Presented at 14th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems, Web Based Collaboration Workshop WBC'2003, Prague, Czech Republic, September 2003 Visualisation of (Distributed) Process Execution based on Extended BPMN * Mariusz Momotko, Bartosz Nowicki Rodan Systems ul. Puławska 465 02-844 Warszawa Poland {Mariusz.Momotko, Bartosz.Nowicki}@rodan.pl Abstract In order to create, share and improve knowledge on business processes, humans need a common, readable and preferably visual notation. So far, a lot of effort has been put into visualisation of process definitions (e.g. the recently published Business Process Modelling Notation - BPMN). In this paper we propose to put equal stress on visualisation of process instances (i.e. process executions), thus allowing process performers to understand the process history, its current state and possible future execution. This covers distributed or cross-organisational process executions as well. In our opinion, putting the activity of interest in its visualised context makes the user’s knowledge more comprehensive and, consequently, increases productivity. Thus, we define a process instance notation as an extension of BPMN. The underlying premise for this approach is the reuse of well-defined and commonly accepted concepts from the process definition level on the process instance level. The prototype implementation is being integrated within the ICONS knowledge management platform. 1. Introduction Flexible and innovative business processes are one of the key elements that enable modern organisations to succeed. In order to define, share and improve knowledge on business processes, humans need a standard way of describing them. During the last decade there has been much activity laid on defining appropriate visualisation of business processes. Thousands of business analysts have been studying the way companies work and they have defined business processes using various modelling techniques. As a result, hundreds of business modelling tools have been developed. Despite such a huge effort spent on defining business processes there was no standard, flexible and widely accepted modelling notation that could enable process analysts to speak the same language and to be easily transformed to various range of business process execution languages. Recently, the Business Processes Management Initiative (BPMI) put much effort to develop such a standard business process modelling notation. So far, there exists a working draft of the Business Process Modelling Notation published by BPMI [2]. Modelling of business processes is the first but not the only step to make them useful for organisations. We believe that the next step, business process execution, is even more important for organisations than modelling. Such a statement can trigger a lot of discussion, however, one must admit that failure of many business reengineering projects in the last decade were connected with the lack of implementation of very well documented business processes. Many business process management systems (BPM systems) have been developed. In a BPM system a business process is instantiated and executed according to its definition. One of the main goals of a BPM system is to assure that individual activities of the process will be executed in appropriate order, by the right performers and on the proper data. Since a performer can be a human, it is useful to visualise information on process execution. Such a visualisation allows performers to better understand the process history (what was done before, by whom, what were the recommendations, what were the time constraints), presence (what its current state is, what are the requirements for the current activity) and future (who will continue the process, what are potential consequences of current decisions). Also for distributed or cross-organisational processes that are executed in a Web environment (e.g. using Wf-XML operations over HTTP [14]), such visualisation may help performers to monitor/control the progress of work in the other organisations/workflow engines and to react early when an exceptional or not required situation occurs. Simply said, the process instance becomes * This work was supported by the European Commission project ICONS, project no. IST-2001-32429.