Keynote at ZEUS 2024; Manfred Reichert, Ulm, Germany, 29.02.2024

The utmost importance of data for knowledge-intensive business processes has led to the emergence of object-centric and data-driven process management approaches. By tightly integrating process and data, which more or less constitute two sides of the same coin, these approaches differ significantly from the widely used activity-centric process paradigm, aiming at the support of semi- or unstructured processes and offering by far the highest flexibility. The progress of an object-centric process depends on the availability of object data rather than on the completion of black-box activities. Moreover, the focus has shifted from large, monolithic processes towards small data-driven processes (i.e., object lifecylces), which are running concurrently, but need to interact with each other to reach a given business goal. The keynote speech gives insights into the evolution from activity- to object-centric business process management (BPM) approaches with a focus on process flexibility issues. Moreover, it deals with fundamental concepts, features and enabling technologies of activity- and object-centric approaches to business process management. Finally, it discusses how object-centric process management approaches enable new avenues with respect to the engineering, automation, and monitoring of large-scale business processes in the era of digitization and Industry 4.0.