Agility and innovation are necessary to achieve global excellence and customer value in twenty-first century business; yet most approaches to business process engineering sacrifice these in favor of operational efficiency and economics. Moreover, the IT systems used to automate and encapsulate business processes are unresponsive to the dynamic business environment. Mitra and Gupta provide insight to close this gap - showing how innovation can be systematized with normalized patterns of information, how business processes and information systems may be tightly aligned, and how these processes and systems can be designed to automatically adapt to change by reconfiguring shared patterns of knowledge. A modular approach to building business systems that parallels that of object oriented software is presented. Practical templates required for accelerating integration, analysis and design are provided. This book will appeal to consultants, analysts, and managers in IT as well as researchers and graduate students in business, management and IT.

Innovation, agility, and coordination are paramount in the support of value in the global knowledge economy. Therefore, the long-term success of a company is increasingly dependent on its underlying resilience and agility. Knowledge Reuse and Agile Processes: Catalysts for Innovation addresses flexibility of both business and information systems through component technology at the nexus of three seemingly unrelated disciplines: service-oriented architecture, knowledge management, and business process management. Providing practitioners and academians with timely, compelling research on agile, adaptive processes and information systems, this Premier Reference Source will enhance the collection of every reference library.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

The motivation behind the conception of this monograph was to advance scientific knowledge about the design and control of workflow processes. A workflow pr- ess (or workflow for short) is a specific type of business process, a way of or- nizing work and resources. Workflows are commonly found within large admin- trative organizations such as banks, insurance companies, and governmental agencies. Carrying out the tasks of a workflow in a particular order is required to handle one type of case. Examples of cases are mortgage applications, customer complaints, and claims for unemployment benefits. A workflow used in handling mortgage applications may contain tasks for recording the application, specifying a mortgage proposal, and approving the final policy. The monograph concentrates on four workflow-related issues within the area of Business Process Management; the field of designing and controlling business processes. The first issue is how workflows can be adequately modeled. Workflow mod- ing is an indispensable activity to support any reasoning about workflows. Diff- ent purposes of workflow modeling can be distinguished, such as system ena- ment by Workflow Management Systems, knowledge management, costing, and budgeting. The focus of workflow modeling in this monograph is (a) to support simulation and analysis of workflows and (b) to specify a new workflow design. The main formalism used for the modeling of workflows is the Petri net. Many - isting notions to define several relevant properties have been adopted, such as the workflow net and the soundness notion.

Workflow-based Process Controlling Systems provide companies with the ability to measure the operational performance of their business processes in a timely and accurate fashion. The combination of workflow audit trails with data warehouse technology and operational business data allows for complex analyses that can support managers in their assessment of an organization's performance. The increasing maturity of business process management and data warehouse systems enables the design and development of advanced process-oriented management information systems. Michael zur Muehlen discusses the integration of workflow audit trail data with existing data warehouse structures and develops a reference architecture for process-oriented management information systems. Starting with an organizational and technical analysis of process organizations, this book provides a comprehensive documentation of business process management, workflow technology, and existing standardization efforts. The proposed reference architecture is validated in an industry context. A prototypical implementation of the reference architecture and its integration with a commercial business process management system are demonstrated as well. This book is directed at both practitioners and academics in the fields of business process management, management accounting, and information systems research.

The ABCs of IBM® z/OS® System Programming is a 13-volume collection that provides an introduction to the z/OS operating system and the hardware architecture. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced system programmer, the ABCs collection provides the information that you need to start your research into z/OS and related subjects. Whether you want to become more familiar with z/OS in your current environment, or you are evaluating platforms to consolidate your online business applications, the ABCs collection will serve as a powerful technical tool. Volume 1 provides an updated understanding of the software and IBM zSeries architecture, and explains how it is used together with the z/OS operating system. This includes the main components of z/OS needed to customize and install the z/OS operating system. This edition has been significantly updated and revised.

Business Process Management (BPM) is about managing all the work that is necessary for delivering an end product or service. This book is well-suited for teaching an academic course as a part of a final year Bachelor and Master Degree programs in ITC, Management, and also, other related disciplines. It can also be used for conducting an equivalent training programme for in-house professionals. Although no book can be a substitute for the wide and varied experience of an instructor, this book will help the instructor to concentrate on teaching rather than worrying about creating the teaching material and assembling the student material. In view of the likely differences in background of the readers, some material has been placed into appendices to enable them to read on a need to know basis. Besides, this book, in its present form, is equally useful for the professionals, who wish to grasp the essentials of BPM without attending a formal instructional course. KEY FEATURES  Chapters are appropriately organized as per the process life cycle  Written in bullet format for easy grasping  Comprises theory and its applications systematically  Emphasizes relevant deployment issues  Separate chapter on Performance Monitoring  Highly illustrative with diagrams and sketches  Separate appendix on BPMS TARGET AUDIENCE  ME (Computer Science/ Engineering/Technology)  MBA (Information Systems)  MCA students