Business Process Management (BPM) has significantly advanced and gained high popularity in industry. However, it remains an open issue why tools frequently are used for business process modeling that are not mainly implemented for this purpose. Often, macros for Microsoft Visio or Microsoft Excel form the first choice to capture the flow of business activities. One reason why these tools might be used is the low training effort and the fast creation of a quick model, which can be generated with these tools. Another reason for the “lower” preference of BPM software tools might be their inability to respond to changes in technology and working styles, e.g. the shift towards "agile" processes and the "flattening" of workforce hierarchies that bring more stakeholders into contact with a much broader array of processing steps than before.

A central question is whether the BPM community should create an entirely new paradigm for process modeling. One can think of more intuitive drawing conventions that laymen would use, and of models of an entirely different kind (i.e. not process-centric and not data- or case-centric) that still bear the possibility to support modern and future business process.

The purpose of this seminar is to bring together a cross-disciplinary group of academic and industrial researchers to foster a better understanding of how to ease the access to, and applicability of, business process modeling. We plan to discuss the capabilities of imperative and declarative process modeling languages, emerging approaches (e.g. subject-oriented BPM, Case Management, CMMN) and also procedural models that allow for an easier modeling of process tasks. We will juxtapose these approaches against emerging pressures on business modeling, such as flexibility and changeability, the need for incremental and agile creation of new processes, and the need for workers to understand and participate in multiple contextual levels (e.g. transactional, business goals, strategic directions) while performing processes. The seminar will also consider how new technologies, such as big data analytics and modern tools for UI design (e.g. D3, node.js) can be applied to support fundamentally shifts in how processes are modeled and how humans are involved with their execution.

This seminar intends to bring together the following cross-disciplinary mix of specialists. BPM and workflow specialists from both the Computer Science and Information Systems communities will contribute with knowledge of process modeling in the large. Urban and architectural designers and industrial engineers will provide BPM and workflow specialists with alternative techniques for modeling and structuring processes. One process modeling technique from the cognitive systems engineering domain is to study operators and their work domain from a cognitive perspective and to identify the relevant functional invariants and the corresponding functional relationships that underlie their operations. The goal of such tools is to create representations of the system that would enable better problem diagnosis and system performance management. Expertise in HCI and product design can significantly contribute to the process by devising alternative process representations, and visualization methods. This is not so much to do with the visual form, but an understanding of how to render the necessary functional invariants and the meaningfulness of those visual representations. The seminar will also include experts in application areas where (business) process modeling is essential, including conventional transactional systems, highly knowledge-worker-intensive processes (e.g. healthcare, fraud detection, security breaches), and the emerging area of supporting the big data analytics lifecycle.

• Banu Aysolmaz (VU University Amsterdam, NL) [dblp]
• Fernanda Baião (Federal University - Rio de Janeiro, BR) [dblp]
• Achim D. Brucker (University of Sheffield, GB) [dblp]
• Artur Caetano (INESC-ID - Lisboa, PT) [dblp]
• Soren Debois (IT University of Copenhagen, DK) [dblp]
• Marlon Dumas (University of Tartu, EE) [dblp]
• Kathrin Figl (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, AT) [dblp]
• Avigdor Gal (Technion - Haifa, IL) [dblp]
• Jens Gulden (Universität Duisburg-Essen, DE) [dblp]
• Alexander Herwix (Universität Köln, DE)
• Thomas T. Hildebrandt (IT University of Copenhagen, DK) [dblp]
• Richard Hull (IBM TJ Watson Research Center - Yorktown Heights, US) [dblp]
• Christian Janiesch (Universität Würzburg, DE) [dblp]
• Udo Kannengiesser (Metasonic GmbH - Pfaffenhofen, DE) [dblp]
• Julius Köpke (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, AT) [dblp]
• Agnes Koschmider (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Ralf Laue (Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, DE) [dblp]
• Henrik Leopold (VU University Amsterdam, NL) [dblp]
• Tamara Mchedlidze (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Massimo Mecella (Sapienza University of Rome, IT) [dblp]
• Hamid Reza Motahari Nezhad (IBM Almaden Center - San Jose, US) [dblp]
• Andreas Oberweis (KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, DE) [dblp]
• Alexander Paar (TWT GmbH - Stuttgart, DE) [dblp]
• Jan Recker (Queensland University of Technology - Brisbane, AU) [dblp]
• Hajo A. Reijers (VU University Amsterdam, NL) [dblp]
• Flávia Santoro (Federal University - Rio de Janeiro, BR) [dblp]
• Tijs Slaats (IT University of Copenhagen, DK) [dblp]
• Chris Snijders (TU Eindhoven, NL) [dblp]
• Minseok Song (POSTECH - Pohang, KR) [dblp]
• Christian Stahl (TWT GmbH - Stuttgart, DE) [dblp]
• Jianwen Su (University of California - Santa Barbara, US) [dblp]
• Victoria Torres (Technical University of Valencia, ES) [dblp]
• Han van der Aa (VU University of Amsterdam, NL) [dblp]
• Barbara Weber (Universität Innsbruck, AT) [dblp]
• Ingo Weber (Data61 / NICTA - Sydney, AU) [dblp]
• William Wong (Middlesex University, GB) [dblp]
• Liang Zhang (Fudan University - Shanghai, CN) [dblp]
• Michael zur Muehlen (Stevens Institute of Technology, US) [dblp]