The evolution of the economy, competition, development of new technologies and globalization explain the blooming of inter-organizations cooperation. The interorganizations cooperation represents a new opportunity to answer to complex challenges that a single organization can't face alone. Cloud Computing is an emerging computation paradigm in information technology and networking. Most recently business applications are leveraging the power of this novel technology. In this work, we are interested in the issue of Inter-organizations Cooperation in Cloud Computing environment. More precisely, this paper deals with Contextualized Flexible Cloud Workflow Services (CWS). By CWS, we mean services automating loosely coupled fragments of inter-organization business processes and whose description and execution are accessible through the Cloud. One possible way to deal with CWS modeling in a comprehensive conceptual framework is to use the Model-Driven Engineering. The basic principle of MDE is the separation of organizational concerns from their technical achievement. Therefore, business models are not corrupted by technical concerns and vice versa. Following this practice, we first propose the Cloud Workflow Service Meta-Model (CWS2M) by extending BPMN 2.0 to support the modeling of CWS. In order to deal with variability, evolution and adaptation of CWS, we also propose the Flexible Cloud Workflow Service Meta-Model (FCWS2M) as an extension of the CWS2M meta-model using the versioning technique. Finally, we propose the Contextualized Flexible Cloud Workflow Service Meta-Model (CFCWS2M) to characterize the situations in which CWS versions are executed. We illustrate our solution through the “Drug Development Process” case study.

The Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) method promotes a holistic approach in Enterprise Modeling and advocates that a single modeling perspective (product, activity or role) is not sufficient for describing business processes. Instead, it offers a set of modeling formalisms, namely actor-role, role-activity, and business objects formalisms, in order to capture the knowledge on enterprise processes view from different perspectives. On the one hand, this strengthens modeling complex business processes, but on the other hand this sets the requirement for dealing with the consistency among those models describing the same business process according to different perspectives. The systematic literature review we have conducted showed, among its findings, that there is no modeling tool supporting all these formalisms, and hence no way was proposed to handle their consistency. In multi-perspective modeling, the quality of the created models and their capability to be involved in the “design by reuse” depend strongly on the consistency among them. This paper aims to enhance the syntactic and semantic quality of EKD business process models by proposing a set of consistency rules controlling their dependencies. As the definition of semantic consistency rules is far from obvious, we have modeled and investigated a plethora of business processes from different domains. Our proposal is then supported by a tool in order to promote an automated consistency handling and hence to save the time and efforts of process modelers.

Although there are few efficient algorithms in the literature for scientific workflow tasks allocation and scheduling for heterogeneous resources such as those proposed in grid computing context, they usually require a bounded number of computer resources that cannot be applied in Cloud computing environment. Indeed, unlike grid, elastic computing, such asAmazon's EC2, allows users to allocate and release compute resources on-demand and pay only for what they use. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the number of resources is infinite. This feature of Clouds has been called âillusion of infiniteresourcesâ. However, despite the proven benefits of using Cloud to run scientific workflows, users lack guidance for choosing between multiple offering while taking into account several objectives which are often conflicting. On the other side, the workflow tasks allocation and scheduling have been shown to be NP-complete problems. Thus, it is convenient to use heuristic rather than deterministic algorithm. The objective of this paper is to design an allocation strategy for Cloud computing platform. More precisely, we propose three complementary bi-criteria approaches for scheduling workflows on distributed Cloud resources, taking into account the overall execution time and the cost incurred by using a set of resources.

A workflow process defines a set of activities and the specific order according to which they should be executed in order to achieve a common objective. The correctness and efficiency of the business process supported by the workflow management are vital, in particular the k-soundness property when processes are modeled by workflow nets (WF-nets). This property entails the proper termination of the workflow execution and the absence of tasks that do not contribute to the processing cases. Furthermore, business processes are not isolated and in order to support the global performance of a given organization, they should well articulated, and correctly synchronized to each other. Nevertheless, without specific conditions, the k-soundness criterion is not compositional while it should remain valid for the set articulated processes. We propose in this paper a set of compositional rules that allow to build complex workflows from single ones while preserving k-soundness property under elementary conditions. Moreover, for the free-choice Petri net class we show that the soundness property verification can be efficiently checked.

Resources allocation and scheduling has been recognised as an important topic for business process execution. However, despite the proven benefits of using Cloud to run business process, users lack guidance for choosing between multiple offering while taking into account several objectives which are often conflicting. Moreover, when running business processes it is difficult to automate all tasks. In this paper, we propose three complementary approaches for Cloud computing platform. On the other side, elastic computing, such as Amazon EC2, allows users to allocate and release compute resources (virtual machines) on-demand and pay only for what they use. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the number of virtual machine is infinite while the number of human resources is finite. This feature of Clouds has been called “illusion of infinite resources”. In this paper, we design an allocation strategy for Cloud computing platform taking into account the above characteristics. More precisely, we propose three complementary bi-criterion approaches for scheduling business process on distributed Cloud resources.

Special issue on business process lifecycle: design, deployment, operation and evaluationThis special issue on Business Process Lifecycle: Design, Deployment, Operation and Evaluation follows the 9th Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS'08) organized in conjunction with CAiSE'08, which was held in Montpellier, France in June 2008.The special issue is targeted at both researchers and practitioners in the information systems (in the broad sense) community.It is the result of an open call for papers in which both papers from BPMDS'08 and contributions from the business process engineering community were selected following several blind review rounds.We present extensively modified versions of five BPMDS'08 papers and two new contributions.In this special issue, we used the business process lifecycle model shown in Figure 1.It comprises three phases: design, deployment, operation and evaluation.The design phase begins with the requirements definition and ends with the implementation of the business process.In the deployment phase, the business process is tested for fulfilling the customer's requirements.After successful testing, the business process is released to operation.In the operation and evaluation phase, the business process is measured and analyzed to identify problems and potential improvements.Thus, the continuous improvement requirement is the force that 'drives' the wheel of the business process lifecycle.During the BPMDS workshops prior to BPMDS'08, various issues that could be related to different but isolated phases in the lifecycle of a business process have been discussed.In the BMPDS08 workshop, the focus was set on the interaction between two or more phases of the lifecycle, as well as the holistic view of the whole lifecycle.Furthermore, the relationships between the phases have been investigated.The papers in this special issue remain faithful to this focus.

Business process modeling is a valuable technique helping organizations to specify their processes, to analyze their structure and to improve their performance. Conventional process modeling techniques are proven to be inefficient while dealing with non-repetitive, knowledge-intensive processes such as Case Management processes. In this work we use the MAP notation to model a Mortgage Approval Process as defined in Banking. To increase the navigability and practical value of map models, we extend the MAP notation with the concepts of Roles, Relations between roles, and Role Configuration Rules.

Abstract Business Process Management is called agile when it is able to react quickly and adequately to internal and external events. Agile Business Process Management requires putting the life cycle of business processes on a new paradigm. It is advocated in this paper that social software allows us to satisfy the key requirements for enabling agile BPM by applying the four features of social software: weak ties, social production, egalitarianism and mutual service provision. Organizational and semantic integration and responsiveness (of the business processes engineering, execution and management activities) have been identified as the main requirements for implementing an agile BPM life cycle. Social software may be used in the BPM life cycle in several manners and using numerous approaches. This paper presents seven among them and then analyzes the ‘support’ effects between those approaches and the underlying social software features, and the three requirements for Agile BPM. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract Social software has received much attention in the academia and industry due to many success stories. However, although social software is used widely for business support, its relationship with Business Process Management has not been analysed. The results of the workshop on Business Process Management and Social Software (BPMS2'08), as part of the International Conference on Business Process Management in Milano, show the manifold possibilities of combining concepts from Business Process Management and social software. Social software provides a better integration of all stakeholders into the business process life cycle and offers new possibilities for a more effective and flexible design of business processes. The modelling of business processes may profit particularly from using social software techniques by alleviating the integration of process knowledge from all stakeholders. In addition, the implementation and deployment phase of the business process life cycle may profit from social software by collecting valuable information for continuous process improvement from a larger set of sources than before. Furthermore, social software environments may be used to provide workflow support. Moreover, the use of social software also requires new considerations about the digital identity and reputation in business processes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates context awareness in business process modelling (BPM). It introduces a context model for BPM (CM4BPM) and a role-based business process model (RBPM), and presents an approach allowing enacting processes with respect to the context. Decisions driving business processes enactment are based on context related knowledge. The proposed approach consists on using contextual knowledge in order to enhance the adequacy of the assignments during the enactment of the business processes, it can be used to improve the design and implementation of business processes using existing process modeling languages in order to allow the support of context-aware process enactment.

Mastering the complexity of IS engineering processes which are more and more constrained with the rapid market change became an essential requirement. IS engineers are challenged to develop systems that can meet the requirements of modern organisations in a continuously evolving environment. As far as IS engineering is concerned, IT governance has also the responsibility to master the change process and the evolution of the IS. We argue that Business/IS alignment and decision making mechanisms serve each other: strategic alignment is well performed when leaders make adequate decisions in time and strategic alignment facilitates the decision making process related to the information system (IS) and business processes (BP). We argue that it is essential to understand the dependencies and implications between ITG and alignment in order to improve both as a whole and to enhance the sustainability of ISs we engineer. This work provides a first stage in the understanding of Business/IS alignment and IT governance requirements and of their dependencies. It also offers a comparison framework for IS development approaches with respect to their ability to support Business/IS alignment and IT governance requirements.