Jan Claes | Artevelde University College (original) (raw)

Papers by Jan Claes

Society 5.0: EPiC Series in Computing, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to work from home. Even after pandemic restrictions have... more The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to work from home. Even after pandemic restrictions have been lifted, many parents continue to work from home. This poses several challenges and has led to a number of issues related to sharing rooms and equipment, dealing with distractions, and dealing with feelings. This paper examines the issues that arose for parents working from home in Flanders within these three categories, and recommends potential solutions. Data were collected through a survey. The target population of the survey was a group of Flemish parents with children under the age of 18 and working from home during the lockdown. The main findings of the research are summarized as follows. Most respondents did not have a separate workspace at home. This means that parents experienced different distractions at home than while working from the office. Children were the number one distraction for parents working from home. The care of children and the lack of work-life balance were also the main sources of conflict. However, the feelings when working from home are not only negative. Parents felt frustration and powerlessness, as well as motivation and happiness. Based on the analysis of the responses, recommendations are formulated from parents to parents on how to organise working from home with children.

Several factors influence the level of business process model understanding. In this paper, we in... more Several factors influence the level of business process model understanding. In this paper, we investigate two personal factors that potentially relate to this level: a reader's cognitive style and theoretical knowledge on business process (BP) modeling. An experiment with 183 graduate students was conducted to explore their differences in cognitive styles using Cognitive Style Index (CSI) and how these relate to their scores in process model understandability. We used two real-life BPMN collaboration diagrams as our process models in our experiment. The results indicate a significant difference between intuitive and analytic students with respect to the level of BP model understandability. The relation between students' theoretical BP modeling and notation competency, and their level of model understanding is also found significant.

More and more organizations turn to the construction of process models to support strategical and... more More and more organizations turn to the construction of process models to support strategical and operational tasks. At the same time, reports indicate quality issues for a considerable part of these models, caused by modeling errors. Therefore, the research described in this paper investigates the development of a practical method to determine and train an optimal process modeling strategy that aims to decrease the number of cognitive errors made during modeling. Such cognitive errors originate in inadequate cognitive processing caused by the inherent complexity of constructing process models. The method helps modelers to derive their personal cognitive profile and the related optimal cognitive strategy that minimizes these cognitive failures. The contribution of the research consists of the conceptual method and an automated modeling strategy selection and training instrument. These two artefacts are positively evaluated by a laboratory experiment covering multiple modeling sessions and involving a total of 149 master students at Ghent University. Keywords: modeling support, smart business process management, cognitive aspects of modeling, process of process modeling, process model quality.

In their effort to control and manage processes, organizations often create process models. The q... more In their effort to control and manage processes, organizations often create process models. The quality of such models is not always optimal, because it is challenging for a modeler to translate her mental image of the process into a formal process description. In order to support this complex human processing task, we are developing a smart process modeling method. This paper describes how we have built the underlying prescriptive theory, which is constructed from existing evidence about successful information processing techniques in cognitive psychology. Keywords: business process management, business process modeling, human aspects of bpm, smart bpm, process of process modeling

After visualizing data of various observational experiments on the way in which modelers construc... more After visualizing data of various observational experiments on the way in which modelers construct process models, a promising process modeling style (i.e., structured process modeling) was discovered that is expected to cause process model quality to increase. A modeler constructs process models in a structured way if she/he is working on a limited amount of parts of the model simultaneously. This paper describes two cognitive theories that can explain this causal relation. Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) suggests that the amount of errors increases when the limited capacity of our working memory is overloaded. Cognitive Fit Theory (CFT) states that performance is improved when task material representation matches with the task to be executed. Three hypotheses are formulated and the experimental set-up to evaluate these hypotheses is described.

Information System Frontiers, Vol 17(6), p. 1401-1425, 2015

After observing various inexperienced modelers constructing a business process model based on the... more After observing various inexperienced modelers constructing a business process model based on the same textual case description, it was noted that great differences existed in the quality of the produced models. The impression arose that certain quality issues originated from cognitive failures during the modeling process. Therefore, we developed an explanatory theory that describes the cognitive mechanisms that affect effectiveness and efficiency of process model construction: the Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT). This theory states that modeling accuracy and speed are higher when the modeler adopts an (i) individually fitting (ii) structured (iii) serialized process modeling approach. The SPMT is evaluated against six theory quality criteria.

Expert Systems with Applications, Vol 41(16), p. 7291-7306, 2014

In an inter-organizational setting the manual construction of process models is challenging becau... more In an inter-organizational setting the manual construction of process models is challenging because the different people involved have to put together their partial knowledge about the overall process. Process mining, an automated technique to discover and analyze process models, can facilitate the construction of inter-organizational process models. This paper presents a technique to merge the input data of the different partners of an inter-organizational process in order to serve as input for process mining algorithms. The technique consists of a method for configuring and executing the merge and an algorithm that searches for links between the data of the different partners and that suggests rules to the user on how to merge the data. Tool support is provided in the open source process mining framework ProM. The method and the algorithm are tested using two artificial and three real life datasets that confirm their effectiveness and efficiency.

Expert Systems with Applications, Vol 41(17), p. 7678-7690, 2014

Considering the presence of large amounts of data in organizations today, the need to transform t... more Considering the presence of large amounts of data in organizations today, the need to transform this data into useful information and subsequently into knowledge, increasingly gains attention. Process discovery is a technique to automatically discover process models from data in event logs. Since process discovery is gaining attention among researchers and practitioners, the quality of the resulting process model must be assured. In this paper, the quality of the frequently used Heuristics Miner is improved as anomalies were found concerning the validity and completeness of the resulting process model. For this purpose, a new artifact called the Updated Heuristics Miner was constructed containing alterations to the tool and to the algorithm itself. Evaluations of this artifact resulted in the conclusion that the Updated Heuristics Miner indeed demonstrates higher validity and completeness and that there is a need for a systematic evaluation method for process discovery techniques.

Information Systems and e-Business Management, Vol 13(1), p. 147-190, 2015

The construction of business process models has become an important requisite in the analysis and... more The construction of business process models has become an important requisite in the analysis and optimization of processes. The success of the analysis and optimization efforts heavily depends on the quality of the models. Therefore, a research domain emerged that studies the process of process modeling. This paper contributes to this research by presenting a way of visualizing the different steps a modeler undertakes to construct a process model, in a so-called PPMChart. The graphical representation lowers the cognitive efforts to discover properties of the modeling process, which facilitates the research and the development of theory, training and tool support for improving model quality. The paper contains an extensive overview of applications of the tool that demonstrate its usefulness for research and practice and discusses the observations from the visualization in relation to other work. The visualization was evaluated through a qualitative study that confirmed its usefulness and added value compared to the Dotted Chart on which the visualization was inspired.

Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 41(16), p. 7291–7306, Jun 2014

The Internal Auditor Compass, IIA Belgium Magazine, 2012

Organizations often construct business process models to document how they think processes are ex... more Organizations often construct business process models to document how they think processes are executed (as-is) or should be executed (to-be). But are these models accurate? Do they represent real process execution or do they only reflect people's perceptions about processes? - Typically, an auditor has to pick samples to verify certain regulations. These sample cases are mostly selected rather randomly. But isn't it possible to use a technique that directs you quickly to suspicious cases? Wouldn't it be interesting to be able to focus on exceptional cases right from the start? - Process mining helps you with that. It is an umbrella term for dozens of techniques that derive interesting information from historical process data that can be found in so called log files of your software systems. This will empower an auditor with the tools to focus on real process execution and to quickly jump to exceptional behavior.

BPM Workshop proceedings , LNBIP, Springer, 2012

In the quest for knowledge about how to make good process models, recent research focus is shifti... more In the quest for knowledge about how to make good process models, recent research focus is shifting from studying the quality of process models to studying the process of process modeling itself. This paper reports on our efforts to visualize this specific process in such a way that relevant characteristics of the modeling process can be observed graphically. By recording each modeling operation in a modeling process, one can build an event log that can be used as input for the PPMChart analysis plug-in we implemented in ProM. The graphical representation this plug-in generates allows for the discovery of different patterns of the process of process modeling. It also provides different views on the process of process modeling (by configuring and filtering the charts).

BPM Workshop proceedings 2012, LNBIP, Springer, 2012

In the last decade the field of process mining gained attention from research and practice. There... more In the last decade the field of process mining gained attention from research and practice. There is, however, not much known about the use and the appreciation of the involved techniques and tools, many of which are integrated into the well-known ProM framework. Therefore a questionnaire was sent out to ask people’s opinions about process mining and the ProM framework. This paper reports on the answers and tries to link them to existing knowledge from academic literature and popular articles. It must be seen as a first, exploratory attempt to reveal the adoption of process mining and the actual use of the ProM framework.

BPM proceedings 2012, LNCS 7481, Springer, 2012

In an investigation into the process of process modeling, we examined how modeling behavior relat... more In an investigation into the process of process modeling, we examined how modeling behavior relates to the quality of the process model that emerges from that. Specifically, we considered whether (i) a modeler’s structured modeling style, (ii) the frequency of moving existing objects over the modeling canvas, and (iii) the overall modeling speed is in any way connected to the ease with which the resulting process model can be understood. In this paper, we describe the exploratory study to build these three conjectures, clarify the experimental set-up and infrastructure that was used to collect data, and explain the used metrics for the various concepts to test the conjectures empirically. We discuss various implications for research and practice from the conjectures, all of which were confirmed by the experiment.

Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from event logs commonly available in tod... more Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from event logs commonly available in today's information systems. These techniques provide new means to discover, monitor, and improve processes in a variety of application domains. There are two main drivers for the growing interest in process mining. On the one hand, more and more events are being recorded, thus, providing detailed information about the history of processes. On the other hand, there is a need to improve and support business processes in competitive and rapidly changing environments. This manifesto is created by the IEEE Task Force on Process Mining and aims to promote the topic of process mining. Moreover, by de ning a set of guiding principles and listing important challenges, this manifesto hopes to serve as a guide for software developers, scientists, consultants, business managers, and end-users. The goal is to increase the maturity of process mining as a new tool to improve the (re)design, control, and support of operational business processes.

Process mining techniques try to discover and analyse business processes from recorded process da... more Process mining techniques try to discover and analyse business processes from recorded process data. These data have to be structured in so called computer log files. If processes are supported by different computer systems, merging the recorded data into one log file can be challenging. In this paper we present a computational algorithm, based on the Artificial Immune System algorithm, that we developed to automatically merge separate log files into one log file. We also describe our implementation of this technique, a proof of concept application and a real life test case with promising results.

Process mining techniques are applied to single computer log files. But many processes are suppor... more Process mining techniques are applied to single computer log files. But many processes are supported by different software tools and are by consequence recorded into multiple log files. Therefore it would be interesting to find a way to automatically combine such a set of log files for one process. In this paper we describe a technique for merging log files based on a genetic algorithm. We show with a generated test case that this technique works and we give an extended overview of which research is needed to optimise and validate this technique.

Thesis Chapters by Jan Claes

The mentioned academic titles conform to the Belgian standard ii iii Something I learned on the r... more The mentioned academic titles conform to the Belgian standard ii iii Something I learned on the road… "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."