Semantically investigating business processes

• US 20040015378A1
• Filed: 07/22/2002
• Published: 01/22/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Micro Focus LLC (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Casati, Fabio, Shan, Ming-Chien
• Granted Patent: US 7,644,006 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0639 Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

Systems and methods of semantically investigating business processes are described. In one aspect, execution data that is generated by one or more components of a business process platform is accessed. The data is generated during execution, at each of one or more nodes, of one or more instantiations of one or more business processes each involving a set of one or more activities each defined by a respective service and performed by a respective set of one or more resources. The accessed execution data is mapped into one or more semantic concepts to obtain outcome data. The outcome data is visualized in terms of a user-selected perspective.

Claims

1. A method of investigating a business process, comprising:

accessing execution data generated by one or more components of a business process platform during execution, at each of one or more nodes, of one or more instantiations of one or more business processes each involving a set of one or more activities each defined by a respective service and performed by a respective set of one or more resources;

mapping the accessed execution data into one or more semantic concepts to obtain outcome data; and

visualizing the outcome data in terms of a user-selected perspective.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein mapping comprises assigning nodes of the business process to nodes of a conceptualized definition of the business process.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the conceptualized business process definition is user defined.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein mapping comprises aggregating the accessed execution data generated at the business process nodes in accordance with the node assignments to obtain process region execution data for each of the nodes of the conceptualized business process definition.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein visualizing comprises summarizing process region execution data in terms of a user-selected statistic.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein mapping comprises classifying the accessed execution data in accordance with one or more behaviors to obtain behavioral outcome data.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein each behavior comprises a behavior label and an associated condition on the process execution data.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein each of one or more behaviors further comprises an associated value.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein mapping comprises assigning values to behavioral outcome data.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein one or more behaviors are user defined.

11. The method of claim 6, wherein one or more behaviors are predefined.

12. The method of claim 6, wherein one or more behaviors correspond to alerts.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising monitoring execution of one or more business processes, and visualizing outcome data comprises summarizing alert outcome data in terms of a selected statistic.

14. The method of claim 6, wherein visualizing outcome data comprises correlating behavioral outcome data corresponding to different behaviors.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein mapping comprises classifying the accessed execution data in accordance with one or more taxonomies to obtain taxonomic outcome data.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein each taxonomy comprises a set of categories each associated with a respective condition on the process execution data.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein each of the categories of one or more taxonomies is associated with a respective value.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein mapping comprises assigning values to taxonomic outcome data.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein one or more taxonomies are user defined.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein one or more taxonomies are predefined.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein visualizing outcome data comprises correlating taxonomic outcome data corresponding to different taxonomies.

22. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-selected perspective is selected from:

an aggregation of multiple business processes;

a single business process;

a business process node;

a business process resource;

a business process behavior; and

time.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein outcome data relates to one or more of process instance executions, node instance executions, and behaviors.

24. The method of claim 1, wherein the user-selected perspective is user-definable.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein a perspective definition comprises a taxonomy comprising a set of one or more category labels each associated with a respective condition on the process execution data.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein a taxonomy condition corresponds to one of:

number of activations of a node;

assignment of a node to an identified resource;

duration of a node;

duration of an identified business process;

a value of data items at process instantiation time, completion time, or after execution of a node.

27. The method of claim 1, further comprising building a process data warehouse from the outcome data.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the process data warehouse is built based upon a star schema.

29. A system for investigating a business process, comprises a business process operation intelligence engine configured to:

access execution data generated by one or more components of a business process platform during execution, at each of one or more nodes, of one or more instantiations of one or more business processes each involving a set of one or more activities each defined by a respective service and performed by a respective set of one or more resources;

map the accessed execution data into one or more semantic concepts to obtain outcome data; and

visualize the outcome data in terms of a user-selected perspective.

30. A computer program for investigating a business process, the computer program residing on a computer-readable medium and comprising computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to:

access execution data generated by one or more components of a business process platform during execution, at each of one or more nodes, of one or more instantiations of one or more business processes each involving a set of one or more activities each defined by a respective service and performed by a respective set of one or more resources;

map the accessed execution data into one or more semantic concepts to obtain outcome data; and

visualize the outcome data in terms of a user-selected perspective.

31. The computer program of claim 30, wherein the computer program comprises computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to assign nodes of the business process to nodes of a conceptualized definition of the business process.

32. The computer program of claim 31, wherein the computer program comprises computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to aggregate the accessed execution data generated at the business process nodes in accordance with the node assignments to obtain process region execution data for each of the nodes of the conceptualized business process definition.

33. The computer program of claim 30, wherein the computer program comprises computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to classify the accessed execution data in accordance with one or more behaviors to obtain behavioral outcome data.

34. The computer program of claim 30, the computer program comprises computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to classify the accessed execution data in accordance with one or more taxonomies to obtain taxonomic outcome data.