Business process management experiences a large uptake by the industry, and process models play an important role in the analysis and improvement of processes. While an increasing number of sta becomes involved in actual modeling practice, it is crucial to assure model quality and homogeneity along with providing suitable aids for creating models. In this paper we consider the problem of oering recommendations to the user during the act of modeling. Our key contribution is a concept for dening and identifying action patterns - chunks of actions often appearing together in business processes. In particular, we specify action patterns and demonstrate how they can be identied from existing process model repositories using association rule mining techniques. Action patterns can then be used to suggest additional actions for a process model. Our approach is challenged by applying it to the collection of process models from the SAP Reference Model.

1. Action Patterns in Business Process Models Sergey Smirnov 1 , Matthias Weidlich 1 , Jan Mendling 2 , and Mathias Weske 1 1 Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany 2 Humboldt-Universit ä t zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

4. Motivation (II) ? One aspect of process model quality is if the model is complete from a business point of view. An example question is if all actions typically appearing in this business process present in the current model. How to suggest the modeler which model elements are missing in the designed model from a perspective of business semantic?

7. Modeler Assistance allocate calculate revaluate … {allocate calculate} -> {settle} {create update} -> {archive} … {allocate calculate} -> {settle}

17. Co-occurrence action patterns settle allocate calculate process archive enter process permit evaluate level process pick consequent antecedent

18. Weak Order Relation Activities a and b are in weak order relation, if there is a trace in which b occurs after a . We denote weak order relation as Example:

22. Behavioral action pattern {allocate, calculate, settle} allocate settle, calculate settle allocate calculate consequent antecedent

25. Co-occurrence pattern number minconf minsup 0 1 5 375 418 1155 4601 483093 0.95 5 10 15 417 460 1197 4643 483135 0.85 6 11 19 421 505 1477 4923 483415 0.75 9 16 26 497 591 2070 6104 510498 0.65 13 23 34 550 665 2247 6979 511373 0.55 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

26. Co-occurrence pattern number minconf minsup 0 1 5 375 418 1155 4601 483093 0.95 5 10 15 417 460 1197 4643 483135 0.85 6 11 19 421 505 1477 4923 483415 0.75 9 16 26 497 591 2070 6104 510498 0.65 13 23 34 550 665 2247 6979 511373 0.55 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

27. Co-occurrence action patterns minconf = 0.95 and minsup = 7 settle allocate calculate process archive enter process permit evaluate level process pick consequent antecedent