Indice

Modellazione dei processi aziendali - Methods for the specification and verification of business processes

Modellazione dei processi aziendali - Methods for the specification and verification of business processes

MPB 2016/17 (295AA / 372AA, 6 CFU)

Lecturer: Roberto Bruni

Contact: web - email - phone 050 2212785 - fax 050 2212726

Question time: Wednesday 16:00-18:00 or by appointment

Objectives

The course aims to reconcile abstraction techniques and high-level diagrammatic notations together with modular and structural approaches. The objective is to show the impact of the analysis and verification properties of business processes on the choice of the best suited specification and modelling languages. At the end of the course, the students will gain some familiarity with business process terminology, with different models and languages for the representation of business processes, with different kinds of logical properties that such models can satisfy and with different analysis and verification techniques. The students will also experiment with some tools for the design and analysis of business processes.

Course Overview

Business process management. Evolution of Enterprise Systems Architectures. Conceptual models and abstraction mechanisms. Petri nets: invariants, S-systems, T-systems, Free-choice systems and their properties. Workflow nets and workflow modules. Workflow patterns. Event-driven Process Chains (EPC). Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN). Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL). Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Process Mining.

Textbook(s)

Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures (book on BPM, main reference)
Diagnosing workflow processes using Woflan (article on Formal Analysis of Workflows, recommended reading)
Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems (book on Workflow Management, optional reading)
Free Choice Nets (book on Petri nets, optional reading)
Fundamentals of Business Process Management (book on BPMN, optional reading)
Process Mining (book on Process Mining, optional reading)
Further bibliography and lecture notes will be indicated during the course.

Quick reference(s)

Petri Nets World
PNML (Petri Nets Markup Language): XML-based standard for Petri nets
BPMN: Current specification v2.0
BPEL
Workflow Patterns
Process Mining
XES (eXtensible Event Stream): XML-based standard for event logs

Tool(s)

Woped: Workflow Petri Net Designer
Woflan: a Petri-net-based Workflow Analyzer (Windows only), also available as a ProM plugin (all platforms)
yEd: Graph Editor
Yaoqiang BPMN Editor: BPMN Editor
BPMS: Intalio BPMN Editor
Bizagi Process Modeler: BPMN editor (Windows only)
Visual Paradigm offers University of Pisa VP-UML, Logizian for educational use through the VP Academic Partner Program.
YAWL: Yet Another Workflow Language platform
ProM: Process Mining Framework
BIMP: Business Process Simulator

Exams

The evaluation will be based on mid-term written exams, a group project and an oral exam. The final score will be obtained by combining the scores of the above exams with equal weight.

The mid-term exam will be held on: Thursday 03/11/2016 (Room C, 14:00-16:00).

The student must demonstrate the ability to put into practice and to execute, with critical awareness, the activities illustrated or carried out under the guidance of the teacher during the course.

Announcements

11/10/2016:
The mid-term exam has been scheduled on Thursday 03/11/2016 (Room C, 14:00-16:00)
Registration to the exam is mandatory.

22/09/2016:
All lectures will be moved from room L1 to room A

as the course starts:
Each student should send an email to the professor from his/her favourite email account with subject MPB16 and the following data
(by doing so, the account will be included in the class mailing-list, where important announcements can be sent):
1. first name and last name (please clarify which is which, to avoid ambiguities)
2. enrolment number (numero di matricola)
3. bachelor degree (course of study and university)

Lectures

N	Date	Time	Room	Lecture notes	Topics	Links
1	Wed 21/09	14:00-16:00	L1	Lecture 1	Course introduction: course objectives, textbooks, BPM aim and motivation, models and abstraction
2	Fri 23/09	11:00-13:00	A	Lecture 2	Introduction to Business Processes: work units, processes, terminology, organizational structures, process management
3	Wed 28/09	14:00-16:00	A	Examples	Examples and Exercises
4	Fri 30/09	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises Lecture 3	Business Processes Lifecyle: design and analysis, configuration, enactment, evaluation, administration and stakeholders
5	Wed 05/10	14:00-16:00	A	Lecture 4 Lecture 5	Business Process Modelling Abstractions: conceptual model, workflow management, horizontal abstraction, aggregation abstraction, vertical abstraction, value chains and value systems, Taylorism, from business functions to processes Business Process Methodology: levels of business processes, business strategies, operational goals, organizational BP, operational BP, implemented BP, design guidelines
6	Fri 07/10	11:00-13:00	A	Lecture 6 Lecture 7	Evolution of Enterprise Systems Architectures: separation of concerns, sw architectures individual enterprise applications, enterprise resource planning system, siloed enterprise applications, enterprise application integration, message-oriented middleware, enterprise service computing Introduction to Petri nets: finite state automata
7	Wed 12/10	14:00-16:00	A	Petri nets (from Lecture 7) Lecture 8	Introduction to Petri nets: from finite state automata to Petri nets More concepts about Petri nets: multisets and markings, transition enabling and firing, firing sequences, reachable markings	Woped
8	Fri 14/10	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 7, 8) Lecture 9	More concepts about Petri nets: occurrence graph Behavioural properties: liveness, place liveness, deadlock freedom
9	Wed 19/10	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 8, 9) Properties (from Lecture 9)	Behavioural properties: boundedness, safeness, cyclicity Structural properties: weak and strong connectedness, S-systems, T-systems, free-choice nets
10	Fri 21/10	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lecture 9) Lecture 10 Lecture 11	Nets as matrices: incidence matrices, markings as vectors, Parikh vectors, marking equation lemma, monotonicity lemma, boundedness lemma, repetition lemma Invariants: S-invariants, fundamental property of S-invariants
11	Wed 26/10	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lecture 11) Invariants (from Lecture 11) Lecture 12 Lecture 13	Invariants: alternative characterization of S-invariant, support, positive S-invariants, about boundedness, reachability and liveness, T-invariants, fundamental property of T-invariants, alternative characterization of T-invariants, reproduction lemma, about liveness and boundedness Other properties of nets: exchange lemmas, connectedness theorems Workflow nets: definition, control flow aspects, decorations
12	Fri 28/10	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 11, 12) Workflow nets (from Lecture 13) Lecture 14	Workflow nets: control flow aspects, triggers Analysis of workflow nets: structural analysis, activity analysis, token analysis, net analysis, verification and validation, reachability analysis
13	Thu 03/11	14:00-16:00	C	Mid-Term Exam	Registration (look at past exercises)
14	Wed 09/11	14:00-16:00	A	Solutions to mid-term exam Exercises (from Lecture 13) Coverability graph (from Lecture 14) Soundness theorem (from Lecture 14)	Analysis of workflow nets: coverability graph, soundness, N*, soundness theorem
15	Fri 11/11	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lecture 14) Lecture 15 Lecture 16 Lecture 17	Workflow nets: soundness (and safeness) by construction S-systems: fundamental property of S-systems, S-invariants of S-nets, liveness theorem reachability lemma, reachability theorem, boundedness theorem T-systems: circuits and token count on a circuit, fundamental property of T-systems
16	Wed 16/11	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 15, 16) Analysis of T-system (from Lecture 17) A note on P and NP (optional reading)	T-systems: T-invariants of T-nets liveness theorem, boundedness theorem for live T-systems, boundedness in strongly connected T-systems, liveness in strongly connected T-systems
17	Fri 18/11	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 17) Lecture 18	Free-choice nets: Fundamental property of free-choice nets, clusters, fundamental property of clusters in f.c. nets, stability, siphons, proper siphons, fundamental property of siphons, siphons and liveness, siphons and deadlock traps, proper traps, fundamental property of traps, a sufficient condition for deadlock freedom, place-liveness and liveness in f.c. nets, non-liveness and unmarked siphons in f.c. nets, Commoner's theorem, complexity issues
18	Wed 23/11	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lecture 18) Rank Theorem (from Lecture 18) S- and T-Covers (from Lecture 18) Lecture 19	Free-choice nets: Rank theorem, S-cover, T-cover Diagnosis of Workflow nets: Woped, Woflan, TP-handles, PT-handles, well-handled nets, well-structured wf nets	Woflan ProM
19	Fri 25/11	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 19) Error sequences (from Lecture 19) Lecture 20	Diagnosis of Workflow nets: error sequences, non-live sequences, unbounded sequences Workflow systems: workflow modules, strong and weak compatibility, workflow system, weak soundness, DF,k-controllability
20	Wed 30/11	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 19, 20) LF,k-controllability (from Lecture 20) Lecture 21 (updated 02/12)	Workflow systems: LF,k-controllability EPC: Notation, semantics ambiguities and problems, corresponding split, matching split
21	Fri 02/12	11:00-13:00	A	EPC semantics (from Lecture 21) Lecture 22	EPC: policies (wfa, fc, et), from EPC to nets, relaxed soundness BPMN: Notation, swimlanes, flow objects	yEd Yaoqiang BPMS Bizagi Logizian
22	Wed 07/12	14:00-16:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 21) BPMN (from Lecture 22)	BPMN: artefacts, connecting onjects, conversations, choreographies, collaborations, from BPMN to nets
23	Fri 09/12	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 22) From BPMN to nets (from Lecture 22) Lecture 23	BPMN: From BPMN to nets (ctd.) BPEL: BPEL structured constructs, links, transition condition, join condition, from BPEL to nets	ProM
24	Wed 14/12	14:00-16:00	A	Lecture 24 Lecture 25	Quantitative analysis: Performance dimensions and objectives, KPI, cyle time analysis, Little's law, cost analysis Simulation: resource allocation, classification diagrams, capacity planning, simulation parameters, task durations, BIMP	BIMP Woped ProM
25	Fri 16/12	11:00-13:00	A	Exercises (from Lectures 22, 24) Lecture 26 (updated 16/12)	Process mining: Event logs, discovery, conformance, enhancement, perspectives, play-in, play-out, replay, overfitting, underfitting alpha-algorithm, footprint matrix, naive fitness, improved fitness	ProM
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