MPB 2017/18 (295AA, 6 cfu)

part of Business Performance Analysis (APA 2017/18, 417AA, 12 cfu)

Lecturer: Roberto Bruni

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

Question time: Wednesday 14:00-16:00 or by appointment

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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

• 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
• BPMN.io: BPMN Editor
• BPMS: Intalio BPMN Editor
• Bizagi Process Modeler: BPMN editor (Windows only)
• Visual Paradigm supports University of Pisa with UML tools and ERD tools under the VP Academic Training Partner Program
• YAWL: Yet Another Workflow Language platform
• ProM: Process Mining Framework
• BIMP: Business Process Simulator

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 02/11 at 14:00-16:00 in room A1.
Registration to the exam is mandatory.

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.

• An additional lecture has been scheduled on tuesday 17/10 (16:00-18:00, room L1) to replace the one canceled on 6/10.

• The lecture of friday 6/10 has been canceled because of the Internet Festival. If necessary it will be re-scheduled in the next weeks.

• as the course starts:
  Each student should send an email to the professor from his/her favourite email account with subject MPB17 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)

• A.A. 2016/17
• A.A. 2015/16
• A.A. 2014/15
• A.A. 2013/14