Knowledge workers are confronted with a massive load of data from numerous heterogeneous sources, making it difficult for them to identify the information relevant for performing their tasks. Particularly challenging is the alignment of information with business processes. In previous work, we introduced a Semantic Network (SN) for bridging this gap, i.e., for identifying relations between information and business processes. What has been neglected so far is the maintenance of an SN in order to keep the SN consistent, complete, and up-to-date. This paper tackles this issue and extends our approach with algorithms dealing with the maintenance of an SN. For this purpose, we identify and classify properties of objects and relations captured in an SN and show how these properties can be maintained. We use a case from the automotive domain in order to demonstrate and validate the feasibility and applicability of our maintenance framework.

Although process-aware information systems have been adopted in enterprises for many years, they still do not properly link the business processes they implement with related enterprise process information (e.g., guidelines, checklists, templates, and e-mails). On one hand, process management technology is used to design, implement, enact, and monitor processes. On the other, enterprise process information is spread over various sources like shared drives, databases, and enterprise information systems. As a consequence, users often manually link process information with particular process objects (e.g., using process portals). What is needed instead, however is an integrated access to both processes and related enterprise process information. This paper establishes such a link by introducing an integrated navigation space for process model collections and related enterprise process information. In particular, this navigation space allows process participants to flexibly navigate within process model collections, single process models, and related process information. In turn, this enables advanced end-user support for process repositories.

The diversity and quantity of medical information emerging from patient treatment makes it a challenging task for medical staff to identify and handle the information they need to perform their tasks in the best possible way. The doctor's ward round, for example, is a knowledge-intensive process comprising complex information-centric tasks such as patient examination and diagnosis. Goal is to provide medical staff with relevant information dependent on their work context. This paper picks up this challenge and presents iCare, a semantic application enabling an intelligent integration, analysis, and delivery of personalized medical information.

Today, enterprises are confronted with a continuously increasing amount of data. Examples of such data include office files, e-mails, process descriptions, and data from process-aware information systems. This data overload makes it difficult for knowledge-workers to identify the information they need to perform their tasks in the best possible way. Particularly challenging is the alignment of process-related information with business processes. In fact, process-related information and business processes are usually managed separately. On the one hand, enterprise content management systems, shared drives, and Intranet portals are used for organizing information, on the other hand, process management technology is used to design and enact business processes. With process-oriented information logistics (POIL) this paper presents an approach for bridging this gap. POIL enables the process-oriented and context-aware delivery of process-related information to knowledge-workers. We also present a clinical use case and a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate the application and benefits of POIL.

This short paper summarizes and discusses the result of an iterative construction and evaluation of a checklist for writing and reading reports about experimental and observational research.

Enterprises are confronted with an increasing amount of data. This data overload makes it difficult to provide knowledge-workers and decision-makers with the needed information. Particularly challenging in this context is the integrated provision of both structured and unstructured information depending on the current process context and user, i.e., the context-aware, personalized delivery of process information. Examples of unstructured process information include all kinds of office documents or e-mails. Examples of structured process information are business process models or data from enterprise information systems. Picking up the need for a context-aware, personalized delivery of process information, this paper presents results from three empirical studies: two exploratory case studies from the automotive domain and the healthcare sector, and an online survey among 219 participants. In a first step, we identify and describe problems with respect to process-oriented information management in general and the personalized provision of process information in particular. In a second step, we derive requirements on the user-adequate handling of process information.

Process-oriented information systems (IS) aim at the computerized support of business processes. So far, contemporary IS have often fail to meet this goal. To better understand this drawback, to systematically identify its rationales, and to derive critical success factors for business process support, we conducted three empirical studies: an exploratory case study in the automotive domain, an online survey among 79 information technology professionals, and another online survey among 70 business process management experts. This paper summarizes the findings of these studies, puts them in relation with each other, and uses them to show that ";process orientation"; is scarce and ";process awareness"; is needed in IS engineering.

Several studies have indicated that existing IS (IS) often fail to provide adequate business process support. To systematically identify the reasons for this drawback, we conducted a case study in the automotive domain and a survey among 79 IT practitioners. This paper presents the findings of this empirical research and explains why mere "process-orientation" (regarding business process support) is scarce

Workflow management systems (WfMS) have become a widely accepted software technology, which enables the effective management, execution, and monitoring of computerized processes. Though the introduction of WfMS results in high costs, corresponding investments are often justified solely by referring to assumed benefits such as improved business process performance. In fact, there exists no framework to systematically evaluate WfMS from a value-based perspective. One major reason for this drawback is that research about the economic impact of WfMS has to deal with many challenges like the potential identification of impact factors, the handling of dependencies among these impact factors, the collection of real-world data, and the quantification of costs and intangible benefits. This paper presents an evaluation methodology to tackle these problems, which is based upon modeling and simulation

During the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in the number of paradigms, standards and tools that can be used to realize process-oriented information systems. A major problem neglected in software engineering research so far has been the systematic determination of costs, benefits, and risks that are related to the use of these process-oriented software engineering methods and technologies. This task is quite difficult as the added value is influenced by many drivers. This paper sketches an economic-driven evaluation methodology to analyze costs, benefits, and risks of process-oriented software technologies and corresponding projects. We introduce an evaluation meta model and sketch a formalism to describe economic-driven evaluation scenarios.