionally, BPM is about process entirely new BPM approaches. Deduc- viewpoints on “BPM Past, Present and modeling and BPM/WFM systems. In tive and also inductive (e.g., process Future”. the 1990-ties we assumed that we mining) methods need to be comple- Prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst is a full pro- could generate information systems by mented by abductive approaches ena- fessor at RWTH Aachen University lead- modeling processes properly. However, bling advanced process design. This will ing the Process and Data Science this turned out to be the exception ra- require new design criteria, methods, (PADS) group. He is also part-time affili- ther than the rule. Instead, Process Min- systems and most of all mindsets for ated with the Fraunhofer FIT where he ing (PM) and Robotic Process Automa- BPM to stay relevant.” tion (RPA) are booming while organiza- tions are still using ERP systems from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Infor and the like. Therefore, we need to rethink BPM and no longer assume we can improve processes by just modeling them. We need to exploit the data available, go beyond simplistic BPMN models, and accept that BPM needs to build on exist- ing complex data-centric applications. This will help us to expand the scope of process management far beyond con- temporary BPM niches.”

Prof. Dr. Michael Rosemann is a full pro- fessor at Queensland University of Tech- nology leading the Centre for Future Enterprise. He has published compre- hensively on various aspects of BPM and initiated research in areas such as leads FIT's group, and a BPM maturity models, context-aware We invite you to join and promote this member of the Board of Governors of BPM, ambidextrous BPM and trust- event within your networks and pre- Tilburg University. Wil van der Aalst has aware BPM. His books are available in pare to be enlightened and entertained published over 800 articles and books five languages and he serves on the at this rare opportunity to learn from and is typically considered to be in the editorial boards of 10 international jour- two of the biggest contributors in the top-15 of most cited computer scientists nals. Rosemann has conducted invited field of BPM. with an H-index of over 155 and more keynotes at academic and professional than 110.000 citations. Next to serving BPM conferences and is a regular advi- on the editorial boards of over ten sci- sor to board rooms across various indus- Register now at https://uqz.zoom.us/ entific journals, he is also playing an tries. He is also the Honorary Consul for webinar/register/ advisory role for several companies, the Federal Republic of Germany in WN_i4sg26h_QAqsLsbCC5HpqQ including Fluxicon, Celonis, and UiPath. Queensland, Australia. Van der Aalst is an IFIP Fellow, IEEE We look forward to continuing the ex- Fellow, ACM Fellow and received hon- pert forum with further exciting talks. orary degrees from the Moscow Higher Looking forward, Prof. Rosemann high- School of Economics (Prof. h.c.), Tsing- lights the need to understand what we On May 4, 2021, Gero Decker and Jan vom Brocke will debate whether hua University, and Hasselt University might miss in future BPM related re- “Digital innovation needs process mod- (Dr. h.c.). He is also an elected member search and developments. He indicates els?”, and on July 6, 2021, we will hear of the Royal Academy of that “The management of business pro- from Stefanie Rinderle-Ma and Bernd Arts and Sciences, the Royal Holland cesses has been mostly centred on the Society of Sciences and Humanities, the identification of process issues and been Ruecker on whether they think “RPA will make BPMSs redundant?” Stay Academy of Europe, and the North guided by process improvement ap- Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Scienc- proaches such as lean management, six tuned for further updates. es, Humanities and the Arts. In 2018, he sigma or process automation. However, such reductionist approaches to process was awarded an Alexander-von- Shazia Sadiq Humboldt Professorship. management are no longer sufficient. P AGE 3 B P M N EWSLETTER

Welcome to BPM 2021 — Welcome to Rome! Rome is the capital and largest city of informatica, automatica e gestionale Italy, and one of the largest cities in Antonio Ruberti (DIAG), named after Europe. Roman antiquities, Baroque the famous engineer, politician, and palaces, the Vatican with the St. Peter’s European Commissioner (with a major Basilica and the Vatican Museums, Lib- impact on EU research and EU scientific erty quarter and 900 modern quarters programmes), will be the organizational (such as Esposizione Universale di Ro- home of BPM 2021. ma) give the city a unique flair well The venue of the main conference and known all over the world. All this is ac- of the forums (BPM Forum, Industry Forum, Blockchain Forum, and RPA Forum) will be the Auditorium Antonia- num, an astonishing congress center nearby the Colosseum. Satellite events, as well as the workshops and the Doc- toral Consortium, will be held at DIAG (photo left). The two buildings are only 110 mt. away from each other. Unfortu- nately travelling on large scale might not yet be possible due to the pandem- ic, but the organizing team is well pre- pared for a fully blended mode, thanks to the equipment that was recently procured in all rooms of DIAG and Au- ditorium Antonianum for remote teach- party will be probably substituted by an ing. Zoom and Whova are already in alternative “party” (a concert or some place for managing remote attendees. companied by a fantastic weather that nice activity in the open air) that will allows enjoying the summer until the Social events will be a very important allow to socialize even in these times of end of September and also having part of BPM 2021 as well, respecting all social distance. swimming and beach time in Ostia, the safety constraints imposed by the We are very much looking forward to which is easily accessible from Rome. pandemic. Besides enjoying the fantas- your contribution and hope to see you tic September weather in Rome, you in Rome next September! Find more BPM 2021 will be organized by Sapien- will learn more about the history of the za Università di Roma, the largest Euro- information at the conference website: Romans and the Popes during the social https://bpm2021.diag.uniroma1.it/ pean university by enrollments and one dinner, and enjoy a real Trattoria-based of the oldest in the world, founded in welcome reception, with delicious Massimo Mecella 1303. The Dipartimento di Ingegneria “carbonara” and “tiramisu”. The dancing (BPM 2021 General Chair) I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 1 P AGE 4

A message from the BPM 2021 PC Chairs

The BPM 2021 conference explicitly well as interaction with services and special issues in Elsevier's Information seeks to bring together the finest rese- deployment architectures like the Systems (Tracks I and II) and in Sprin- arch contributions and viewpoints from Cloud. Papers in this track must include ger’s Business & Information Systems the fields of , informa- rigorous and repeatable empirical eva- Engineering (Track III). tion systems engineering, and informati- luations that demonstrate the merits of The BPM 2021 conference will continue on system management, insofar as they the artifact introduced. Where applicab- with its tradition of hosting the BPM enhance or refine the existing portfolio le, artifacts should be evaluated against Forum alongside the main conference. of theories, methods, and tools for ma- public datasets and be compared to the The BPM Forum is a venue for research naging and improving business proces- state of the art in a reproducible man- papers that explore innovative research ses. To accommodate for this diversity, ner. directions, which need time to reach the BPM conference is structured into TRACK III (MANAGEMENT) invites pa- the level of maturity of more established three tracks. pers that aim to advance our under- research topics. Moreover, BPM 2021 TRACK I (FOUNDATIONS) invites papers standing of how BPM can deliver busi- will feature several workshops, tutorials, that follow computer science research ness value (e.g., competitive advantage) a demo track, an RPA Forum, a Block- methods, including contributions that by developing process-oriented capabi- chain Forum, and an Industry Forum, investigate the underlying principles of lities to improve, innovate or transform altogether offering a rich, diverse, and BPM systems, theories, algorithms, se- organizations, or to tackle the challen- exciting program. mantics, and methods for modeling, ges and opportunities of process-related Some important deadlines (for a full list automating, and analyzing business digitalization. Papers that examine pro- please visit the BPM 2021 homepage): processes. Track I also covers papers on cess thinking, organizational routines, novel languages, architectures, and process innovation, or the context-  15 March 2021 — Paper submissi- other concepts underlying process- aware impact of BPM methods and ons to main conference tracks aware information systems, as well as tools based on empirical observation (strict) papers that use conceptual modeling are highly welcome. Areas of interest techniques to investigate problems in include a wide range of capability areas  24 May 2021 — Paper submissions the design and analysis of BPM systems. that are relevant for BPM, such as strate- to Blockchain Forum, RPA Forum Papers in Track I are evaluated accord- gic alignment, governance, methods, and BPM workshops ing to computer science standards, in- information technology, and the related  1 June 2021 - Extended abstract cluding sound formalization, convincing human aspects including people and submissions Doctoral Consortium argumentation, and, where applicable, culture. Papers will be evaluated accord- proof-of-concept implementation. ing to current management and infor-  14 June 2021 - Paper submission to mation systems standards. the Demo & Resources Track TRACK II (ENGINEERING) invites papers that deal with engineering aspects of The BPM 2021 conference encourages  6-10 September 2021 — BPM 2021 information systems research. The focus authors of research papers to follow the Conference and Co-Located Events is on the investigation of artifacts and principles of transparency, reproducibili- systems in business environments. Track ty, and replicability, e.g., by disclosing Further details can be found at https:// II covers business process intelligence, anonymized and curated datasets. bpm2021.diag.uniroma1.it/ including process mining techniques, Authors of selected papers will be in- and the use of process models for auto- vited to submit an extended version to Manfred Reichert mation, model-driven engineering, as (BPM 2021 Consolidation Chair) I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 1 P AGE 5

Get ready for the BPM 2021 Workshops!

Also in 2021, the BPM conference fea-  5th Workshop on Artificial Intelli- tures a number of workshops dedicated gence for Business Process Ma- to particular areas of business process nagement (AI4BPM’21) management. While the main con-  17th Workshop on Business Pro- ference focuses on finished and mature cess Intelligence (BPI’21) work, workshops provide opportunities  9th Workshop on DEClarative, DE- for BPM researchers to exchange and Cision and Hybrid approaches to discuss novel research at an early stage. processes (DEC2H’21) The idea is to create and engage a com- munity and provide a forum for interes-  14th Workshop on Social and Hu- ting discussions and promising direc- man Aspects of Business Process tions for future work. Management (BPMS2’21)  1st Workshop on BPM governance A large number of workshop organizers for and beyond digital transformati- have made the effort of proposing a on (BPMGOV’21) workshop for the BPM conference.  The Fourth Workshop on Security After a thorough evaluation phase, nine and Privacy-enhanced Business We are looking forward to your sub- workshops have been selected to be Process Management (SPBP’21) mission to a BPM Workshop. Notice held on Monday, September 6, 2021,  5th Workshop on Business Proces- the deadline May 24, 2021. right before the main conference. ses Meet the Internet-of-Things (BP- More details can be found on This year BPM workshops address basic Meet-IoT’21) https://bpm2021.diag.uniroma1.it/w research, applied research, and  Workshop on BPM Problems to orkshops/ emerging application areas in the Solve Before We Die context of BPM, offering a rich spectrum (PROBLEMS’21) We are looking forward to your sub- missions! of opportunities to submit, present, and  Workshop on Business Process discuss preliminary research works in a Management and Routine Dyna- Andrea Marrella, Barbara Weber focused and interactive session: mics (BPM&RD’21) (BPM 2021 Workshop Chairs)

I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 1 P AGE 6

Exciting Keynotes at BPM 2021

In the tradition of our conference series, these studies and discuss their special crucial industry needs such as interope- BPM 2021 features three top-notch relevance for BPM, building on the al- rability, advanced production data ana- keynotes with different perspectives on ready established connections in decla- lysis, and compliance management, business process management. rative process management. particularly for SMEs.

Giuseppe De Giacomo is full professor Stefanie Rinderle-Ma is a full professor Hajo Reijers is a full professor in the in Computer Science and Engineering for Information Systems and BPM at the Department of Information and Compu- at University of Roma La Sapienza. His Department of Informatics, Technical ting Sciences of Utrecht University, research activity has concerned theore- University of Munich, Germany. Before where he leads the BPM & Analytics tical, methodological and practical as- Stefanie worked as full professor at the group. His interest in both the academic pects in different areas of AI and CS, and the applied side of BPM is reflected most prominently Knowledge Represen- in much of his work. His well-known tation, Reasoning about Actions, Gene- redesign heuristics for process improve- ralized Planning, Autonomous Agents, ment are a case in point, as is his work Service Composition, Business Process on the practical application of process Modeling, Data Management, and In- mining. More recently, he has been tegration. He is AAAI Fellow, ACM Fel- working on techniques that help low, and EurAI Fellow. He has got an streamline Robotic Process Automation ERC Advanced Grant for the project

University of Vienna, Austria. Stefanie‘s research interests include flexible and distributed process technology and digitalized compliance management. She is area lead of the upcoming Austri- WhiteMech: White-box Self Program- an Center of Digital Production 2, focu- ming Mechanisms (2019-2024). He was sing on smart processes and tangible the Program Chair of ECAI 2020. data for SMEs. projects. On these and other topics, he Giuseppe will talk about “Artificial Intelli- Stefanie will talk about “Bringing Pro- published more than 250 scientific pa- gence-based declarative process synthe- cess Technology from Lab to Factory”. pers, chapters in edited books, and arti- sis for BPM”. Artificial intelligence is re- Her keynote will share experiences and cles in professional journals. cently studying processes that auto- insights on her group’s journey starting Hajo’s keynote will provide a historic nomously take decisions and re- from the EU project ADVENTURE and perspective on the discipline of BPM. program themselves to act strategically arriving at the actual adoption of pro- Make sure to attend his talk if you like to in reaction to unexpected outcomes in cess technology at the factory site. The learn how the ancient Egyptians orga- a nondeterministic partially controllable keynote will reflect on possible road- nized their workforce, how the guilds in environment. These studies are develo- blocks and pitfalls and elaborate on the Middle Ages perfected case man- ping synergies among AI planning and new research directions arising along agement, and how the Duke of Wel- reactive synthesis and verification in the way, including sensor-aware pro- lington beat Napoleon's forces by supe- Formal Methods, MDPs with non- cess analysis and interactive process rior process management. Markovian rewards and dynamics, mo- automation. The keynote will be il- del learning, i.e., learning environment lustrated by selected real-world use Manfred Reichert dynamics from traces and reinforce- cases that demonstrate how process (BPM 2021 Consolidation Chair) ment learning. The talk will look into technology becomes the enabler of I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 1 P AGE 7

Interview with workshop organizers Iris Beerepoot, Claudio Di Ciccio, Hajo Reijers

At BPM 2021 the new "Workshop on be covered by a single conference pa- research topics or do they go hand in BPM Problems to Solve Before We per. In modern academic life, we do not hand? Die" (https://sites.google.com/view/ take the time anymore to reflect on the Hajo: I love the tracks in the BPM con- bpm-problems) will be kicked off. What big problems. This is an occasion to take ference. For the workshop, we embrace is the idea behind this workshop? a step back and look at the main open problems along all these three lines, i.e., Iris: Within the BPM field, several direc- foundations, engineering, manage- tions evolved over the years such as ment/IS side with a broader perspective. process mining, modeling, etc. This is a Let me give an example for the engi- good point in time to see what we have neering perspective. We are using a done and what else we can come up process perspective on all types of prob- with. Or in other words, let us identify lems, but I was recently thinking that research gaps that did we not pay there are a lot of IT problems out there. enough attention to. If I were leading a project to build a Is this workshop idea unique? For BPM? new IT system. where would I start? Would a process view really be the best Iris: For BPM, yes. The ESWC conference runs a similar workshop. We want to see whether the workshop idea is trans- ferable to BPM, as well.

areas to investigate and that are not covered, that is, take a different focus, and to identify larger chunks of un- charted territory. Claudio: I’d say it is not only a step back, but also a step “above”. I observed that some colleagues, especially from the Information Systems field, often take a broader view on a topic, whereas some of us (me in the first place!) enjoy dig- ging deeper into the technical or formal way of analyzing the problem? Do we side of the solution. Which is perfectly know when a data perspective is prefer- fine but I perceive the risk to forget the able or an integrated approach? Re- big picture we might observe from searchers have worked for decades on above. process and data approaches, but I do Iris: The workshop provides a nice op- not think we know when to apply What are examples for "burning" BPM portunity to challenge assumptions that what. I am sure many people have an topics nowadays? we base our work on. Why do we run opinion on this matter, but where is the Hajo: With conferences and papers, we into certain problems? Are they at- scientific evidence for these opinions? tached to certain assumptions? In BPM tend to work on incremental improve- Claudio: In that regard, I am thinking of we sometimes take a black-and-white ments — for example, improving algo- a recent presentation by Alexander perspective, i.e., talk about compliance/ rithms in one area, or an experiment to Kaiser on learning from the future. non-compliance, while there may be a test a single idea/guideline. This means What if we tried not to engineer the gray area in between (e.g., worka- we proceed in rather small steps. The evolution of processes based only on rounds). attractive thing of this workshop is to data from the past, but rather consider not aim for one piece of manageable Would you differentiate between fun- what’s unknown at present to plan the research, but to consider big problems damentals and application-oriented next steps? This would be a change of as a starting point, even if they cannot mentality and perhaps quite in line with this workshop. P AGE 8 B P M N EWSLETTER

The workshop also features a new for- effect: once a problem is solved, new Iris: The fun part is: we really have no mat. How do you think will this format challenges open up. When we write idea what the authors will come up facilitate the exchange of ideas? project proposals or papers, a corner- with. stone of their evaluation often is feasibil- Claudio: We wanted to create a new Apart from the hot BPM topics - what ity, whether an affordable plan is environment with a different perspec- are currently the most important threats achievable. Here, on the contrary, we tive. During the presentation at the for BPM as a topic? relieve ourselves from this constraint. If workshop we should imagine that a we assume the problem is already Claudio: BPM is an interdisciplinary disci- problem, as described in the submitted solved, its inherent impact is the only pline. A threat for us could be that BPM paper, was already solved. And then metrics to success. becomes a field per se and fails to suffi- the discussion would be about what we ciently connect to the disciplines it can build upon that. A shift of this sort Hajo: I love it that you thought of this draws from. It is another good reason would allow us to imagine how broad angle, Claudio. It will also help us to to try to focus again on some of the the impact would be if the problem create something tangible on the day of bigger problems out there. were to be solved. This would contrib- the workshop itself. A description of ute to share the excitement with which problems and the benefits that we get Iris: I agree. It is good to stay connected academics look at problems, after all: from solving them. It is yet another to other disciplines. While it is mostly problems that are not meant to bear means to break away from a typical clear for the BPM community to write a the usual negative connotation, but conference paper mindset. good paper for the BPM conference, we quite the opposite. We do not want to also need to understand how other claim "No, this is impossible", but "Yes, communities work and what they ap- this is what we want to be able to de- preciate in research so that we can also clare as solved". And create a domino publish in their outlets. Stefanie Rinderle-Ma (Interview Editor)

Step-by-step introduction to process mining: a new openhpi online course

With increasing industrial relevance of Week 1 introduces the main concepts in process mining can help to understand business process intelligence, more and process mining, using a sample business more detailed aspects of the process more non-technical people are expec- process. We explore the data generated execution. This includes understanding ted to contribute to process mining during the execution of this process what decisions have been made in the projects. However, the concepts and and we transform data items to events process and why, and which factors techniques behind process mining are that tell us about the execution of pro- determine the overall completion time far from trivial. To educate professionals cess activities. Process discovery shows of a process. how business processes are actually with a broad range of non-BPM back- Registration is now open; please access executed. grounds, Mathias Weske and Henrik https://open.hpi.de/courses/processmi Leopold offer a new massive open onli- Week 2 focuses on process mining tech- ning2021 for more information. The ne course A Step-by-Step Introduction niques beyond process discovery. First, course starts on May 5, 2021. Please to Process Mining. The MOOC is free of we explore how data about the process help disseminating this information charge, and it is hosted at the open- execution can be used to detect undesi- outside of the core BPM community! hpi.de MOOC platform. red behavior and potential compliance Mathias Weske The goal of this online course is to pro- issues. Second, we take a look at how vide a general understanding of the concepts and techniques behind pro- cess mining. The course will be most valuable for domain experts, whose business processes are investigated, and for professionals in IT and in business consulting. We aim at facilitating com- munication between all stakeholders involved in process mining projects. To allow professionals with limited time budget to participate in the course, it is limited to two weeks that focus on the essentials of process mining. I SSUE 1 / 2 0 2 1 P AGE 9

Group Column: focus on rome

For the third time the BPM Newsletter solutions to the specification and ma- the group has been awarded with the features a group column that has the nagement of data-aware, artifact- best paper award at the prestigious goal to introduce different BPM groups centric, and knowledge-intensive pro- CAiSE’17 conference. with their specific research focus and cesses using formalisms developed for highlights. This group column intro- reasoning about actions in Artificial The group is also working on solutions duces the Data Management and Ser- Intelligence (AI), such as Situation Calcu- to integrate BPM methods with IoT vice-Oriented Computing (DM&SOC) lus and Golog-based languages. techniques. It is among the core propo- group at Sapienza Università di Roma, sers of the recent seminal contribution which will organize BPM 2021. The research on Process Mining is main- on this topic: “The Internet-of-Things ly targeted on the development of no- Meets Business Process Management: A Currently, the group consists of 19 vel algorithms to solve the compliance Manifesto” appeared on IEEE Systems, members and spans a set of macro checking and the trace alignment prob- Man, and Cybernetics Magazine, 2020. areas of interest including Business Pro- lems against procedural and declarative Moreover, they are studying solutions cess Management (BPM), Service Ori- process models, leveraging AI planning to the challenge of habit mining, which ented Computing (SOC), Data and Ser- techniques to the identification of com- consists of analysing the concrete beha- vice Integration, Knowledge Represen- pliance violations and optimal align- viours of humans (collected using dedi- tation and Reasoning, and Human- ments. Recently, the group is investiga- cated sensors in IoT-based environ- Computer Interaction. DM&SOC facul- ting unsupervised techniques to solve ments) to model human habits in the ties all have strong research experience the challenge of the automated dis- form of process models. in the above areas, tackling multidiscipli- covery of declarative processes. nary challenges. Finally, the group is investigating inno- In the field of Process Adaptation, the vative research solutions in Robotic Pro- The research on BPM aspects involves 9 historical focus has been on the develo- cess Automation for the automated group members including 2 Professors pment of a formal framework and a generation of software robots, by only (Giuseppe De Giacomo and Massimo general technique for solving the chal- reasoning on the user interface logs Mecella), 1 Associate Professor (Fabio lenge of automated adaptation of data- that keep track of the user interactions Patrizi), 2 Assistant Professors aware business processes at run-time, to involved in the enactment of routine (Francesco Leotta and Andrea Marrella), repair running processes in unpre- tasks. and currently 7 PhD Students. Their dictable environments. Currently, this is research concerns theoretical, metho- investigated in the context of Digital On the above topics, the group is recipi- dological and practical aspects in diffe- Twins-based processes in Industry 4.0 ent of the ERC Advanced Grant White- rent areas of BPM, including Process scenarios. Mech (principal investigator Giuseppe Modeling, Mining, Adaptation, Resi- De Giacomo), which aims at developing lience, the integration of BPM and Inter- In the context of Process Resilience, the the science and the tools for process- net-of-Things (IoT) and Robotic Process research of the group is focused on aware mechanisms that are able to pro- Automation. investigating design-time approaches to gram themselves, of the H2020 RIA model processes in a way that makes DataCloud project, whose target is to In the area of Process Modeling, the them more resilient at run-time from a leverage process mining techniques to group has studied and delivered many data-centric perspective. On this topic, extract and reason over the data pipe- lines that run behind the organizational , and of the H2020 WIDES- PREAD DESTINI project, which aims at investigating smart data processing systems and smart data-centric services and applications.

Barbara Weber (Group Column Editor) 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

A personal note by Signavio CEO and nies of all sizes realize that operational Business Process Management Cases BPM community member Gero Decker resilience and business renewal can Vol. 2 edited by Jan vom Brocke, Jan on the announced acquisition of Signa- only be achieved with a strong process Mendling and Michael Rosemann vio by SAP: „Who would have thought? management practice. presents 22 new cases for practitioners Twelve years ago, if you wanted to do and educators to showcase and study After the acquisition, Signavio will beco- something cool, then you would pro- business process management. The me the centerpiece of SAP’s new busi- bably build a social network or some- BPM cases collection is dedicated to ness unit “Business Process Intelligence”, thing with robots. But BPM? Perceived providing a contemporary and compre- with the mandate to help shape SAP’s as utterly boring back then, it produces hensive, industry-agnostic insight into agenda on all things process. BPM is some of the biggest success stories of the realities of BPM. The experiences sexy as never before, enabling operatio- today. Two weeks ago, SAP announced documented cover both, the positive nal agility and digital reinvention on a to acquire Signavio, my “baby” that I co- impact of deploying BPM as well as the massive scale. We, as a process commu- lessons learnt from failed attempts. Each nity, finally have a seat at the table and case takes a holistic approach; each shape how the organizations of the chapter recognizes that BPM in practice future are built. Exciting times!“ is a multidimensional endeavor covering strategy to operations, systems and infrastructure, governance and culture, models and running processes. The Fundamentals of Business Process Management by Dumas, La Rosa, Mendling and Reijers resources have been recently extended. First, we recor- ded as series of video lectures covering the full book. It is freely available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list= founded with friends and colleagues PL9iw99lS3Prj5VoC4Bwhmj9Wawd2r- from Hasso Plattner Institute back in Vtt. The family of translations is about to 2009. be extended with a German translation It all started in the academic BPM com- Grundlagen des Geschäftsprozessma- munity. With the love for process mode- nagements, translated by Grisold, Groß, ling and the inspiration by other open Mendling and Wurm. Teaching materi- source projects, we launched “Oryx”, als will be added to the web site the first web-based modeling environ- http://fundamentals-of-bpm.org/DE ment. soon. Instructors-only materials are available by registering via bpmtext- Fast forward to today, and process ma- [email protected]. nagement is at the forefront of the digi- tal transformation discussion. With Co- Jan Mendling vid as the ultimate accelerator, compa-