Monday, February 18, 2008

CfP - GovSOS'08

CALL FOR PAPERS
1st International Workshop on Governance of Service-oriented Systems(GovSOS'08)held in conjunction withIEEE Joint Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC'08) and Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services (EEE'08)(CEC/EEE 2008)

http://cec2008.cs.georgetown.edu/

Crystal City, Washington, D.C., USAJuly 21-24, 2008

http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/GovSOS2008/

Deadline for submissions: March 30th, 2008

WORKSHOP GOALS==============
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researches fromacademia and industry, as well as practitioners interested in thedifferent aspects of service-oriented systems governance.We seek contributions from practitioners in industry and government,as well as from academic and industrial researchers. We especiallyinvite contributions from industrial partners that have a richexperience in the area of governance of service-oriented systems.

WORKSHOP THEME==============
The central workshop theme is Governance for Service-orientedSystems. Over the last years, the field of Service-oriented Computing(SoC) has emerged as a paradigm for managing the developmentcomplexity of large-scale (enterprise) systems and for creatingdynamic and autonomously adapting software. There are a number of openresearch issues in this area, with governance as being one of them.Governance of service-oriented systems is a very important conceptthat deals with all activities related to the control and managementof the services landscape within and across organizationalboundaries. In this workshop we would like to address governance ingeneral, in particular we focus on the following themes:* Service-Lifecycle Management:Service-lifecycle management deals with a magnitude of issues such asdeployment, assembling and testing of services. Service versioning isanother important issue that arises during the evolution of a service,thus requiring a dedicated versioning support from the SOA-basedinfrastructure. As composite services become more and more important,issues such as dynamically reconfiguring/rebinding a composition areincreasingly challenging. These issues all need a strong SOA runtimeand infrastructure support to manage SOA-based solutions in anonintrusive and non-disruptive manner.* Management of QoS and SLA:Quality of Service (QoS) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) are anintegral part of service-centric systems to express the qualityattributes provided by atomic services and service compositions. Suchquality attributes can be grouped in an agreement to specify anagreement between the service provider and the service consumer. Thespecification, management and enforcement of such agreements requirestrong support from the SOA infrastructure. The workshop shouldaddress these issues by discussing quality of service and SLA models,
issues related to monitoring of QoS attributes, agreements, automatedSLA negotiation, negation protocols, etc.* Compliance Management:Compliance to standards and laws (e.g., ITIL for service management orSarbanes-Oxley Act) is important for an enterprise to adhere tocertain required regulations and to demonstrate certain qualitycompliance to business partners. Work in this area should discussnovel approaches to monitor and manage the compliance (e.g., byapplying self-adaptive and policy based monitoring) that allowschanging compliance regulations without modifying the services itself.

WORKSHOP TOPICS===============

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of particular topics that addressdifferent aspect from above:* Service-Lifecycle Management* Service Versioning Approaches* Monitoring Approaches (Service, Processes, Infrastructure)* SLA Policy Specification and Enactment* Quality of Service Models* Autonomic Management of Service Level Agreements* Performance Management and Analysis* Infrastructure and Runtime Support for SOA Governance* Event-Driven Architectures for Governance* Service Modeling and Capacity Planning* Managing Service CompositionsWe seek papers that address these aforementioned issues by discussingnovel ideas and provide detailed insights into their softwarearchitecture that implements their proposed approaches. Contributionsin all other areas related to SOA governance (and not listed above)are more than welcome.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Why the diagrams mum?

Have come across this little article at a FormTek blog. The story is about the use of technical drawings to understand the capabilities of the thing you are buying, and able to use. They go into the issues of maintaining the technical drawings as essentially a revision control problem.

This is the issue of having technical diagrams on paper, they are a physical thing that is hard to maintain. But, they are easier to use than a notebook with the same data, as they do not require power, are not fragile (well paper does tear, but this doesn't mean that it reboots on you ;-)) and within reason can be carried anywhere that allows enough room to unfold the print.

However, just as we want paper free offices, we want to be able to remove paper in technical diagrams. Now that some flexible displays are coming, we won't need such laptop or PDA bound methods of working, and will be able to play with a piece of networked paper.

How would you interact with such a set of diagrams? What sort of tools would you need to manipulate such information on a paper-based display, that is automatically networked to headquarters. How do you play with such an interface with a number of people at once in an office?

Not only that, but what is the nature of a technical drawing when it goes live...

I think the time is nigh to stop thinking about technical diagrams in such a static manner, and begin to conceptualise the documents as living paper. Which makes me wonder why most diagrammatic representations of Business Processes are sooo dead in nature. They are simple 2D diagrams without many annotations to give extra information. In fact the information is the key (duh), so maybe it is the "display" technology that is the issue.

For instance, what about walking around with a HUD pair of glasses with annotations of your work place containing information about the processes in a spatial manner. Could be useful for process model verification and modelling for that manner.

Some work here to be done I think.

Ross

Friday, February 8, 2008

EDM and the User Interfaces

Came across this blog entry today, about EDM, Enterprise Decision Management. Which, by my estimate, talks about actioning on the part of the decision support tools.


While these people talk about the need for greater integration of Business Intelligence into thses tools, to make it actionable, I wonder if people had a good visualisation of the concequences then it would make things easier.


People have not trusted computers with decisions due to a lack of understanding of what is actually happening internally when the computer comes out with a response to data.



I think a good visualisation (interactive in nature for prognosticating) would assist this process.

Ross

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Damn Kiwis...

Just came across a nice process visualisation system at IVistra. Same people who were involved in the Black Magic visualisation system, generated on old SGI iron (sigh...the memories).

So once again, the Nu Zulunders have a jump in the area of computer graphics. Choice bro! :-)

3D visualisations need more analysis

It's an interesting things to note, that with all the papers I read on 3D environments for process visualisation, there seems to be a lack of analysis on how good it is, and how this should map to various tasks being carried out by stakeholders.

It's a component of what I will be writing about here into the future, so no give aways at present, until I get some publications.

It seems that most analysis is at the level of "Geez, this is soooooo cool. I can see my processes as little men...", doesn't cut it in the usability analysis stakes.

I think it is relevant to spend time ascertaining whether the visualisations work for each stakeholder, and then maybe this can move from a geewhiz area to a rigorous professional contribution to the modelling of business processes.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Innnov8 by IBM


In November 2007, IBM launched a serious game for people to learn business process modelling called Innov8. This is another example of the avalanche of serious game applications that have been developed, exploiting the educational properties of games in areas ranging from the military, to emergency workers, and now to business process modellers. I will be downloading it, as soon as IBM authorise my application. I will then report on its value as an educational tool.

But until then, it looks like a first strike on the area of using virtual environments for business process management. The question is, what sort of tool support is available for devleoping such representations, and how effective is it really going to be as a modelling and educational tool. One could say that maybe the use of games as teaching tools is turning into the proverbial "when using hammer, every problem is a nail" scenario.

Ross

Sometimes it is good to begin esoterically...

My first real post will be odd, but I think it illustrates a number of things about process visualisation.

Here is a link (via Boing Boing) to the exquisite drawings of a Clarence Larkin, Baptist minister and dispensationalist. He provided a number of charts to illustrate the "Process of Salvation."

Now why would I put this on the BPMVE blog?

I'm glad you asked. Visualisation has been around for thousands of years. From drawings depicting hunting grounds in caves to the present Second Life like environments, humans have been creating visual representations of processes to illustrate, educate and generally entertain.

The issues remain the same; the derivation of appropriate visual structures and styles to create an image to comunicate information relevant to a human task. Easier said than done - visualisation is thus an art and a science, with many failures.

Plus, I have a fascination for etchings. It is a fascinating art form, and reminiscent of the black line drawings we use on screens today for diagrams. While the images in the link are noisey in parts, the line art seems to do its job of communicating Xian concepts. Even in this time, layout, glyphs, metaphors etc. need to be designed to communicate effectively.

Anyway, somehow these old drawings tell me that I am researching a field that has been around for a long time. Which is kind of comforting.

Ross