Applying the business process and practice alignment meta-model: Daily practices and process modelling

Background: Business Process Modelling (BPM) is one of the most important phases of information system design. Business Process (BP) meta-models allow capturing informational and behavioural aspects of business processes. Unfortunately, standard BP meta-modelling approaches focus just on process description, providing different BP models. It is not possible to compare and identify related daily practices in order to improve BP models. This lack of information implies that further research in BP meta-models is needed to reflect the evolution/change in BP. Considering this limitation, this paper introduces a new BP meta-model designed by Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model (BPPAMeta-model). Our intention is to present a meta-model that addresses features related to the alignment between daily work practices and BP descriptions. Objectives: This paper intends to present a meta-model which is going to integrate daily work information into coherent and sound process definitions. Methods/Approach: The methodology employed in the research follows a design-science approach. Results: The results of the case study are related to the application of the proposed meta-model to align the specification of a BP model with work practices models. Conclusions: This meta-model can be used within the BPPAM methodology to specify or improve business processes models based on work practice descriptions

The Distribution and Abundance of Terrestrial Vertebrates of the James and Hudson Bay Regions of Québec

Grâce à des études de plus en plus nombreuses entreprises dans le nord du Québec nous avons un aperçu plus précis des ressources animales et de leur répartition. Un examen rétrospectif nous indique que la répartition des animaux semble dans la plupart des cas reliée à la répartition des aires riches en nutriments, tout comme la répartition des animaux dans le désert se fait en fonction de l'eau. Environ 50% de toute activité animale estivale se produit sur de vastes étendues d'habitat pauvre qui englobe 90% environ du territoire. Dans ces régions, les nutriments en faible concentration sont utilisés au bord des lacs ou dans les systèmes aquatiques rapides où ils sont captés et transformés par le processus des chaînes alimentaires en une variété de carnivores tels qu'on en trouve près de tous les rapides importants. Dans la riche région de la mer de Tyrrell, les facteurs principaux qui semblent affecter les populations animales sont le drainage du sol et la turbidité de l'eau. La réduction du couvert végétal forestier semble avoir un effet sur les changements de composition des espèces plutôt que sur la fonction des animaux. En tenant compte des facteurs ci-haut mentionnés et des habitats connus des animaux, on peut diviser le Nouveau-Québec occidental en six zones zoogéographiques, dont trois sont affectées par les riches dépôts marins de la mer de Tyrell, la topographie et le climat, et les trois autres par les sols glaciaires extrêmement pauvres et par leur topographie et leur climat.From an increasing number of surveys conducted in northern Québec interior at all times of the year, a view of animal resources and their distribution is crystallizing. In retrospect the distribution of animals seems for the most part related to the distribution of nutrient rich areas much like the distribution of animals in the desert relates to water. About 50% of all summer animal activity takes place on vast areas of poor habitat which comprises approximately 90% of the region. The small concentrations of nutrients from these regions where they are captured and transformed through food chains to a variety of carnivores such as those found at all major rapids. In the rich Tyrrell Sea the most salient factors which affect the populations seem to be the drainage of the soil and the turbidity of the water. The reduction of forest crown cover seems to affect the changes in species composition rather than the function of animals. In reviewing all the above factors and the known ranges of the animals it seems that western Nouveau-Québec can be divided into six zoogeographical entities, three of which are affected by the rich marine deposits of the Tyrrell Sea, topography and climate, the three others by the extremely poor glacial soils, topography and climate

An agile business process improvement methodology

Adoption of business process improvement strategies are now a concern of most organisations. Organisations are still facing challenges and finding transient solutions to immediate problems. The misalignment between IT solutions and organisational aspects evolves across space and time showing discrepancies. Unfortunately, existing business process approaches are not according with continuous business process improvement involving business stakeholders. Considering this limitation in well-known Business Process (BP) methodologies, this paper presents a comparative study of some approaches and introduces agility in the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and introduce agility in our proposal to address features, like the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions, in a simple and agile way. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

An agile business process and practice meta-model

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Building and Exploiting a Business Process Model for Lobbying: Experience Report

The paper describes a project in the domain of business process modeling that concerns loosely-structured business processes, i.e. processes for which it is difficult to establish an order of activities. The process in focus is the lobbying process, i.e. a process aimed at influencing decisions of others, e.g. politicians. The project was carried out at a non-profit interest organization, and the paper describes the project’s motivation, structure, methodology, results, and how the results were exploited, including a short description of an IT system built to support the lobbying process. As the commonly spread workflow technique is not particularly suitable for loosely-structured business processes, the project exploited an original state-flow technique for developing a model of the lobbying process. The state-flow technique is based on the state-oriented view on business processes that has been used as a foundation for building the support system. The paper reports a number of problems encountered during the introduction of the system into operational practice. These problems led to the needs of reducing the level of details initially introduced into the system; they will be reintroduced at the later stage when the users become more accustomed to work in the process-oriented manner. In the conclusion, the paper discusses success factors important for modeling projects, and pros and cons of the modeling method used, as well as a broader research context of which the work presented in the paper is a part

KLAUZULA DOBRYCH PRAKTYK ZAWARTA W „USTAWIE O ZWALCZANIU NIEUCZCIWEJ KONKURENCJI” Z DNIA 16 KWIETNIA 1993 R. ORAZ W ŚWIETLE WYBRANEGO ORZECZNICTWA. WYBRANE IMPLIKACJE ETYCZNE

This paper, employing historical-legal methods, presents selected court judgments on the good practices clause in the Act on Combatting Unfair Competition of 16 April 1993 (Ustawa o zwalczaniu nieuczciwej konkurencji z 16 kwietnia 1993 r.) (Journal of Laws 1993, No 47, item 211). The term unfair competition is used in the different legal categories in the act, which makes interpretation difficult. Each time the court determines the existence of two qualifications: entrepreneurs being in a court dispute conducting economic activity where there may be an infringement or a threat to the economic interests of the other entrepreneur. The innovative approach in this paper is based on what are ethical implications.Artykuł, wykorzystując metodę historyczno-prawną, prezentuje wybrane orzeczenia sądowe odnoszące się do klauzuli dobrych praktyk w Ustawie o zwalczaniu nieuczciwej konkurencji z 16 kwietnia 1993 r. Zróżnicowanie używania kategorii terminu nieuczciwej konkurencji utrudnia jego interpretację. Każdorazowo sąd w orzeczeniu ustala, czy przedsiębiorcy pozostający w sporze sądowym prowadzą działalność gospodarczą oraz czy naruszenie lub zagrożenie interesów gospodarczych dotyczy drugiego przedsiębiorcy. Nowatorskie ujęcie zagadnienia przejawia się w ukazaniu etycznych implikacji

Exploring Elementary Teachers\u27 Perceptions of Teaching Social Studies Through Historical Fiction Using Google Lit Trips

There is a new generation of students entering our school systems called Digital Natives ; students who are more technologically inclined than their teachers. With the new cohort of students, it is becoming problematic for teachers to implement engaging lessons. Because social studies is not a state tested subject, teachers and administrators find it very difficult to retrieve the time and the passion for the subject in the everyday classroom. One new Google application called Google Lit Trips is an appealing way to teach social studies for the new generation of students. Prior research on Google Lit Trips showed that this application is well suited for creating lessons that can satisfy standards for a multitude of subjects, and in a way that catches the students\u27 attentions. After I completed research on the 21st century learner, how teachers can integrate social studies into their classroom, and Google Literature Trips; I studied many virtual field trips of various books or novels. These Google Literature Trips allows teachers to utilize Google Earth to pin locations of importance for students in order to gain a visual, while simultaneously exploring educational activities. Then, I created my own Google Lit Trip. Before teachers participated in exploring the Google Lit Trip I created, a survey was conducted on the five teachers; getting their perceptions of technology, social studies education, and Google Lit Trips. They were then asked to read the picture book The Story of Ruby Bridges (Coles, 1995). The computer application was then shown to teachers to get their opinions on its perceived effectiveness. A post-survey was then conducted on the teachers\u27 perceptions of the Google Literature Trip. The results of the teachers\u27 discernments of the teaching tool proved it to be an effective application to use in the classroom to enhance cross-curricular education from technology, art, reading, and most importantly for this thesis, social studies. Future research should be conducted on students\u27 perceptions, and whether or not it sustains engagement, and whether or not their knowledge of the subject matter improves

Multiple camera plenacoustic imaging : estimation of the radiation pattern of an acoustic source

LAUREA MAGISTRALEGli strumenti musicali acustici sono caratterizzati dallo specifico modo con cui interagiscono con l’ambiente circostante. Diversi studi sono stati e sono tutt’ora fatti sulla natura di questa interazione, su come questa si traduce in termini musicali, fisici e percettivi. Lo scopo di questo elaborato è definire un sistema che stimi il pattern di radianza di uno strumento, che è la funzione che descrive la dipendenza angolare dell’energia che questo irradia, e che costituisce uno degli aspetti più importanti della sua caratteristica interazione con l’ambiente. In particolare, il nostro scopo è progettare un sistema che lavori con più camere plenacustiche, dispositivi composti da una griglia di microfoni sincronizzati in grado, per mezzo di una serie di strumenti analitici, di misurare il campo sonoro, parametrizzarlo e determinare le caratteristiche della scena acustica. Prendiamo come punto di partenza un sistema sviluppato nel 2013 presso l’Image and Sound Processing Group del Politecnico di Milano: in quel lavoro, la stima è effettuata usando una singola camera plenacoustica e un sistema separato per stimare la posizione nello spazio e l’orientamento dello strumento mentre viene suonato da un musicista. L’idea fondamentale del nostro lavoro è che la tecnica può essere migliorata aggiungendo una seconda camera, in modo tale da permettere al musicista di muoversi in maniera più naturale e rendere più veloce il processo di acquisizione. Con questa tesi intendiamo esplorare più a fondo le potenzialità dell’analisi plenacustica, studiando come l’aggiunta di una seconda camera influenza le tecniche plenacustiche esistenti, e come l’interazione fra più camere può essere sfruttata per progettare un sistema autosufficiente, in grado sia di misurare il pattern di radianza che di stimare la posizione dello strumento. Presentiamo l’estensione formale al caso multi camera delle esistenti tecniche plenacustiche a camera singola, così come le tecniche di localizzazione, calibrazione e stima del pattern di radianza che abbiamo studiato per affrontare il problema in analisi.Acoustic musical instruments are characterized by their own specific way of interacting with the sourrounding environment. A variety of different studies have been and are still being made on the nature of this interaction, on how it translates into musical, physical and perceptual terms. The purpose of this work is to devise a system that estimates the radiation pattern of an instrument, which is the function that describes the angular dependence of the energy it radiates, and constitutes one of the most important aspects of its peculiar interaction with the environment. In particular, we aim at designing a system that relies on multiple Plenacoustic Cameras, devices composed by a set of synchronized microphones that are capable, by means of a series of analytic tools, of measuring the soundfield, parameterize it and assess the features of the acoustic scene. We take as a starting point a system developed in 2013 at the Image and Sound Processing Group of Politecnico di Milano: in that work, the estimation is performed by using a single plenacoustic camera and a separate system for tracking the instrument position and orientation in space while it is played by a musician. The founding idea of our work is that the technique can be improved by adding a second camera, in order to allow the musician to move in a more natural way as well as to shorten the acquisition process. With this thesis we intend to further explore the potentialities of plenacoustic analysis and study how the addition of a second camera impacts on the existing plenacoustic techniques, and how the interaction between multiple cameras can be exploited to design a self-contained system that is capable of both measuring the radiation pattern and estimate the instrument position in space. We present the formal extension of the existing single-camera pleancoustic techniques to the multiple-camera scenario, as well as the localization, calibration and radiation pattern measurement techniques that we have devised to address the problem at hand