In global economy, complex, dynamic and turbulent organization environment strongly influences organization’s operation and market success. Organizations must constantly adapt to changing circumstances and search for new possibilities of gaining competitive advantage. To face this challenge, small organizations base their operation on strategies of specialization, differentiation and collaboration within Virtual Organizations (VOs). VO operation is based on collaborative processes. Due to dynamism and knowledge-intensiveness, as well as required flexibility and adaptability of collaborative processes, existing business information systems are insufficient to efficiently support them. In this paper a novel method for supporting collaborative processes based on process mining techniques is proposed. The method allows activity patterns in various instances of collaborative processes to be identified. Extracted activity patterns are used for recommendation of activities which provide an opportunity for better computer support of collaborative processes leading to more efficient and effective realization of business goals. Full article: http://www.kti.ue.poznan.pl/en/node/3064

1. June 5th, 2011, Poznań, Poland
Computer Supported Collaborative
Processes in Virtual Organizations
Zbigniew Paszkiewicz Wojciech Cellary
Department of Information Technology
Poznań University of Economics, Poland
{zpasz,cellary}@kti.ue.poznan.pl

2. Agenda
1. Virtual organizations and breeding environments
2. Collaborative processes
– Semi structured processes
3. RMV method
– Activity patterns
– Process mining
– Method steps
– Technical implementation
4. Conclusions
© UEP 2

3. Virtual organization and
breeding environments

4. Virtual organization
• A set of at least two autonomous partners,
• where at least one of them is an organization,
• cooperating within a particular structure of social
and legal relations
• in order to carry out a particular venture due to the
demand from virtual organization clients
• and having a plan to carry out this venture
© UEP 4

5. Virtual Organization
Breeding Environment
Virtual Organization
Process of
Partner and Service Selection
Virtual Organization Breeding Environment
© UEP 5

6. Collaborative processes

7. Processes
Basic notions
Process is a set of activities which realize a business objective in a
structured manner
Process instance is a single enactment of a process that normally takes
place within the context of an organizational structure defining functional
roles of involved actors and relationships existing among actors
Process model captures the possibility to execute process activities in a
given process state.
© UEP 7

8. Processes
Process structures
• Structured processes
– process model is known a priori
– static environment – process repetition
• Ad-hoc processes
– process cannot be modeled a priori
– process model is designed at run-time
• Semi-structured
– some sequences of actions are highly probable to appear
in a particular context Example:
– it is unknown whether the particular context will appear
– general structure of the process is known Recue action
© UEP 8

9. Collaborative processes
• A semi-structured process that
• involves at least two different and autonomous process
participants being legally independent and
• aiming to fulfill their own goals that may be different from the
goal of a virtual organization they are a part of.
Main characteristics
Knowledge intensiveness
Flexibility
Adaptability
Long lasting
© UEP 9

10. Repeatable processes not Support only for
adjusted to context communication
Insufficient support for collaborative processes
Error prone and lower efficiency
of collaborative processes execution
Lower effectiveness of virtual organization operation
© UEP 10

11. Recommendation Method for
Virtual organizations
(RMV method)

12. IT support for collaborative processes
• Mix of approaches to both structured and ad-hoc processes
support
• Structured process parts can be efficiently supported
Key problem
Identification of parts of a collaborative process
that have a predictable structure and those
which have ad-hoc character
© UEP 12

13. RMV method concept
1. Analyze running and former executions of the collaborative
process instances to detect activity patterns
A set of activities that are frequently performed
in a structured way in a particular context
2. Analyze the context of activity patterns
3. Knowledge of activity patterns and their context can be used
in recommendations in on-going and future collaborative
processes
© UEP 13

14. Activity pattern and context identification
• Explicit identification
• Difficult verbalization
– Experience
– Tacit knowledge
– Discrepancies between the way the processes were intended
and are executed in practice
Method for objective and human error free
identification of activity patterns
© UEP 14

15. Process mining
Wil M.P. van der Aalst „Process Mining. Discovery, Conformance and Enhancement of Business
Processes”, Springer, 2011
© UEP 15

16. RMV method assumptions
1. Detailed model of the process is not known in advance
2. Process participants use tools and data sources offered by
VOBE for activity execution
3. VOBE’s technical infrastructure records events created by
process participant actions during activity execution and the
context of these activities
4. Process mining techniques are use for extraction of
collaborative process models and activity patterns
© UEP 16

17. A. Process instances in context c1
RMV method steps – phase 1
b) No. of
occurrences: 3
A. Process instances in context c1
b) No. of
occurrences: 3
Criteria:
a) No. of Partner Search
P2 engine
competence
occurrences: 3 search name
Criteria:
a) No. of Partner Search
P2 engine
competence
occurrences: 3 search name
Partner Partner
a)
search selection
Partner P1 Selected Partner P1
E-mail
Selected
org.:
selection P3 Q
E-mail org.:
selection P3 Q
Partner Search Criteria:
P2
Formulation of Cooperation search engine localization
Varify partner P3 Tool P
Criteria:
past
Partner Terms P2 Contract P1 cooperation
b) Manual cooperation P2 Tool Z terms Manual Tool K
selection Partner terms Search
for X
Criteria: Org. X signing
Partner Org. X Selected
P2 acceptance selection
P2 Manual
org.: X
Org.:
search engine localization Criteria: Offer inquiry P1 Tool J
Q
Varify partner P3 Tool P past
Cooperation
cooperation terms P2 Tool Z
Terms
for X Answer to
formulation Org. Q
inquire
Partner Answer to Contract
c) Email Varify partner Offer inquiry Discussion Cooperation
selection Partner Selected inquire signingterms
P2
Org. X
Manual P1
P2 Manual
org.: X
acceptance Discussion P3 P4 Tool B
selection Org.:
P5
Offer inquiry P1 Tool J
Q Contract P1 Contract
Contract P2 Contract Tool K
Tool K signing Org. Q for Q
signing Org. X for X
Cooperation
Terms
terms P2 Tool Z
for X Answer to
formulation Org. Q
inquire
Partner Partner
a)
search selection
Cooperation
Partner Formulation of
Terms
Cooperation
P2 P2
Contract P1 P1
b) selection
Manual cooperation P2 Tool Z
for X
terms terms
Org. X
Manual
signing ManualTool K
Org. X
terms acceptance Org. X Discussion P3 P4 Tool B
acceptance
P5
Partner Answer to Contract
c) Email Varify partner Offer inquiry Discussion
selection inquire signing
Contract P2 Contract
Contract P1 Contract
Tool K Tool K
for X signing Org. Q for Q
signing Org. X
Activity pattern repository
© UEP 17

18. RMV method steps – phase 2
Description of context
<owl:ObjectProperty rdf:ID="locatedIn">
<rdf:type="owlTransitiveProperty"/>
<owl:inverseOf rdf:resource="#contains"/>
</owl:ObjectProperty>
<Person rdf:ID="Wang">
<locatedIn rdf:resource="#Office"/>
</Person >
<
<
a) Partner
search
Partner
selection
verify partner (P3, tool P, Criteria: past cooperation),
b)
Partner
selection
Manual
Formulation of
cooperation P2 Tool Z
Terms
for X
Cooperation
terms
P2
Org. X
Manual
Contract
signing
P1
Org. X
Tool K
offer inquiry (P1, Tool Z, Organization Q),
terms acceptance
c)
Partner
Email Varify partner Offer inquiry
Answer to
Discussion
Contract
answer to inquiry (Organization Q),
selection inquire signing
discussion ((P1, P3, P4, P5), Tool K),
contract signing (P1, Organization Q, Tool K, Contract for Q)
>
confidence indicator: 89%
Activity pattern repository >
© UEP 18

19. Technical implementation
• ErGo platform
– Support for inter-organizational
cooperation
– http://ergo.kti.ue.poznan.pl
• ITSOA project
– http://soa.edu.pl
© UEP 19

20. Conclusions
• RMV method increased efficiency of collaborative process
execution by identification of its repeatable parts
• RMV method supports the adaptation of the collaborative
processes to changing environment
– reasoning based on context
• RMV method recommendations can be use:
– Simple: to user consideration
– Complex: flexible workflow engines
• RMV method allows more accurate and applicable
recommendations adjusted to the context
© UEP 20

21. Computer Supported Collaborative Processes
in Virtual Organizations
Thank you
for your attention
Zbigniew Paszkiewicz Wojciech Cellary
Department of Information Technology
Poznań University of Economics, Poland
{zpasz,cellary}@kti.ue.poznan.pl