1st IEEE International Workshop on
Semantics for Business Process Management (SemBPM 2008)
in conjunction with COMPSAC 2008
http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2008/workshops/SemBPM2008.html
Turku, Finland, July 29-30, 2008

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WORKSHOP THEME:
The theme and emphasis of the workshop is on the intersection of Business
Process Management (BPM) and Semantic Web Services (SWS) in order to
increase automation and flexibility of business processes. The workshop
creates a forum for discussion between researchers working on topics
related to automation of Business Process Management and it aims at
answering the question how and to what extent introduction of semantics
can provide the desired improvements.


BACKGROUND AND GOALS:
Business Process Management (BPM) refers to joint initiatives of business
and IT people to enact and take control over full lifecycle of business
processes: discovery, modelling, implementation, deployment, execution,
interaction, monitoring, optimization, and analysis. Enactment of business
processes in modern network enterprises involves a mix of manual and
automated activities coordinated with assistance of software systems â??
Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs). Therefore, BPM specifies
management models for business processes and defines organisational
resources (including IT resources) to support achieving business goals.

A central problem for supporting all phases of BPM is still the usage and
integration of various IT components within and across enterprises.
The current trend for solving this issue is the use of the Service Oriented
Architecture (SOA) paradigm - IT functionality is achieved by loosely
coupled services with stable interfaces. However, even though the
combination of BPM and SOA offers a flexible approach for automated support
of business processes, there are many unresolved issues, especially when it
comes to the smooth (automatic) transition from one phase to another. For
instance, in existing BPM execution environments the resolution of the
service types specified at design time to particular implementations is
still hard-coded what makes processes less flexible and less adjustable to
the current state of the environment. Therefore, process flexibility and
automation requires improvements with respect to ad-hoc changes of
processes.

Such improvements may be provided by usage of semantics. For instance,
Semantic Web Services (SWS) develop techniques for automated discovery,
composition, and execution of Web Services based on richer, semantic
descriptions. Founded on ontologies, Semantic Web provides methods and
tools for the machine-understandable representation of collective knowledge
and business processes in which such knowledge resides. Current research
shows that combining the worlds of BPM and SWS may be very fruitful.


TOPICS OF INTEREST:
Topics of interest include theoretical and/or empirical contributions
related to intersections of semantics, business processes, process
automation and management, services computing, and software engineering.
Topics include but are not restricted to:
â?¢ semantics for business processes
â?¢ semantics for adaptive discovery and enactment of services
â?¢ semantic web as an enabler of business processes implementation
â?¢ integrating applications at the semantic level
â?¢ ontologies describing business processes
â?¢ utilizing knowledge embedded in business processes
â?¢ the process-centric computing paradigm
â?¢ management of full lifecycle of business processes
â?¢ evolution and adaptiveness of business processes
â?¢ service-oriented enterprise
â?¢ leveraging existing â??as isâ?? processes and systems
â?¢ meta-modeling and executable business process specifications
â?¢ IT for better business agility
â?¢ the human aspect of business processes
â?¢ business process management and software development process


LIKELY PARTICIPANTS:
Potential participants come from the field of Business Process Management
as well as applications of semantic technologies including Semantic Web
services. Semantic Business Process Management community, such as existing
around the FP6 SUPER (Semantics Utilised for Process Management within and
between Enterprises) project, is constantly growing and it therefore
searches for more discussion opportunities. This workshop will not only
further enable such discussions but it will also provide different and
unique insights because of the participation of the software engineering
researchers and practitioners.


PROGRAM AND ORGANIZING CHAIRS:
Abramowicz, Witold
Poznan University of Economics, Poland
http://www.kie.ae.poznan.pl/members/wabramowicz/
W.Abramowicz@kie.ae.poznan.pl

Maciaszek, Leszek A.
Macquarie University ~ Sydney, Australia
http://www.comp.mq.edu.au/~leszek/
leszek@ics.mq.edu.au


PROGRAM COMMITTEE (proposed)
Alt, Rainer University of Leipzig, Germany
Filipowska, Agata Poznan University of Economics, Poland
Frank, Ulrich University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Kowalkiewicz, Marek SAP Research, Australia
Li, Dancheng Northeastern University Shenyang, China
Wecel, Krzysztof PoznaÅ? University of Economics, Poland
Weske, Mathias University of Potsdam, Germany
Yang, Jian Macquarie University, Australia


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Bukowska, Elzbieta
Poznan University of Economics, Poland
e.bukowska@kie.ae.poznan.pl


IMPORTANT DATES:
* March 1, 2008 Workshop paper submission due
* April 7, 2008 Workshop paper notification (electronic)
* April 30, 2008 All final manuscript and author pre-registration due


SUBMISSION:
Papers must be submitted electronically via the SemBPM 2008 submission site.
Manuscripts will be limited to 6 pages including all figures, tables, and
references. The format of submitted papers must follow the IEEE conference
proceedings guidelines (i.e., 8.5" x 11", Two-Column Format
(PDF: instruct.pdf; DOC: instruct.doc); Layout Guide (PDF: format.pdf;
DOC: format.doc; all under http://pubftp.computer.org/press/outgoing/proceedings/).
Papers must represent original contributions. All submitted papers will be
reviewed by the program committee. All accepted papers will be published in
the electronic conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society, indexed
through INSPEC and EI Index, and automatically included in the IEEE Digital
Library.
At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full
participant of the workshop for the paper to be included in the proceedings.
Each accepted paper must be presented in person by (one of) the author(s).