Resilient Business Process Management: Framework and services

This research contributes to extend Business Process Management (BPM) systems with resilience support. We applied concepts derived from resilience engineering and the study of hazards in highly reliable organizations to characterize resilient BPM. We developed a resilience framework based on two criteria, control, which may be prescriptive, mixed or discretionary, and response, considering planned and non-planned actions. We review and classify techniques developed in the BPM field dealing with various types of hazards. Three out of five categories involve humans in various ways. A special focus is given to discretionary/unplanned human interventions. We developed a set of services integrating resilience support in BPM systems, including detection, diagnosis, recovery and escalation. One important feature associated with the diagnosis service is handling the dynamic trajectory of hazards. Another fundamental feature provided by the escalation service is involving different operators in the collaborative activities necessary to overcome more complex hazards.