Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Rethinking BPM in a Cognitive World: Transforming How We Learn and Perform Business Processes

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Business Process Management (BPM 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9850))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

If we are to believe the technology hype cycle, we are entering a new era of Cognitive Computing, enabled by advances in natural language processing, machine learning, and more broadly artificial intelligence. These advances, combined with evolutionary progress in areas such as knowledge representation, automated planning, user experience technologies, software-as-a-service and crowdsourcing, have the potential to transform many industries. In this paper, we discuss transformations of BPM that advances in the Cognitive Computing will bring. We focus on three of the most signficant aspects of this transformation, namely: (a) Cognitive Computing will enable “knowledge acquisition at scale”, which will lead to a transformation in Knowledge-intensive Processes (KiP’s); (b) We envision a new process meta-model will emerge that is centered around a “Plan-Act-Learn” cycle; and (c) Cognitive Computing can enable learning about processes from implicit descriptions (at both design- and run-time), opening opportunities for new levels of automation and business process support, for both traditional business processes and KiP’s. We use the term cognitive BPM to refer to a new BPM paradigm encompassing all aspects of BPM that are impacted and enabled by Cognitive Computing. We argue that a fundamental understanding of cognitive BPM requires a new research framing of the business process ecosystem. The paper presents a conceptual framework for cognitive BPM, a brief survey of state of the art in emerging areas of Cognitive BPM, and discussion of key directions for further research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    The term was coined in our earlier work [17].

References

  1. Brambilla, M., Fraternali, P., Vaca, C.: BPMN and design patterns for engineering social BPM solutions. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 219–230 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Brucker, A., Gal, A., Herwix, A., Hull, R., Mecella, M., Nezhad, H.R.M., Santoro, F.M., Slaats, T., Wong, W.: Knowledge-intensive Processes. Unpublished manuscript created by a working group during the Dagstuhl workshop on “Fresh Approaches to Business Process Modeling", 8 May 2016

    Google Scholar 

  3. Deloitte. Artificial intelligence, real results. http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/About-Deloitte/gx-gr15-artificial-intelligence-computing-capabilities.pdf. Accessed 01 July 2016

  4. Di Ciccio, C., Marrella, A., Russo, A.: Knowledge-intensive processes: characteristics, requirements and analysis of contemporary approaches. J. Data Semant. 4(1), 29–57 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Ignio: Neural automation system for enterprises. https://www.digitate.com. Accessed 01 July 2016

  6. dos Santos França, J.B., Netto, J.M., do E.S. Carvalho, J., Santoro, F.M., Baião, F.A., Pimentel, M.G.: KIPO: the knowledge-intensive process ontology. Softw. Syst. Model. 14(3), 1127–1157 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Ghose, A.K., Narendra, N.C., Ponnalagu, K., Panda, A., Gohad, A.: Goal-driven business process derivation. In: Kappel, G., Maamar, Z., Motahari-Nezhad, H.R. (eds.) Service Oriented Computing. LNCS, vol. 7084, pp. 467–476. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Hewlett Packard. Augmented intelligence: Helping humans make smarter decisions. http://www8.hp.com/tw/zh/software-solutions/asset/software-asset-viewer.html?asset=2195447&module=1970414. Accessed 01 July 2016

  9. IPSoft home page. http://www.ipsoft.com/. Accessed 01 July 2016

  10. Kelley III, J.E.: Computing, cognition, and the future of knowing: how humans andmachines are forging a new age of understanding. http://www.research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/multimedia/Computing_Cognition_WhitePaper.pdf. Accessed 01 July 2016

  11. Robotic Revolution – separating hype from reality, 5 October 2015. https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/insights/2015/09/separating-hype-from-reality.html. Accessed 01 July 2016

  12. KPMG. Embracing the cognitive era, February 2016. https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2016/03/embracing-the-cognitive-era.pdf. Accessed 01 July 2016

  13. Marin, M., Hull, R., Vaculín, R.: Data-centric BPM the emerging Case management standard: a short survey. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 24–30 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Marrella, A., Mecella, M., Sardiña, S.: SmartPM: an adaptive process management system through situationcalculus, indigolog, and classical planning. In: Proceedings of Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning KR (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Marrella, A., Mecella, M., Sardiña, S.: An adaptive process management system based on situation calculus, indigolog, and classical planning. In: Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (2016, to appear)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Nezhad, H.R.M.: Cognitive assistance at work. In: AAAI Fall Symposium Series. AAAI Publications, November 2015

    Google Scholar 

  17. Nezhad, H.R.M., Akkiraju, R.: Towards cognitive BPM as the next generation BPM platform for analytics-driven business processes. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 158–164 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Reichert, M., Weber, B.: Enabling Flexibility in Process-Aware Information Systems - Challenges, Methods, Technologies. Springer, Berlin (2012)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Swenson, K. (ed.): Mastering the Unpredictable: How Adaptive Case Management Will Revolutionize The Way That Knowledge Workers Get Things Done. Meghan-Kiffer Press, Tampa (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Vaculín, R., Hull, R., Vukovic, M., Heath, T., Mills, N., Sun, Y.: Supporting collaborative decision processes. In: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, Santa Clara, CA, USA, June 28 - July 3, 2013, pp. 651–658 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  21. van der Aa, H., Leopold, H., Reijers, H.A.: Detecting inconsistencies between process models and textual descriptions. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM), pp. 90–105 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  22. van der Aalst, W.M.P., et al.: Process mining manifesto. In: Business Process Management Workshops, pp. 169–194 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  23. van der Aalst, W.M.P., Weske, M., Grünbauer, D.: Case handling: a new paradigm for business process support. Data Knowl. Eng. 53(2), 129–162 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Wipro Holmes web page. http://www.wipro.com/holmes/. Accessed 01 July 2016

  25. Zhou, P., El-Gohary, N.: Ontology-based information extraction from environmental regulations for supporting environmental compliance checking. In: Computing in Civil Engineering, pp. 190–198 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to than several IBM colleagues for numerous inspirational discussions on the topics presented in this paper, including Currie Boyle, Robert Farrell, Janet Hunter, Matthias Kloppmann Rong Liu, Mike Marin, Manoj Mishra, Nirmal Mukhi, Jae-eun Park, Karthikeyan Ponnalagu, Michael Oland, Eniko Rozsa, Stuart Strolin, and John Vergo. The authors also thank members of the working group [2] on Knowledge-intensive Processes (KiP’s) at the Dagstuhl workshop on “Fresh Approaches to Business Process Modeling” held in April, 2016, where the discussions were very stimulating and informative.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, New York, USA

    Richard Hull

  2. IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, USA

    Hamid R. Motahari Nezhad

Authors
  1. Richard Hull
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hamid R. Motahari Nezhad
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard Hull .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Marcello La Rosa

  2. DFKI, Universität des Saarlandes DFKI, Saarbrücken, Saarland, Germany

    Peter Loos

  3. Universidad Politècnica de Valencia , Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Hull, R., Motahari Nezhad, H.R. (2016). Rethinking BPM in a Cognitive World: Transforming How We Learn and Perform Business Processes. In: La Rosa, M., Loos, P., Pastor, O. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9850. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45348-4_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45347-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45348-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation