Towards a Framework for Context Awareness Based on Textual Process Data: Case Study Insights

Abstract

Context awareness is critical for the successful execution of processes. In the abundance of business process management (BPM) research, frameworks exclusively devoted to extracting context from textual process data are scarce. With the deluge of textual data and its increasing value for organizations, it becomes essential to employ relevant text analytics techniques to increase the awareness of process workers, which is important for process execution. The present paper addresses this demand by developing a framework for context awareness based on process executions-related textual data using a well-established layered BPM context model. This framework combines and maps various text analytics techniques to the layers of the context model, aiming to increase the context awareness of process workers and facilitate informed decision-making. The framework is applied in an IT ticket processing case study. The findings show that contextual information obtained using our framework enriches the awareness of process workers regarding the process instance urgency, complexity, and upcoming tasks and assists in making decisions in terms of these aspects.