The aim of this study was to assess the impact that Business Process Excellence has on the innovation process to create new products and services in the software development environment. The best practices were identified in the current use of BPE in software development organisations. Subsequently, a proposal was put forward to enhance the use of BPE in the software development process to create innovative products and services. Once these products are implemented the organisation can use these products as a sustainable competitive advantage. The use of Business Process Excellence in software development creates an innovative environment for employees in order to develop innovative products that can create shareholder wealth, and increase market share. Companies want to create products that are unique to the market, and be able to offer their customers products that only they can offer in order to secure future business. Innovation is a key factor to enhance processes within the software development company. Enhancing the processes can generate new ideas that contribute to the sustainable competitive advantage of the company. The literature does not create a definite link between the use of Business Process Excellence and innovation, and the study aimed at evaluating the possibility to merge the concepts. Business Process Excellence optimises a currently implemented process, by exploring all ideas to increase the effectiveness of the system. It is a structured way to ensure that all possibilities are explored before a decision is made on how the process is structured to implement new products or services. The software development industry is a very competitive industry, and most companies do not share their competitive strategy, or make it available to the public, to ensure that they would be offering their customer something unique. These companies would only make their strategy known to the market once the new product or service is launched, and the trend is set for other companies to follow. It also creates the opportunity for companies to become the market leader within the industry, to ensure growth, and increase profits. Some key aspects were identified that companies could focus on to encourage an innovative environment. Most employees are willing to accept responsibility for the v innovative ideas, since this will benefit the company. Managers should take responsibility for their actions within the software development department, and reward employees that assist in reaching the goals set in company strategy. The software development process should always include a step for quality and reliability. This step is needed, since even the most innovative product needs to be stable and reliable, otherwise the product will not be used by customers if they are frustrated. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This research is concerned with investigating reengineering teams in the context of business process change, or more widely known, business process reengineering (BPR). Business Process Change, on the one hand, is still considered as being an approach that is required in recent times. Reengineering teams (teams that are involved with the planning, analysis and design of the approach) on the other hand, have been viewed to be essential for the development and implementation of BPR. Bearing these points in mind, it was discovered that although the reengineering teams area warrants attention, there has been little attention paid to it. In the reengineering area, specifically, this research aims to address two main issues: first, the role of reengineering teams in business process change and second, the human and organisational aspects that surround the teams. For this, the research applied several steps and they are described in the following paragraphs. To discover the role of the reengineering teams in the context of business process change, it was initially assumed that the foundations of the BPR lie in organisational change. Using this assumption, it became simpler and clearer to determine the exact role of teams. With regards to the human and organisational aspects, a strategy unique to the topic was adopted. At the outset, some human and organisational aspects that are more commonly found in the organisational behaviour and psychology areas were revealed and research with regards to these particular aspects was described. Whilst that was the theoretical side of the research, the research then had to determine whether the deductions formed from the theoretical side were evident in practice. For the empirical results, the research used a combination of approaches in order to obtain the desired results. A qualitative approach that has its foundations in Interpretivism was the methodology used in the research. The ontology assumed then that subjective meanings could be assumed to reconstruct reality. Evidence from practice was obtained using initially, two pilot studies. Further, a multiple case study strategy and the research techniques of mainly, interviews and referring to archival documents were utilised. Once the data was analysed, a theory that could be used for future research in the reengineering teams area was developed. This was arrived at using a combination of certain grounded theory techniques, particularly, the forming of categories and coding. The findings suggested that reengineering teams are imperative for BPR and that some of the selected human and organisational aspects are evident in the newly formed theory.

In this thesis, eliciting system functional requirements based on business requirements during software intensive systems acquisition or development process is investigated and an approach is proposed for this purpose. Concepts and current problems within the framework of business requirements are investigated with a general literature review of requirements engineering and technology acquisition. Determination of requirements of IT system to be acquired according to the business objectives and base lining business processes is dealt with business process modeling. ARIS providing integrated and complete information system architecture along with modeling techniques and modeling tool is also investigated. Proposed approach recommends EEPC as process modeling technique and ARIS software as supporting toolset, and explains how to conduct application of automatic requirements eliciting from business process models, by extending a reporting script provided by ARIS software. Proposed approach was partially applied to the real project and the obtained results were presented in this thesis.

The purpose of this work is to provide simulation-based support for making optimal (or near-optimal) decisions in situations where decision makers are faced with imperfect information. We develop several novel techniques and algorithms for simulation-based optimization and decision support and apply them to two categories of problems: (i) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) path planning in search operations, and; (ii) optimization of business process models. Common features of these two problems for which analytical approaches are not available, are the presence of imperfect information and their inherent complexity. In the UAV path planning problem, the objective is to define the path of a UAV searching for a target on a known road network. It is assumed that the target is moving toward a goal and we have some uncertain information about the start point of the target, its velocity, and the final goal of the target. The target does not take evasive action to avoid being detected. The UAV is equipped with a sensor, which may detect the target once it is in the sensor’s scope. Nevertheless, the detection process is uncertain and the sensor is subject to both false-positive and false-negative errors. We propose three different solutions, two of which are simulation-based. The most promising solution is an on-line simulation-based method that estimates the location of the target by using a Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method. During the entire mission, different UAV paths are simulated and the one is chosen that most reduces the uncertainty about the location of the target. In the optimization of the business process models, several different but related problems are addressed: (i) we define a measure of performance for a business process model based on the value added by agents (employees) to the process; (ii) we use this model for optimization of the business process models. Different types of processes are distinguished and methods for finding the optimal or near-optimal solutions are provided; (iii) we propose a model for estimating the performance of collaborative agents. This model is used to solve a class of Assignment Problems (AP), where tasks are assigned to collaborative agents; (iv) we propose a model for team activity and the performance of a team of agents. We introduce different collaboration strategies between agents and a negotiation algorithm for resolving conflicts between agents. We compare the effect of different strategies on the output of the team. Most of the studied cases are complex problems for which no analytical solution is available. Simulation methods are successfully applied to these problems. They are shown to be more general than analytical models for handling uncertainty since they usually have fewer assumptions and impose no restrictions on the probability distributions involved. Our investigation confirms that simulation is a powerful tool for providing decision-making support. Moreover, our proposed algorithms and methods in the accompanying articles contribute to providing support for making optimal and in some cases near-optimal decisions: (i) our tests of the UAV simulation-based search methods on a simulator show that the on-line simulation method has generally a high performance and detects the target in a reasonable time. The performance of this method was compared with the detection time when the UAV had the exact information about the initial location of the target, its velocity, and its path (minimum detection time). This comparison indicated that the online simulation method in many cases achieved a near-optimal performance in the studied scenario; (ii) our business process optimization framework combines simulation with the Hungarian method and finds the optimal solution for all cases where the assignment of tasks does not change the workflow of the process. For the most general cases, where the assignment of tasks may change the workflow, we propose an algorithm that finds near-optimal solutions. In this algorithm, simulation, which deals with the uncertainty in the process, is combined with the Hungarian method and hill-climbing heuristics. In the study of assigning tasks to collaborative agents we suggest a Genetic Algorithm (GA) that finds near-optimal solutions with a high degree of accuracy, stability, scalability and robustness. While investigating the effect of different agent strategies on the output of a team, we find that the output of a team is near-optimal, when agents choose a collaboration strategy that follows the principle of least effort (Zipf’s law) and use our suggested algorithm for negotiation and resolving conflicts. / QC 20111202

Le marché du véhicule électrique (VE) est aujourd’hui en plein essor et il s’agit d’un marché quireprésente un intérêt pour des industriels comme EDF. Pour réaliser ses objectifs (optimisation de laconsommation, tarification...) EDF doit d’abord extraire des données hétérogènes (issues des VE etdes bornes de recharge) puis les analyser. Pour cela nous nous sommes orientés vers un entrepôt dedonnées (ED) qui est ensuite exploité par les processus métiers (PM). Afin d’éviter le phénomèneGarbage In/Garbage Out, les données doivent être traitées. Nous avons choisi d’utiliser une ontologiepour réduire l’hétérogénéité des sources de données. La construction d’une ontologie étant lente, nousavons proposé une solution incrémentale à base briques ontologiques modulaires liées entre elles. Laconstruction de l’ED, basé sur l’ontologie, est alors incrémentale. Afin de charger des données dansl’ED, nous avons défini les processus ETL (Extract, Transform & Load) au niveau sémantique. Ensuitenous avons modélisé les PM répétitifs selon les spécifications BPMN (Business Process Modelisation& Notation) pour extraire les connaissances requises par EDF de l’ED. L’ED constitué possède lesdonnées et des PM, le tout dans un cadre sémantique. Nous avons implémenté cela sur la plateformeOntoDB développée au Laboratoire d’Informatique et d’Automatique pour les Systèmes de l’ISAEENSMA.Elle nous a permis de manipuler l’ontologie, les données et les PM d’une manière homogènegrâce au langage OntoQL. De plus, nous lui avons fourni la capacité d’exécuter automatiquement lesPM. Cela nous a permis de fournir à EDF une plate-forme adaptée à leurs besoins à base d’élémentsdéclaratifs. / Nowadays, the electrical vehicles (EV) market is undergoing a rapid expansion and has become ofgreat importance for utility companies such as EDF. In order to fulfill its objectives (demand optimization,pricing, etc.), EDF has to extract and analyze heterogeneous data from EV and charging spots. Inorder to tackle this, we used data warehousing (DW) technology serving as a basis for business process(BP). To avoid the garbage in/garbage out phenomena, data had to be formatted and standardized.We have chosen to rely on an ontology in order to deal with data sources heterogeneity. Because theconstruction of an ontology can be a slow process, we proposed an modular and incremental constructionof the ontology based on bricks. We based our DW on the ontology which makes its construction alsoan incremental process. To upload data to this particular DW, we defined the ETL (Extract, Trasform& Load) process at the semantic level. We then designed recurrent BP with BPMN (Business ProcessModelization & Notation) specifications to extract EDF required knowledge. The assembled DWpossesses data and BP that are both described in a semantic context. We implemented our solutionon the OntoDB platform, developed at the ISAE-ENSMA Laboratory of Computer Science and AutomaticControl for Systems. The solution has allowed us to homogeneously manipulate the ontology, thedata and the BP through the OntoQL language. Furthermore, we added to the proposed platform thecapacity to automatically execute any BP described with BPMN. Ultimately, we were able to provideEDF with a tailor made platform based on declarative elements adapted to their needs.

Large corporations increasingly utilize business process models for documenting and redesigning their operations. The extent of such modeling initiatives with several hundred models and dozens of often hardly trained modelers calls for automated quality assurance. While formal properties of control flow can easily be checked by existing tools, there is a notable gap for checking the quality of the textual content of models, in particular, its activity labels. In this paper, we address the problem of activity label quality in business process models. We designed a technique for the recognition of labeling styles, and the automatic refactoring of labels with quality issues. More specifically, we developed a parsing algorithm that is able to deal with the shortness of activity labels, which integrates natural language tools like WordNet and the Stanford Parser. Using three business process model collections from practice with differing labeling style distributions, we demonstrate the applicability of our technique. In comparison to a straightforward application of standard natural language tools, our technique provides much more stable results. As an outcome, the technique shifts the boundary of process model quality issues that can be checked automatically from syntactic to semantic aspects.

This thesis deals with the problem of the transport company reservation system innovation. Innovation includes definition and automation of new processes, new system for expenses control and web pages optimalized for using on mobile phones and tablets. According to IS innovation problem analysis and transport company requirements the new IS will be designed and implemented.

Submitted by Priscila Oliveira (priscila.b.oliveira@ufes.br) on 2016-07-12T12:40:28Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) cp128327.pdf: 6590453 bytes, checksum: 5654758329fe7af83bec07339d8a3ffb (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Patricia Barros (patricia.barros@ufes.br) on 2016-08-15T18:10:11Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) cp128327.pdf: 6590453 bytes, checksum: 5654758329fe7af83bec07339d8a3ffb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-15T18:10:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) cp128327.pdf: 6590453 bytes, checksum: 5654758329fe7af83bec07339d8a3ffb (MD5) / Business process modelling basically comprises an activity whose main goal is to provide a formalization of business processes in an organization or a set of cooperating organizations (Recker, et al., 2006) (van der Aalst, et al., 2003). By modelling an organization’s business processes, it is possible to capture how the organization coordinates the work and resources with the aim of achieving its goals and strategies (Sharp, et al., 2001). Since business processes and goals are intrinsically interdependent, establishing an alignment between the process and the goal domains arises as a natural approach. This thesis reports on a real-life exploratory case study in which we investigated the relationship between the elements of the enterprise (modeled in the ARIS framework) and the goals (modeled in the Tropos framework and modeling language) which are attained by these elements. The case study has been conducted in the Rheumatology Department of a University Hospital in Brazil. In the course of the case study, we have identified the need of splitting this effort into three phases: the elicitation phase (in which goal models and business process models are captured from the organizational domain), the harmonization phase (in which the goal domain is structured for alignment according to the business processes structures that will support it) and the alignment phase (in which the relationships between the goal domain and the elements of the organizational domain are established). In order to investigate the relation between goals and enterprise elements, we propose an ontological account for both architectural domains. We recognize the importance in considering the business process as the means for implementing an enterprise’s strategy, but we do not exclude the remaining enterprise elements. Furthermore, we are concerned with both the identification of the relationships and with a classification for their nature.

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, 2017. / Submitted by Raquel Almeida (raquel.df13@gmail.com) on 2018-03-16T16:24:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_ValériaAparecidaGuimarães.pdf: 1828368 bytes, checksum: 4047d548f541303b269a48ee3ab36079 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Raquel Viana (raquelviana@bce.unb.br) on 2018-04-17T18:21:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_ValériaAparecidaGuimarães.pdf: 1828368 bytes, checksum: 4047d548f541303b269a48ee3ab36079 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-04-17T18:21:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2017_ValériaAparecidaGuimarães.pdf: 1828368 bytes, checksum: 4047d548f541303b269a48ee3ab36079 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-17 / Uma das técnicas de medição mais utilizadas e documentadas para a obtenção do tamanho de um software é a Análise de Pontos de Função (APF). No entanto, discussões acerca da sua aplicabilidade para projetos SOA (Arquitetura Orientada a Serviço) têm sido constantes, o que justificou a escolha desse tema de investigação. Este documento apresenta os resultados de uma pesquisa cujo objetivo foi a construção de uma proposta para a medição, por meio da utilização de Pontos de Função (PF), do tamanho funcional de softwares que utilizam as abordagens de desenvolvimento de software com SOA e BPM (Business Process Management). A proposta foi desenvolvida a partir de revisão da literatura e de análises de dados empíricos coletados durante a execução de um projeto real. Ao final do trabalho, foi possível realizar análises comparativas entre projeções usando APF, o método proposto e dados empíricos. O resultado mostrou que a APF não é adequada para a medição do tamanho funcional de projetos SOA/BPM, ao contrário do método proposto. / One of the most widely used and documented measurement techniques for obtaining software size is Function Point Analysis (FPA). However, there have been frequently discussions about its applicability to SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) projects, which justifies a choice of the research topic. This document presents the results of a research whose objective was the construction of a proposal to measure SOA and BPM (Business Process Management) softwares through the use of Function Points (PF). A proposal has been developed based on literature review and empirical data analyzes, with was collected from an execution of a real project. The research compare empirical data (from a real-world project) to projections based on FPA, as well on the proposed method. Results demonstrate that the proposed method is suitable to SOA/BPM projects, differently of FPA.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo realizar um estudo de utilização dos conceitos de produção enxuta na área administrativa e propor um roteiro de referência para aplicação. Para isso, foi feito um levantamento bibliográfico sobre processos de negócios, produção enxuta e metodologias de aplicação desta em processos administrativos, possibilitando uma análise e comparação entre estas metodologias encontradas. Em seguida, foi realizado um estudo de caso com base em aplicações reais de produção enxuta na área administrativa. Como resultado da análise das metodologias e do estudo de caso foi proposto um roteiro de referência. / This work has the purpose of study the lean production concepts use within the administrative area and to propose an application script. A bibliographic research was done about business process, lean production and methodologies for lean production application in business process what enabled an analysis and a comparison between the found methodologies. The next step was a case study of a real application of lean production within an administrative area. As a result of the methodologies analysis and the case study an application script has been proposed.