Call for Papers

 

2nd Int’l. Workshop on Empirical Research in Business Process Management (ER-BPM 2011)

 

in conjunction with

9th Int'l. Conf. on Business Process Management (BPM 2011) in Clermont-Ferrand, France

 

I. Workshop Theme and Goals:

 

Providing effective IT support for business processes has become crucial for enterprises to stay competitive in their market. In response to this need numerous process support paradigms (e.g., workflow management, service flow management, case handling), process specification standards (e.g., WS-BPEL, BPML, BPMN), process tools (e.g., ARIS Toolset, Tibco Staffware, FLOWer) and supporting methods have emerged in recent years. Summarized under the term “Business Process Management” (BPM), these paradigms, standards, tools, and methods have become a success-critical instrument for improving process performance.

 

Research in the area of BPM has traditionally focused on the development and extension of associated tools, methods, standards and technologies. However, when evaluating the suitability of existing BPM technology for a particular project, it is important for practitioners and academics alike to have an informed opinion about their qualities and deficiencies. In particular, the demand for insights or evaluations of BPM technology based on empirical research has only recently gained prominence in the community. This is surprising as the benefits of empirical research have been demonstrated in areas like software engineering (e.g., in the context of software development processes or code reviews), information systems, or, indeed, business for a long time. In fact, from the introduction of empirical research methods such as experimental or case study methods into BPM (as well as into the development of process-aware information systems), we expect more valid, quantitative or qualitative data on the various aspects and effects of BPM technology. This becomes important, not only for IT professionals, but also for researchers dealing with analytical, theoretical or technical challenges in the field of BPM.

 

Our ER-BPM’11 workshop addresses this demand and seeks to stimulate empirical research that, in turn, can contribute to a better understanding of the problems, challenges and existing solutions in the BPM field. In particular, the proposed workshop shall provide an interdisciplinary forum for both researchers and practitioners to improve the understanding of BPM-specific requirements, methods and theories, tools and techniques. Therefore, the ER- BPM’11 workshop will deal with different facets of applying and using BPM methods and technologies; and it will give new insights into the challenges, applications, and perspectives emerging for BPM technology.

 

II. Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

 

- Empirical research on BPM methods, BPM technologies, BPM tools

- Empirical research on process-aware information systems

- BPM-related (software) experiments

- BPM-related action research

- BPM-related surveys

- BPM-related case studies

- BPM-related experience reports

- Critical success factor analyses of BPM methods, BPM technologies, BPM tools

- Evaluations and comparisons of BPM tools, platforms and standards

- Frameworks for quantitatively analyzing BPM methods, BPM technologies, BPM tools

- Frameworks for qualitatively evaluating BPM methods, BPM technologies, BPM tools

- Requirements on empirical and experimental BPM research

- Usability and ease-of-use of BPM technologies and BPM tools

- User acceptance of BPM projects

- BPM success, failure and contingency models

- Studies on the role of standards in practical BPM projects

- Comparative studies of BPM technology

- Empirical studies of cross-organizational BPM coordination and settings

- Costs, benefits, and risks of applying BPM methods, BPM technologies, and BPM tools

- Evaluation approaches for BPM methods, BPM technologies, and BPM tools

Practice-driven challenges for future BPM research

- Reflections on the use of empirical methods in the BPM field

- Advances in empirical methods for BPM research

 

III. Format of the Workshop and Proceedings:

 

Papers have to present original research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere. We invite position papers (outlining research in progress), full research papers as well as tool reports. Length of full research papers must not exceed 12 pages. Position papers and tool reports should be no longer than 6 pages. There is no possibility to buy additional pages. The title page must contain an indication of the submission category. Papers should be submitted in the LNCS/LNBIP format (http://www.springer.com/). Only papers in English will be accepted.

 

Submitted papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee and will be evaluated on the basis of significance, originality, technical quality, and exposition. Papers should clearly establish their research contribution and shall particularly address the relation to transferring BPM methods and technologies into practice.

 

All accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. There will be a single LNBIP volume dedicated to the proceedings of all BPM workshops. As this volume will appear after the conference, there will be informal proceedings during the workshop.

 

At least one author for each accepted paper must register for the workshop and present the paper.

 

IV. Paper Submission:

 

Papers must be submitted via EasyChair:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=erbpm2011

 

V. Important Dates:

- Deadline for workshop paper submissions: 20 May 2011

- Notification of Acceptance: 17 June 2011

- Camera-ready papers deadline: 23 June 2011

- Workshop: 29 August 2011

 

VI. Organizers:

 

Bela Mutschler (University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten, Germany)

Email: bela.mutschler@hs-weingarten.de

 

Jan Recker (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)

Email: j.recker@qut.edu.au

 

Roel Wieringa (University of Twente, The Netherlands)

Email: roelw@cs.utwente.nl