Business processes have a life-cycle that comprises three phases, design, deployment, operation and evaluation. The design phase starts with requirements definition and ends with the implementation of the business process. In the deployment phase, the business process is tested under performance, compliance considerations etc. It is also verified for fulfilling the customer’s requirements. After successful testing, the business process is released to operation. In the operation and evaluation phase, the business process is measured and analyzed during operation to identify improvements.

Each of the phases has one or more purposes. Examples for the purposes of the phases are given on the left. The design phase has the purpose to align the business process with the requirements of the business and to assure its compliance with legal rules etc. The deployment phase has the purpose to verify that the process fits the customer’s requirements to test its performance and to put it into production. In the operation & evaluation phase, evaluation serves the purpose to enhance and improve the process. Nevertheless the process has to be flexible while supporting the business goals.

Motivation

The BPMDS workshop 2008 is the 9th in a series of workshops designed according to the following principles:

1. A workshop should serve as a meeting place for researchers and practitioners in two fields:
   1. business development and
   2. business applications (software) development
2. Each workshop has its own, relatively narrow focus to facilitate meaningful discussions and brainstorming.

During the previous BPMDS workshops, we discussed various issues that could be related to different, but isolated phases in the life-cycle of a business process. In the BMPDS08 workshop, we will focus on the interaction between two or more phases of the life-cycle, as well as the holistic view of the whole life-cycle. Furthermore, the relationship between the phases and their associated purposes shall be investigated. Therefore, we will accept only contributions covering two or more phases of the lifecycle, or process life-cycle management in general.

Topics for Discussion

The main issues for discussion are:

• Goals and approaches for Business process life-cycles and their applicability
• Approaches, methods and technologies for the coupling of life-cycle phases
• Management of the business process lifecycle
• Support for the business process lifecycle
• Metrics and continuous improvement of processes in the life-cycle
• Evaluation and improvement may be practiced (i) in a stable state of the organization, but also and probably often (ii) because the environment changes.

• Case (i) is related to the quality (management) aspects and to the continuous improvement
• Case (ii) is related to the change management and BP transformation

In both cases, we probably can/should have some topics (i)  about the link between the BP, its improvement, and the support systems (not only BPMS), and (ii) the decision issues involved in all stages, illustrated in the wheel above.

• Life-cycles for special types of business processes
• Process and information integration in business process life-cycles
• Processes for the management of business process life-cycles
• Software systems to support the business process life-cycle
• Metrics for business process life-cycles
• Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
• Specific transitions in the BP life-cycle:

• Design to deployment – modeling, verification, alignment, organizational issues, etc.
• Operation to redesign – monitoring, mining, learning, etc.

Submissions

Prospective workshop participants are invited to submit a position paper related to one or more of the main topics. The paper selection will be based upon the relevance of a paper to the main topics, as well as upon its quality and potential to generate relevant discussion. Papers should be emailed to Selmin.Nurcan@univ-paris1.fr.

Form

The aim of the workshop is discussions, rather than presentations. To this end, position papers of up to 2500 words are sought. A position paper does not necessarily need to include answers to the problems described above. Position papers that raise relevant questions, or describe successful or unsuccessful practice, or describe experience will all be welcome. Short papers of up to 1000 words can also be submitted, and will be assigned a 10 minutes presentation. All papers will be published on our website before the workshop, so that everybody can learn about the problems that are important for other participants.

Expected Results

Accepted papers will be published in the CAiSE'08 workshops proceedings.

Based on the discussions, a working document will be produced to summarize the results and outline the promising directions in the field.

After the workshop, the workshop material together with a selection of the best papers will be considered for publishing in a special issue of an international journal.

Important Dates

Submission dedline: February 15^th 2008, extended to Wednesday February 20.

Notification of acceptance: March 21^st 2008

Camera-ready papers due: April 8^th 2008

Organizers

Selmin Nurcan is an associate professor at the Business School of the University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and a researcher at the ‘Centre de Recherche en Informatique’ (CRI). She has a Ph.D and an engineer degree in Computer Science. Her research activities include enterprise computing, business process management, change modelling, business/IS alignment, process (re)engineering and IS engineering. She has actively participated to research projects in collaboration with the industry.

Pnina Soffer is a lecturer in the MIS department in the University of Haifa in Israel. She has a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering, in which she developed a requirement-driven approach to the alignment of enterprise processes and an ERP system. Pnina has industrial experience as a production engineer and as an ERP consultant. Her current research areas are process modeling and requirements engineering.

Industrial Advisory Board:

Ilia Bider, PhD - Director R&D of IbisSoft, a consulting business based company in Stockholm Sweden. The company specializes in the borderland between Management and IT, the main focus being on organization of operative work in non-manufacturing business processes. Ilia is also the Industry Editor of the Business Process Management Journal.

Ian Alexander, Scenario Plus, London, specialises in Requirements Engineering consultancy and training. His books include 'Writing Better Requirements' and 'Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases'. He has published many papers, and edits Requirenautics Quarterly, the newsletter of the BCS RESG.

Lars Taxén, PhD – Has more than 30 years of experience in the telecom industry, where he has held several positions related to processes and information systems. His thesis concerns the coordination of large, globally distributed development projects with focus on ‘soft’ issues like sense-making. He has published in various conference proceedings, journals and book chapters and is now active as a researcher and consultant.

Gil Regev, PhD - Is a Senior Researcher at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Knowledge Manager at Itecor, an international consulting company. Gil has 9 years of industrial experience in the software industry and 11 years in academia. His research interests are in the areas of Requirements Engineering, Enterprise Architecture and Knowledge Management.

Workshop Program Committee

Ian Alexander – Scenario Plus, UK

Ilia Bider– IbisSoft, Stockholm, Sweden

Signe Ellegaard Borch - IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Stewart Green - University of the West of England, UK

Elke Hochmüller - Carinthia Tech Institute, Austria

Paul Johannesson - Royal University of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Marite Kirikova - Riga Technical University, Latvia

Agnes Koschmider, University of Karlsruhe, Germany

Peri Loucopoulos - Loughborough University, UK

Jan Mendling - Vienna University, Austria

Murali Mohan Narasipuram, City University of Hong Kong

Selmin Nurcan - University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, France

L.F.  Pau - Erasmus University, Netherlands

Jan Recker - Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Gil Regev – Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne, Switzerland

Manfred Reichert - University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

Peter Rittgen - University College of Borås, Sweden

Michael Rosemann - Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Rainer Schmidt - University of Applied Sciences, Aalen, Germany

Pnina Soffer – University of Haifa, Israel

Markus Strohmaier – University of Toronto, Canada

Lars Taxén - Linköping University, Sweden

Barbara Weber – University of Insbruk, Austria

Jelena Zdravkovic - Royal University of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Michael zur Muehlen - Stevens Institute of Technology, USA