Date: Wednesday, October 29th - Afternoon	Room: Richmond C
Level: Intermediate
Pre-requisites: General interest in business modelling, compliance, and/or performance management. Suggestion for preparation: Toward an integrated User Requirements Notation framework and tool for Business Process Management, http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibMCeTech08BPM

  Workshop Chair(s):

Daniel Amyot	University of Ottawa
Liam Peyton	University of Ottawa
Alireza Pourshahid	Cognos/IBM
Eric Yu	University of Toronto

Format: Multiple speakers

Abstract:
A business process is a "coordinated chain of activities intended to produce a business result" ‎or a "repeating cycle that reaches a business goal". People from different units and organization are usually involved to complete an end-to-end process. A number of recent initiatives in both academia and industry have sought to achieve improvements in organizations through the utilization of Business Process Management (BPM) methodologies and tools. However there are still some inadequacies that need to be addressed when it comes to achieving alignment between business goals and business processes, as well as compliance with legislation.

This workshop will propose many elements of an integrated BPM framework that takes advantage of languages, methodologies and tools recently developed in the requirements engineering community. This framework provides business process monitoring, performance management, and compliance capabilities integrated across the BPM lifecycle. It also integrates different technologies and tools originating from IBM (Eclipse), recently acquired by IBM (Cognos 8 Business Intelligence tools and the Telelogic DOORS requirements management system), and open source (jUCMNav ‎[6]‎[16]‎[17] and OpenOME [23]).

Our modelling approach combines goal and scenario views. i* is a goal-oriented and agent-oriented language that can be used to model and reason about organizations, stakeholders, goals, requirements, and decision rationales ‎[22]. i* is the main foundation of the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL), now standardized as part of ITU-T's User Requirements Notation (URN) ‎[4]‎[5]. URN supplements GRL with a scenario notation (Use Case Maps - UCM), which can be used to model and analyze functional requirements and business processes in the form of scenarios / workflows ‎[21]. The User Requirements Notation has some unique features and capabilities beyond what is available in other notations that can help address alignment issues.

The first presentation will introduce the URN standard and its analysis capabilities as supported by the jUCMNav Eclipse plug-in (freely available at http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/jucmnav). This presentation will be partly based on a tutorial also available at http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/ProjetSEG/JUCMNavTutorials

In the second presentation, the URN notation is extended to support Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and performance modeling, process portfolio monitoring, and scenario-based performance and impact analysis. It will be shown how the extended URN compares with other business process modelling notations. Tool support is provided by jUCMNav. Integration with Cognos 8 both as a source of information and as a report generation tool will also be discussed. This work is mainly based on the recent theses of Pourshahid and Chen ‎[1]‎[13]‎[14][12] and the work of Mussbacher ‎[11]‎[12].

The i* modeling framework, in recognizing the strategic nature of agents in a social world, provides a vehicle for modeling and reasoning about business models, and their relation to business strategy. In the third presentation, the use of i* modeling for strategic reasoning about business models will be outlined. An example of disruptive innovation will be used to illustrate. The use of a reference catalogue approach to link business models to service-oriented design will be briefly outlined. Support for i* modelling and analysis with OpenOME will also be discussed. This work is based on the theses work of Samavi ‎[18]‎[19]‎[20] and Lo ‎[9]‎[10].

In the fourth presentation, we will show how the URN-based framework also provides conformance and compliance capabilities, with support for traceability from goals and scenarios to requirements and policies from the organization or external legislation. Such traceability enables impact analysis as goals, processes, laws, and external requirements evolve. An integration between jUCMNav and Telelogic DOORS enables URN models to be exported to the DOORS database and links to be created and exploited. This work is based mainly on the thesis of Ghanavati ‎[2]‎[3].

The last presentation will describe an approach for requirements-driven design, configuration, and adaptation of business processes in which business goals and the associated quality criteria are explicitly modeled and refined using goal models. The emphasis in this approach is on capturing intentional variability - the many ways by which the business goals can be attained. Additionally, domain variability can be modeled using “contexts”. The resulting high-variability goal models can be analyzed in terms of how well they meet the quality criteria identified in the model. High-variability executable models (e.g., in WS-BPEL) are then semi-automatically generated preserving at runtime the variability in the corresponding goal models. These executable models can be configured and reconfigured at high-level for every business process instance based on relative priorities of the quality criteria (e.g., cost vs. performance). Deployed processes can then be monitored and analyzed with the results propagated to the corresponding high-level goal models. This work includes the material from ‎[7] and ‎[8].

The framework and the various tools and techniques will be illustrated with concrete business processes.

The participants are expected to help identify the opportunities and limitations of such notations, methodologies, and tools for business process modelling and performance management in organizations.


References:

[1] Chen, P., Goal-Oriented Business Process Monitoring: An Approach based on User Requirement Notation combined with Business Intelligence and Web Services. M.Sc. thesis, Carleton University, Canada, December 2007. http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibPChenThesis07

[2] Ghanavati, S., A Compliance Framework for Business Processes Based on URN, M.Sc. thesis, University of Ottawa, Canada, May 2007. http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibGhanavatiMScThesis

[3] Ghanavati, S., Amyot D., and Peyton, L., "Towards a Framework for Tracking Legal Compliance in Healthcare". 19th Int. Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'07). Trondheim, Norway, June 2007. LNCS 4495, Springer, 218-232.

[4] ITU-T, Recommendation Z.150 (02/03): User Requirements Notation (URN) - Language requirements and framework, Geneva, Switzerland, 2003

[5] ITU-T, Draft Recommendation Z.151: User Requirements Notation (URN), Geneva, Switzerland, 2008

[6] Kealey, J., Enhanced Use Case Map Analysis and Transformation Tooling. M.Sc. thesis, University of Ottawa, Canada, October 2007. http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibKealeyThesis07

[7] Lapouchnian, A, Yu, Y., Liaskos, S., Mylopoulos, J., "Requirements-Driven Design of Autonomic Application Software". In Proc. 16th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering CASCON 2006, Toronto, Canada, Oct 16-19, 2006.

[8] Lapouchnian, A., Yu, Y., and Mylopoulos, J., "Requirements-Driven Design and Configuration Management of Business Processes". Business Process Management, LNCS 4714, 246-261, Springer, 2007

[9] Lo, A. and Yu, E., "From Business Models to Service-Oriented Design: A Reference Catalog Approach", ER 2007: Int. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling, LNCS 4801, Springer, 87-101, 2008

[10] Lo, A., "From Business Models to Service-Oriented Design: A Reference Catalog Approach", M.Sc. thesis, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Univ. of Toronto, 2006.

[11] Mussbacher, G., "Evolving Use Case Maps as a Scenario and Workflow Description Language". 10th Workshop of Requirement Engineering (WER'07), Toronto, Canada, 56-67, May 2007.

[12] Mussbacher, G. and Amyot, D., "Assessing the Applicability of Use Case Maps for Business Process and Workflow Description". 2008 International MCETECH Conference on e-Technologies, Montréal, Canada. IEEE CS, 219-222, January 2008

[13] Pourshahid, A., A URN-Based Methodology for Business Process Monitoring. M.Sc. thesis, University of Ottawa, Canada, March 2008. http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibPourshahidMScThesis

[14] Pourshahid, A., Chen, P., Amyot, D., Weiss, M., and Forster, A. J., "Business Process Monitoring and Alignment: An Approach Based on the User Requirements Notation and Business Intelligence Tools". 10th Workshop of Requirement Engineering. (WER'07), Toronto, Canada, 80-91, May 2007

[15] Pourshahid, A., Chen, P., Amyot, D., Forster, A.J., Ghanavati, S., Peyton, L., and Weiss, M., "Toward an integrated User Requirements Notation framework and tool for Business Process Management". 3rd Int. MCeTech Conference on eTechnologies, Montréal, Canada, January 2008. IEEE Computer Society, 3-15

[16] Roy, J.-F., Kealey, J., and Amyot, D., "Towards Integrated Tool Support for the User Requirements Notation". SAM 2006: Fifth Workshop on System Analysis and Modelling, LNCS 4320, Springer, 198-215, 2006 http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/jucmnav/

[17] Roy, J.-F., Requirement Engineering with URN: Integrating Goals and Scenarios, M.Sc. thesis, University of Ottawa, Canada, March 2007. http://jucmnav.softwareengineering.ca/twiki/bin/view/UCM/VirLibRoyMScThesis

[18] Samavi, R., Yu, E., and Topazoglou, T., "Strategic reasoning about business models: a conceptual modeling approach", Information Systems and E-Business Management. Springer, 2008. DOI:10.1007/s10257-008-0079-z

[19] Samavi, R., Yu, E., and Topazoglou, T., "Applying Strategic Business Modeling to Understand Disruptive Innovation", Proc. Int. Conf. on E-Commerce, Innsbruck. Austria. August, 2008, to appear.

[20] Samavi, R., "Strategic reasoning about business models: a conceptual modeling approach", M.Eng. Project. Dept of Mech. & Ind. Eng., Univ. of Toronto, 2006.

[21] Weiss, M. and Amyot, D., "Business Process Modeling with URN", International Journal of E-Business Research, Vol. 1, No. 3, 63-90, July-September 2006

[22] Yu, E., "Towards Modelling and Reasoning Support for Early-Phase Requirements Engineering". 3rd IEEE Int. Symp. on Requirements Engineering, Washington, USA. IEEE CS, 226-235, 1997

[23] Yu, E. et al. OpenOME, an open-source requirements engineering tool. 2008. https://se.cs.toronto.edu/index.php/OpenOME

Agenda:
1:00 - 1:15: Introductions [All]

1:15 - 1:45: ITU-T's User Requirements Notation (URN) and jUCMNav [D. Amyot, uOttawa]

1:45 - 2:30: Business Process Modelling, Analysis and Monitoring with URN, jUCMNav and Cognos 8 [A. Pourshahid, Cognos/IBM]

2:30 - 3:15: Strategic Business Modeling with i* [E. Yu, U.Toronto]

3:15 - 3:30: Break

3:30 - 4:00: Compliance Management with URN, jUCMNav, and Telelogic DOORS [L. Peyton, uOttawa]

4:00 - 4:30: Requirements-Driven Design, Configuration, and Adaptation of Business Processes [A. Lapouchnian, U.Toronto]

4:30 - 4:45: Discussion and conclusions

Speakers:
Daniel Amyot	SITE, University of Ottawa
Daniel Amyot is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, which he joined in 2002 after working for Mitel Networks as a senior researcher in software engineering. His research interests include scenario-based software engineering, requirements engineering, business process modeling, aspect-oriented modeling, and feature interactions in emerging applications. Daniel is Rapporteur for requirements languages at the International Telecommunication Union, where he leads the development of the User Requirements Notation. He has a Ph.D. and a M.Sc. from the University of Ottawa (2001 and 1994), as well as a B.Sc. from Laval University (1992).
Abstract Requirements represent an important aspect of software products and services. This paper presents an overview of the proposed ITU-T Recommendation Z.151 – User Requirements Notation (URN), intended for the elicitation, analysis, specification, and validation of requirements. URN combines modelling concepts and notations for goals and intentions (mainly for non-functional requirements, quality attributes, and reasoning about alternatives) and scenarios (mainly for operational requirements, functional requirements, and performance and architectural reasoning). The two complementary sub-views are offered by the Goal-oriented Requirement Language (GRL) and the Use Case Map (UCM) notation. Basic concepts and notation elements are introduced, together with the main requirements analysis, transformation, and management techniques relevant to URN and supported by the jUCMNav Eclipse plug-in.
Alireza Pourshahid	Cognos / IBM
Alireza Pourshahid received his M.Sc. degree in E-Business Technologies from the University of Ottawa in 2008 and is now working at IBM. Ali also recently started his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa. His main research interests are Business Process and Performance Management, Process Modeling, Trust Modeling, and Software Development Methodologies.
Abstract Modeling, analysis, and monitoring business processes are three important factors in any process-aware information system. In addition, most process and performance improvement methodologies start with proper process modeling to capture the current state of the organization. Although measuring the performance of business processes is based on organizational goals and although the impact of processes on such goals is an important aspect of the process evaluation, most of the existing process modeling notations and their supporting tools do not support goal modeling, performance modeling, and traceability between goal and process models at the same time. In this presentation, we describe how the User Requirements Notation (URN) can be used to support business process analysis and monitoring. Although URN enables the modeling of processes and goals, its process monitoring capabilities need enhancements. We have addressed this issue by extending URN, particularly with the concept of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). In addition, we propose a methodology that exploits the new capabilities of URN for process analysis and improvement. Furthermore, we have enhanced the jUCMNav Eclipse plugin to support these extensions. The presentation will also include a demonstration of some of the capabilities of the supporting tool using an example from the health care domain.
Eric Yu	Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Eric Yu is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 1995. His interests are in the areas of information systems design, requirements engineering, knowledge management, enterprise architecture, software engineering, and business modeling. His research emphasizes concepts and techniques for modelling and systematically analyzing strategic relationships among social actors. He serves on the editorial boards of the Int. Journal of Agent Oriented Software Engineering, IET Software and the Journal of Data Semantics. He is Program Co-chair for the 27th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER’08). Earlier, he held positions in research and development labs at Bell and Nortel Networks in Ottawa.
Abstract The i* modeling framework, in recognizing the strategic nature of agents in a social world, provides a vehicle for modeling and reasoning about business models, and their relation to business strategy. In this presentation, the use of i* modeling for strategic reasoning about business models will be outlined. An example of disruptive innovation will be used to illustrate. The use of a reference catalogue approach to link business models to service-oriented design will be briefly outlined. Support for i* modelling and analysis with OpenOME will also be discussed. This work is based on the theses work of Samavi ‎[18]‎[19]‎[20] and Lo ‎[9]‎[10].
Liam Peyton	SITE, University of Ottawa
Liam Peyton, Ph.D., P.Eng., is the principal investigator for the Intelligent Data Warehouse laboratory and Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa which he joined in 2002 after spending 10 years as an industry consultant specializing in business process automation, performance management, and software development methodologies. His current research focus is the securing, monitoring and enabling of data sharing within business to business networks based on model-driven, service oriented architecture in compliance with government regulations. He has degrees from Aalborg Universitet (Ph.D. 1996), Stanford University (M.Sc. 1989), and McGill University (B.Sc. 1984).
Abstract Compliance with institutional policies and applicable legislation is a major concern for any organization when defining its business processes. These regulations are in natural language documents that are usually complex and hard to understand. As well, both business processes and regulations are susceptible to change with the potential of introducing non-compliance. We present a framework to track compliance by leveraging requirements engineering models. Compliance is managed by establishing links between User Requirements Notation (URN) models of organizational business processes and the relevant legislation and policy documents and tracking the relationships between them in a requirements management system (IBM Telelogic Doors). Special attention is paid to maintaining compliance as either the legislation or business processes evolve over time. Tool support for URN and its integration with Doors is provided by extensions to the URN meta model supported by the open source jUCMNav IDE. A case study is used to evaluate the framework, based on the approval process implemented to control access to a data warehouse at a major Ontario hospital and whether or not this process complies with the provincial Personal Health Information Privacy Act (PHIPA).
Alexei Lapouchnian	Dept. of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Alexei Lapouchnian is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor John Mylopoulos. His research interests include software engineering for highly customizable, adaptable and adaptive systems, autonomic computing, business process modeling, as well as multiagent systems and in requirements engineering. Most of his research is on using intentional (goal) and social (i*) models for modeling, analysis, and design of systems. He holds an IBM CAS fellowship to study adaptive business processes. Previously, he completed his M.Sc. in the Department of Computer Science at York University. He worked on requirements engineering for multiagent systems, particularly on integrating the i* modeling framework with the Cognitive Agents Specification Language for requirements engineering under the supervision of Professor Yves Lespérance.
Abstract In this presentation, we will describe an approach for requirements-driven design, configuration, and adaptation of business processes in which business goals and the associated quality criteria are explicitly modeled and refined using goal models. The emphasis in this approach is on capturing intentional variability - the many ways by which the business goals can be attained. Additionally, domain variability can be modeled using “contexts”. The resulting high-variability goal models can be analyzed in terms of how well they meet the quality criteria identified in the model. High-variability executable models (e.g., in WS-BPEL) are then semi-automatically generated preserving at runtime the variability in the corresponding goal models. These executable models can be configured and reconfigured at high-level for every business process instance based on relative priorities of the quality criteria (e.g., cost vs. performance). Deployed processes can then be monitored and analyzed with the results propagated to the corresponding high-level goal models.