A goal-based approach for learning in business processes

Organizations constantly strive to improve their business performance; hence they make business process redesign efforts. So far, redesign has mainly been a human task, which relies on human reasoning and creativity, although various analysis tools can support it by identifying improvement opportunities. This chapter proposes an automated approach for learning from accumulated experience and improving business processes over time. The approach ties together three aspects of business processes: goals, context, and actual paths. It proposes a learning cycle, including a learning phase, where the relevant context is identified and used for making improvements in the process model, and a runtime application phase, where the improved process model is applied at runtime and actual results are stored for the next learning cycle. According to our approach, a goal-oriented process model is essential for learning to improve process outcomes.