BPMN and Design Patterns for Engineering Social BPM Solutions

• EU Funded Project, 2 years4 SMEs + 2 UniversitiesCoordinator: Web Models (IT)Main deliverablesMethodologyModeling languagesReusable design pattersForward engineering architectureCases, cases, cases…

www.bpm4people.org
The Social BPM Space
A continuum from closed to open social BPM, where each organization can find the mix of control & flexibility it needs
Process model decided top-down and hard wired, task assignment rigid, communication limited to task input-output
ClosedBPM
Participatory design
Process model resulting from merge of different models (e.g., merger&acquisition), task/flow variants
Participatory enactment
Actors are fixed, but can communicate with social tools (e.g., follow up a task, tweet on a task status, etc)
The community of actors can be (in part) open: e.g.,
launch a task to be executed in Facebook, find an expert in LinkedIn, vote for alternative flows
Social enactment
Tasks are executed freely (e.g., in a Wiki-like mode)
process constraints are mined and progressively enforced by observing community behaviors
Process mining
The contribution of “social” to the BPM lifecycle

• Weak Ties / Tacit Knowledge exploitation (e.g., team formation) Knowledgesharing (e.g., self-service technical support)SocialFeedback (e.g., quality of service monitoring)Transparency: (e.g., legislation building)Participation: (e.g., participatory budgeting)Activitydistribution (e.g., crowd-sourced work)Decisiondistribution (e.g., social CRM)

Social BPMN
Socialization
design
patterns
Socialization
goals
Modeltransformation
Participatory &
social enactment
Social BPM architecture
Overview of the approach
General idea:
Social BPM Design & Implementation
Analyze process improvement requirements
Understand SBPM goals
Identify communities of reference
Analysis & design
Understand process socialization patterns
Map requirements to goals
Identify relevant socialization patterns
Refer patterns to goals
(Re)design process with social interactions
Identify & abstract
social platforms to use
Automate pattern to application transformation
Map process model to
application models
Deployment
Refine
application models
Map application models
into code & deploy
Representing Social BPM requirements
Idea: extending BPMN with stereotypes for expressing:

• The participation of dynamically enrolled actors ( social pools with different roles)The execution of activities by such actors (social tasks)Events for controlling the execution of tasks by social actors

• As in the tradition of BPM design patterns, they capture reusable solutions to recurrent socialization requirements

Dynamic enrollment
Poll
Design patterns and goals

• Socialization goals can be used as drivers for the selection of the social BPM design patterns that are more relevant to a process socialization effort (SBPM by example)

• Models are amenable to be transformed into running applications, enabling fast prototyping and early assessment of alternative process socialization strategies directly by the stakeholdersModel-Driven Engineeringis the discipline that supports a generative approach to the creation and maintenance of application from abstract, platform-independent modelsImplementation exploited WebRatio (www.webratio.com), an industrial MDE tool that manages app development in three steps:

• EU Parliament: IT requirement elicitation processes opened to all DGsNGO: consumers’ claim management and class action organizationPA: participative territory planningMultinational company: social CRM

Future work

• Complete the implementation of model editor, model transformation, social WebML componentsInvestigate SNA techniques for social task optimizationDefine social process improvement metrics and Social Activity Monitoring concepts