Taking an Engineering Perspective on Process-Aware Information Systems

Ulm University

Invited Keynote at the International Workshop on Process Engineering (IWPE) (in conjunction with the BPM'15 Conference);
Manfred Reichert, Innsbruck, Austria, 31 August 2015, 9:15 AM

Business Process Management (BPM) has been evolving as a research discipline for more than a decade and a multitude of innovative concepts, methods and techniques have been suggested. However, there is still a huge gap between the promises of BPM in theory and its actual achievements in practice. A major reason for this gap has been the lack of established principles, methods and techniques for the engineering of more advanced process management technology and process-aware information systems, respectively, i.e., to implement process support features in a cost-effective and practical approach. To deal with this challenge, this keynote talk will take an engineering perspective on process-aware information systems. It will start with a discussion of the existing gap between BPM theory and its translation into reality. Then, it will elaborate on some of the fundamental requirements to be met when engineering process-aware information systems (e.g. scalability, usability, robustness, and integration capability). Furthermore, it will give examples of successful BPM engineering endeavours. Finally, it will discuss some of the challenges on the way towards well established principles, methods and techniques for process engineering.