Henrik Leopold

Henrik Leopold
Kühne Logistics University | KLU · Department of Computer Science

PhD (Dr. rer. pol.)

About

124
Publications
97,493
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
3,671
Citations
Additional affiliations
February 2019 - present
Kühne Logistics University
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
February 2019 - present
Hasso Plattner Institute
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
April 2014 - February 2015
Vienna University of Economics and Business
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)

Publications

Publications (124)
Article
Full-text available
Many organizations use business process models for documenting business operations and for formalizing business requirements in software engineering projects. In recent years, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), a specification by the Object Management Group (OMG), evolved into the leading standard for process modeling. A challenge of B...
Article
Full-text available
System-related engineering tasks are often conducted using process models. In this context, it is essential that these models do not contain structural or terminological inconsistencies. To this end, several automatic analysis techniques have been proposed to support quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can be checked in an au...
Article
Full-text available
The design and development of process-aware information systems is often supported by specifying requirements as business process models. Although this approach is generally accepted as an effective strategy, it remains a fundamental challenge to adequately validate these models given the diverging skill set of domain experts and system analysts. A...
Article
Companies increasingly use business process modeling for documenting and redesigning their operations. However, due to the size of such modeling initiatives, they often struggle with the quality assurance of their model collections. While many model properties can already be checked automatically, there is a notable gap of techniques for checking l...
Preprint
Full-text available
An increasing number of organizations are deploying Large Language Models (LLMs) for a wide range of tasks. Despite their general utility, LLMs are prone to errors, ranging from inaccuracies to hallucinations. To objectively assess the capabilities of existing LLMs, performance benchmarks are conducted. However, these benchmarks often do not transl...
Preprint
Full-text available
The identification of undesirable behavior in event logs is an important aspect of process mining that is often addressed by anomaly detection methods. Traditional anomaly detection methods tend to focus on statistically rare behavior and neglect the subtle difference between rarity and undesirability. The introduction of semantic anomaly detection...
Preprint
Full-text available
Research on algorithms has drastically increased in recent years. Various sub-disciplines of computer science investigate algorithms according to different objectives and standards. This plurality of the field has led to various methodological advances that have not yet been transferred to neighboring sub-disciplines. The central roadblock for a be...
Chapter
Organizations from various domains use process mining to better understand, analyze, and improve their business processes. While the overall value of process mining has been shown in several contexts, little is known about the specific actions that are taken to move from process mining insights to process improvement. In this work, we address this...
Chapter
Many organizations have adopted process mining to analyze their business processes, gain insights into their performance, and identify improvement opportunities. Several academic case studies and reports from practice leave no doubt that process mining tools can deliver substantial value to organizations and help them to realize improvements. Howev...
Article
Full-text available
It may be tempting for researchers to stick to incremental extensions of their current work to plan future research activities. Yet there is also merit in realizing the grand challenges in one’s field. This paper presents an overview of the nine major research problems for the Business Process Management discipline. These challenges have been colle...
Chapter
Full-text available
Predictive process monitoring techniques leverage machine learning (ML) to predict future characteristics of a case, such as the process outcome or the remaining run time. Available techniques employ various models and different types of input data to produce accurate predictions. However, from a practical perspective, explainability is another imp...
Chapter
Process mining allows organizations to obtain relevant insights into the execution of their processes. However, the starting point of any process mining analysis is an event log, which is typically not readily available in practice. The extraction of event logs from the relevant databases is a manual and highly time-consuming task, and often a hurd...
Article
Process mining techniques are valuable to gain insights into and help improve (work) processes. Many of these techniques focus on the sequential order in which activities are performed. Few of these techniques consider the statistical relations within processes. In particular, existing techniques do not allow insights into how responses to an event...
Chapter
Process mining is widely used to visualize, analyze, and improve business processes. However, often its application is hindered by the considerable preparation effort that needs to be conducted by humans. One of the key tasks required in this context is obtaining the input artifact for process mining techniques: the event log. The data that is requ...
Chapter
Pair programming is a technique where two programmers work together. This technique offers benefits such as improved quality of the code, faster task completion, and increased participant satisfaction. Existing research in Business Process Management has not studied the advantages of pair process modeling in comparison to individual modeling. In th...
Article
Process models play an important role in various software engineering contexts. Among others, they are used to capture business-related requirements and provide the basis for the development of process-oriented applications in low-code/no-code settings. To support modelers in creating, checking, and maintaining process models, dedicated tools are a...
Preprint
Full-text available
There is an ongoing debate in computer science how algorithms should best be studied. Some scholars have argued that experimental evaluations should be conducted, others emphasize the benefits of formal analysis. We believe that this debate less of a question of either-or, because both views can be integrated into an overarching framework. It is th...
Chapter
The general goal of automation is to relieve humans from repetitive and routine-like tasks. The positive effects of automation have been demonstrated in various contexts and range from efficiency gains to the reduction of errors. In this chapter, we focus on the automation of individual tasks in a process using the so-called software robots, which...
Chapter
Despite the widespread availability of process modeling tools, the first version of a process model is often drawn by hand on a piece of paper or whiteboard, especially when several people are involved in its elicitation. Though this has been found to be beneficial for the modeling task itself, it also creates the need to manually convert hand-draw...
Article
Anomaly detection in process mining aims to recognize outlying or unexpected behavior in event logs for purposes such as the removal of noise and identification of conformance violations. Existing techniques for this task are primarily frequency-based, arguing that behavior is anomalous because it is uncommon. However, such techniques ignore the se...
Article
Full-text available
Business Process Management is a boundary-spanning discipline that aligns operational capabilities and technology to design and manage business processes. The Digital Transformation has enabled human actors, information systems, and smart products to interact with each other via multiple digital channels. The emergence of this hyper-connected world...
Chapter
Process mining enables organizations to capture and improve their processes based on fact-based process execution data. A key question in the context of process improvement is how response s to an event (action) result in desired or undesired outcomes (effects). From a process perspective, this requires understanding the action-response patterns th...
Preprint
While supporting the execution of business processes, information systems record event logs. Conformance checking relies on these logs to analyze whether the recorded behavior of a process conforms to the behavior of a normative specification. A key assumption of existing conformance checking techniques, however, is that all events are associated w...
Article
While supporting the execution of business processes, information systems record event logs. Conformance checking relies on these logs to analyze whether the recorded behavior of a process conforms to the behavior of a normative specification. A key assumption of existing conformance checking techniques, however, is that all events are associated w...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The BPMO 2016 workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners to present, discuss, and evaluate the application of ontologies to generate new or improve existing methods , techniques, tools, and process-aware information systems that support the different phases of the business process management life-cycle. In its first edition, t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper is a report paper that focuses on research at the intersection of business process management and requirements engineering. It gives an overview of the research on natural language processing with process models organized in terms of 25 challenges. This research line is pursued in a cross-university collaboration between the authors and...
Chapter
People with intellectual disabilities often live in residential care facilities that aim to provide their clients with the best possible quality of life. Aggressive behavior forms a threat to not only the quality of life of the clients, but also the safety of the staff. This study aims to uncover the dynamics underlying the evolution of aggressive...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding conceptual models of business domains is a key skill for practitioners tasked with systems analysis and design. Research in this field predominantly uses experiments with specific user proxy cohorts to examine factors that explain how well different types of conceptual models can be comprehended by model viewers. However, the results...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Process models are an important means to capture information on organizational operations and often represent the starting point for process analysis and improvement. Since the manual elicitation and creation of process models is a time-intensive endeavor, a variety of techniques have been developed that automatically derive process models from tex...
Chapter
Full-text available
Process models are an important means to capture information on organizational operations and often represent the starting point for process analysis and improvement. Since the manual elicitation and creation of process models is a time-intensive endeavor, a variety of techniques have been developed that automatically derive process models from tex...
Article
Full-text available
Documenting business processes using process models is common practice in many organizations. However, not all process information is best captured in process models. Hence, many organizations complement these models with textual descriptions that specify additional details. The problem with this supplementary use of textual descriptions is that ex...
Article
Full-text available
Many process model analysis techniques rely on the accurate analysis of the natural language contents captured in the models’ activity labels. Since these labels are typically short and diverse in terms of their grammatical style, standard natural language processing tools are not suitable to analyze them. While a dedicated technique for the analys...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The Business Process Management (BPM) field focuses in the coordination of labor so that organizational processes are smoothly executed in a way that products and services are properly delivered. At the same time, NLP has reached a maturity level that enables its widespread application in many contexts, thanks to publicly available frameworks. In t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The continuous digitization requires organizations to improve the automation of their business processes. Among others, this has lead to an increased interest in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA solutions emerge in the form of software that automatically executes repetitive and routine tasks. While the benefits of RPA on cost savings and other...
Article
Full-text available
Process model matching refers to the automatic identification of corresponding activities between two process models. It represents the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as the identification of similar process parts or process model search. A central problem is how to evaluate the performance of process model matching...
Article
Full-text available
Textual process descriptions are widely used in organizations since they can be created and understood by virtually everyone. Because of their widespread use, they also provide a valuable source for process analysis, such as compliance checking. However, the inherent ambiguity of natural language impedes the automated analysis of textual process de...
Article
Full-text available
(Note that we have updated the paper to the accepted version on 23 Jan 2018) Blockchain technology offers a sizable promise to rethink the way inter-organizational business processes are managed because of its potential to realize execution with- out a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). To stimulate research on this pro...
Article
Full-text available
Context: The analysis of requirements for business-related software systems is often supported by using business process models. However, the final requirements are typically still specified in natural language. This means that the knowledge captured in process models must be consistently transferred to the specified requirements. Possible inconsis...
Conference Paper
Process model matching refers to the automatic detection of semantically equivalent or similar activities between two process models. The output of process model matchers is the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques and, therefore, must be as accurate as possible. Measuring the performance of process model matchers, however, is...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Having access to the right information is vital to the effective and efficient execution of an organization's business processes. A major challenge in this regard is that information on a single process is often spread out over numerous models, documents, and systems. Despite the potential consequences of this situation, there is a lack of insights...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A crucial requirement for compliance-checking techniques is that observed behavior, captured in event traces, can be mapped to the process models that specify allowed behavior. Without a mapping, it is not possible to determine if observed behavior is compliant or not. A considerable problem in this regard is that establishing a mapping between eve...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Process model matching provides the basis for many process analysis techniques such as inconsistency detection and process querying. The matching task refers to the automatic identification of correspondences between activities in two process models. Numerous techniques have been developed for this purpose, all share a focus on process-level inform...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Process model matching techniques aim at automatically identifying activity correspondences between two process models that represent the same or similar behavior. By doing so, they provide essential input for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as process model search. Despite their importance, the performance of process model mat...
Article
Process models play an important role for specifying requirements of business-related software. However, the usefulness of process models is highly dependent on their quality. Recognizing this, researches have proposed various techniques for the automated quality assurance of process models. A considerable shortcoming of these techniques is the ass...
Preprint
Full-text available
Blockchain technology promises a sizable potential for executing inter-organizational business processes without requiring a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). This paper analyzes its impact on business process management (BPM). We structure the discussion using two BPM frameworks, namely the six BPM core capabilities a...
Article
Monitoring process performance is an important means for organizations to identify opportunities to improve their operations. The definition of suitable Process Performance Indicators (PPIs) is a crucial task in this regard. Because PPIs need to be in line with strategic business objectives, the formulation of PPIs is a managerial concern. Managers...
Article
In recent years, a considerable number of process model matching techniques have been proposed. The goal of these techniques is to identify correspondences between the activities of two process models. However , the results from the Process Model Matching Contest 2015 reveal that there is still no universally applicable matching technique and that...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Process model matching refers to the automatic identification of corresponding activities between two process models. It represents the basis for many advanced process model analysis techniques such as the identification of similar process parts or process model search. A central problem is how to evaluate the performance of process model matching...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The increasing number of process models in an organization has led to the development of process model repositories, which allow to efficiently and effectively manage these large number of models. Searching process models is an inherent feature of such process repositories. However, the effectiveness of searching depends upon the accuracy of the un...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Textual process descriptions are widely used in organizations since they can be created and understood by virtually everyone. The inherent ambiguity of natural language, however, impedes the automated analysis of textual process descriptions. While human readers can use their context knowledge to correctly understand statements with multiple possib...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Many organizations face noncompliance in their business processes. Such noncompliant behavior can range from well-intended actions to the deliberate omission of essential tasks. The current view on noncompliance is mostly negative and many researchers discuss how to avoid it altogether. A gap in the research is a lack of empirical insights on when...
Article
Many organizations maintain textual process descriptions alongside graphical process models. The purpose is to make process information accessible to various stakeholders, including those who are not familiar with reading and interpreting the complex execution logic of process models. Despite this merit, there is a clear risk that model and text be...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
To determine whether strategic goals are met, organizations must monitor how their business processes perform. Process Performance Indicators (PPIs) are used to specify relevant performance requirements. The formulation of PPIs is typically a managerial concern. Therefore, considerable effort has to be invested to relate PPIs, described by manageme...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Documenting business processes using process models is common practice in many organizations. However, not all process information is best captured in process models. Hence, many organizations complement these models with textual descriptions that specify additional details. The problem with this supplementary use of textual descriptions is that ex...
Article
Many organizations use business process models for documenting their business operations. In recent years, the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) evolved into the leading standard for process modeling. However, BPMN is complex: The specification offers a huge variety of different elements and often several representational choices for the s...
Preprint
Full-text available
The design and development of process-aware information systems is often supported by specifying requirements as business process models. Although this approach is generally accepted as an effective strategy, it remains a fundamental challenge to adequately validate these models given the diverging skill set of domain experts and system analysts. A...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Process model matching refers to the automatic identification of correspondences between the activities of process models. Application scenarios of process model matching reach from model validation over harmonization of process variants to effective management of process model collections. Recognizing this, several process model matching technique...