Mturi Elias’s research while affiliated with Stockholm University and other places

Paper is in open access: http://bit.ly/2c3RI8P This paper suggests a new type of enterprise models called fractal enterprise models (FEM), with accompanying methodological support for their design. FEM shows interconnections between the business processes in an enterprise by connecting them to the assets they use and manage. Assets considered in the model could be tangible (buildings, heavy machinery, etc.) and intangible (employees, business process definitions, etc.). A FEM model is built by using two types of patterns called archetypes: a process-assets archetype that connects a process with assets used in it, and an asset-processes archetype that connects an asset with processes aimed to manage this asset (e.g., hiring people, or servicing machinery). Alternating these patterns creates a fractal structure that makes relationships between various parts of the enterprise explicit. FEM can be used for different purposes, including finding a majority of the processes in an enterprise and planning business change or radical transformation. Besides discussing FEM and areas of its usage, the paper presents results from a completed project in order to test the practical usefulness of FEM and its related methodological support.

The Fractal Process-Asset (FPA) model has been proposed as an approach for identifying business processes and defining relationships between them in an enterprise. This paper reports on a project of applying the model in a Higher Education Institution enterprise. The goal of this project is twofold. One is to design a process architecture that provides a holistic view on the major business processes and their interconnections in the department to be used for business planning and development. Second is to test whether the FPA model is suitable for creating a holistic view on the major business processes and their interconnections in an enterprise. The FPA model has been applied and evaluated by business domain experts in a frame of a real organization—department of Computer and System Sciences, Stockholm University. The results show that the FPA model is understandable and suitable for creating a holistic view on the major business processes in an enterprise and their interconnections. The educational processes architecture produced is understandable and can be used for business planning and development. Though the study has been conducted only in one organization, there is a likelihood that the results achieved are of general nature.

A promising approach for analyzing and designing an enterprise is to consider it as a complex adaptive system (CAS) able to self-adjust to the changes in the environment. An important part of designing a CAS model is to untangle the dynamic structure of an enterprise. This paper presents a procedure for identifying all processes that exist in an enterprise as well as their interconnections. The procedure makes use of a number of process-assets and asset-processes archetypes. The first ones help to find out what assets are needed for a particular process, the second ones help to find out supporting processes that are needed to have each type of assets ready available for deployment. The procedure is based on the ideas of fractal organization where the same pattern is repeated on different levels. The uncovered dynamic structure of an enterprise can support strategic planning, change management, as well as discovering and preventing misbalances between its business processes. The paper also presents an example of applying the procedure to research activities of a university.

CPSAM is a context-based process semantic annotation model for annotating business processes in a process model repository. The purpose of the annotation model is to facilitate searching process models, navigating a process model repository and enhance users' understanding of process models. The annotation model has partly been evaluated through an empirical study to test the annotation consistency and correctness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the process annotation (based on CPSAM) through a controlled experiment, where a prototype of the repository is used, to annotate and store process models based on the CPSAM. The evaluation is supposed to test whether process annotation based on the CPSAM can facilitate searching, navigation and understanding of process models stored in a repository. The results show that annotating business processes using the annotation model positively affects searching process models, navigating the repository and understanding process models.

Business process modeling is a complex, time consuming and error prone task. However the efforts made to model business processes are seldom reused beyond their original purpose. Rather than modeling of business processes from scratch, analysts can drive process models, by redesigning the existing ones. A repository is, therefore, necessary to store and manage process models for future reuse. In this paper we, discuss requirements for a process model repository that would support reuse of process models, review existing process model repositories based on the requirement. Finally we analyse and point out major challenges of existing repositories that affect reuse. This survey will be a base to develop the future efficient searchable, user-friendly, useful and well-organized process model repositories.

Reuse of business process models is the act of designing business processes by using existing process models. Reuse of business process models has been considered as a way to reduce the cost of modeling business processes from scratch. In order to support reuse a critical mass of process models is required which justifies the effort of maintaining a process model repository. However, recent studies show that complete repositories which can support reuse are not yet available. One of the reasons is that stakeholder requirements for process model repositories have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to define requirements of a process model repository from stakeholders’ (researchers and practitioners) perspective. In this study, we start by eliciting preliminary requirements (defined as propositions) through an exploratory study followed by an empirical validation of the propositions. Based on the analysis of the results we define as a set of requirements for a process model repository.

Reuse of business process models is the act of designing business processes by using existing process models. Reuse of business process models has been considered as a way to reduce the cost of modeling business processes from scratch. In order to support reuse of process models, a critical mass of process models is required which justifies the effort of maintaining a process model repository. While there are several process modeling languages, no single language is widely accepted. So in order to make process models usable, the stored process models must be presented in a language understandable by users. The purpose of this work is to apply multi-criteria decision making to choose process representation format for a process model repository.

Today reuse of business process models is becoming increasingly important. One of the proven solutions for reusing business process models is the use of repositories. Repositories should have process models and process metadata that can help users in searching, understanding, and interpreting process models. The purpose of this paper is to propose a Business Process Metadata Model (BPMM) that would facilitate a) locating process models, b) understanding and/or interpreting process models, and c) navigating a process model repository. In order to evaluate the BPMM, an empirical study is conducted to measure consistency and correctness of annotating business processes by using BPMM.

Process model reuse is becoming a key approach to addressing the challenges of modeling business processes from scratch. A repository is, therefore, essential to store and manage process models for future reuse. In this paper, we develop a logical data model that enables a Universal Process Repository to store process models in the form of process elements, independent of any process modelling language. In order to store process models in the process repository we propose an algorithm that automatically extracts data from the repository and converts them to process models on the fly. Finally, we use a case study to present data stored about a process model in the repository and to illustrate the development of process models from the data stored in the repository.