Software reference architectures provide templates and guidelines for designing systems in a particular domain. Companies use them to achieve interoperability of (parts of) their software, standardization, and faster development. In contrast to system-specific software architectures that "emerge" during development, reference architectures dictate significant parts of the software design early on. Agile software development frameworks (such as Scrum) acknowledge changing software requirements and the need to adapt the software design accordingly. In this paper, we present lessons learned about how reference architectures interact with Scrum (the most frequently used agile process framework). These lessons are based on observing software development projects in five companies. We found that reference architectures can support good practice in Scrum: They provide enough design upfront without too much effort, reduce documentation activities, facilitate knowledge sharing, and contribute to "architectural thinking" of developers. However, reference architectures can impose risks or even threats to the success of Scrum (e.g., to self-organizing and motivated teams).

In a cross-organizational service-based process provisioning scenario, one provider is likely to execute a given business process to serve several customers. Each customer may hold different expectations about the way this process can be monitored. We present a solution allowing the provider to support the requirements of different customers on the monitoring of a given process, i.e., offering them the opportunity to customize the way a process will be monitored. We propose a multi-dimensional classification model of patterns for process monitoring and rules to compose the patterns to design customized monitoring infrastructures. The fit for purpose of the patterns is evaluated empirically, whereas the feasibility of our solution is demonstrated by a tool supporting process monitoring customization adhering to our pattern design and composition methodology.

Nowadays, business collaborations have to be highly dynamic and flexible to allow companies to operate efficiently and effectively in complex and volatile markets. To increase the business agility of service consumers, it is fundamental that service providers enhance the visibility of parts of their collaborative processes. Service providers are required to release both the process structures of the services offered and their status during execution. To further increase the flexibility of business collaborations, certain control over the process execution has to be offered to service consumers. In this paper, we present a framework for the support of process control in cross-organizational settings. We specify the control primitives that can be used to exert control on activities and processes before, during and after their executions. These primitives empower service consumers to postpone activity and process executions, bypass minor activities, repeat their executions, etc. We describe an approach to the support of these control primitives by service providers. We demonstrate the application of our framework with a case study from the healthcare domain. A proof-of-concept prototype implementation based on Web service technology is presented.

Business-to-business electronic contracts provide a specification of the agreed value exchange and guarantee legal protection to companies during electronic trading relations. Important features that distinguish e-contracts from traditional paper contracts are the possibilities for automatic establishment and enactment, the more detailed e-contract content specification and the frequency of e-contract content updating. In this paper, we discuss these e-contract features and the technology requirements to which they lead. We describe two conceptual architectures for the support of updates in digitally signed e-contracts. We demonstrate that the straightforward approach is inefficient and therefore inadequate for supporting high update rates in an automated, dynamic, communication-intensive contract enactment environment. The second approach that we describe allows companies to handle e-contract updates in a more efficient and simplified manner. It introduces a new type of Trusted Third Party that can be used for the support of e-contract updates. This paper provides the required conceptual foundation for the construction of an important part of an e-contract management system.

Business-to-business e-contracting has gained attention in recent years as a way to improve traditional paper contracting. However, a complete framework specifying the aspects of improvement of traditional paper contracting and the new opportunities introduced by e-contracting still does not exist. Past and current projects in e-contracting have relied on common sense and ad hoc reasoning to motivate the introduction of e-contracting to business. This paper fills the existing gap, describing the business foundation for the employment of e-contracting. A complete and structured description of the improvements and the new business opportunities introduced by e-contracting are presented. This research work allows companies to clearly identify the benefits that can be achieved in their business context by the introduction of e-contracting. We use two business scenarios to illustrate the new contracting opportunities for business parties.

Service outsourcing is the business paradigm in which an organization has part of its business process performed by a service provider. In dynamic markets, service providers can be selected on the fly during process enactment. The cooperation between the parties is specified in a dynamically made electronic contract. This contract includes a process specification that is tailored towards service brokering and cross-organizational process enactment and, hence, has to conform to market and specification standards. Process enactment, however, relies on intra-organizational process specifications that have to comply with the infrastructure available in an organization for process and data management. In this paper, we present a three-level process and data specification framework for dynamic contract-based outsourcing of complex services. We focus on services with an externally visible control flow, as opposed to simple, black-box web services. The framework relates the two process specification levels through a third, conceptual level. This approach is inspired by the well-known ANSI-SPARC model for data management. We discuss an abstract architecture for dynamic service outsourcing based on the three-level framework. We show how the framework and architecture can be placed in the context of existing infrastructures for cross-organizational process support. As service outsourcing is used more and more for core business processes requiring reliable execution, we pay special attention to transaction management.