Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture.

In this book, Greefhorst and Proper focus on the role of architecture principles. They provide both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations. To illustrate their use in practice, several real-life cases are discussed, an application of architecture principles in TOGAF is included, and a catalogue of example architecture principles is provided.

With this broad coverage, the authors target students and researchers specializing in enterprise architecture or business information systems, as well as practitioners who want to understand the foundations underlying their practical daily work.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS 2011) and the 16th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD 2011), held together with the 23rd International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2011) in London, UK, in June 2011.

The 22 papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 61 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business processes development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into sections on BPMDS in practice, business process improvement, business process flexibility, declarative process models, variety of modeling paradigms, business process modeling and support systems development, and interoperability and mobility.

The 16 papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 31 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. They are grouped in sections on workflow and process modeling extensions, requirements analysis and information systems development, requirements evolution and information systems evolution, data modeling languages and business rules, conceptual modeling practice, and enterprise architecture.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS 2012) and the 17th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD 2012), held together with the 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012) in Gdańsk, Poland, in June 2012.

The 17 papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 48 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business process development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into sections on business process in the cloud, advanced BPM in an organizational context, similarity, variations and configuration, BPM and requirements engineering, humans and business process models, and BPM technologies using computational methods.

The 13 papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 28 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. They are grouped in sections on modeling of enterprise architecture, modeling facts and rules, business process modeling, modeling of non-functional requirements, safety modeling and analysis, quality of models and modeling languages, and supporting the learning of conceptual modeling.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Practice-Driven Research on Enterprise Transformation (PRET), held in Gdańsk, Poland, on June 27, 2012, as the industrial track of the 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012).

Restructuring, divesting, improving performance, and merging are among the usual transformation activities that enterprises conduct to provide answers to the challenging demands put on them. To foster the much-needed debate between researchers and practitioners on these topics, the number of papers accepted for PRET is kept low, providing the authors and the audience with ample time to engage in discussions about both the practical implications of results and the theoretical underpinnings of phenomena observed in industrial practice. This year, five papers were selected after careful review, and each paper is between 20 and 25 pages long, to allow for the presentation of details.

The topics covered include enterprise architecture, business and IT alignment, and business process management and evaluation.

Enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture.

In this book, Greefhorst and Proper focus on the role of architecture principles. They provide both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations. To illustrate their use in practice, several real-life cases are discussed, an application of architecture principles in TOGAF is included, and a catalogue of example architecture principles is provided.

With this broad coverage, the authors target students and researchers specializing in enterprise architecture or business information systems, as well as practitioners who want to understand the foundations underlying their practical daily work.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS 2011) and the 16th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD 2011), held together with the 23rd International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2011) in London, UK, in June 2011.

The 22 papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 61 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business processes development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into sections on BPMDS in practice, business process improvement, business process flexibility, declarative process models, variety of modeling paradigms, business process modeling and support systems development, and interoperability and mobility.

The 16 papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 31 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. They are grouped in sections on workflow and process modeling extensions, requirements analysis and information systems development, requirements evolution and information systems evolution, data modeling languages and business rules, conceptual modeling practice, and enterprise architecture.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support (BPMDS 2012) and the 17th International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design (EMMSAD 2012), held together with the 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012) in Gdańsk, Poland, in June 2012.

The 17 papers accepted for BPMDS were selected from 48 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues related to business process development, modeling, and support. They are grouped into sections on business process in the cloud, advanced BPM in an organizational context, similarity, variations and configuration, BPM and requirements engineering, humans and business process models, and BPM technologies using computational methods.

The 13 papers accepted for EMMSAD were chosen from 28 submissions and focus on exploring, evaluating, and enhancing current information modeling methods and methodologies. They are grouped in sections on modeling of enterprise architecture, modeling facts and rules, business process modeling, modeling of non-functional requirements, safety modeling and analysis, quality of models and modeling languages, and supporting the learning of conceptual modeling.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 4th Working Conference on Practice-Driven Research on Enterprise Transformation (PRET), held in Gdańsk, Poland, on June 27, 2012, as the industrial track of the 24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2012).

Restructuring, divesting, improving performance, and merging are among the usual transformation activities that enterprises conduct to provide answers to the challenging demands put on them. To foster the much-needed debate between researchers and practitioners on these topics, the number of papers accepted for PRET is kept low, providing the authors and the audience with ample time to engage in discussions about both the practical implications of results and the theoretical underpinnings of phenomena observed in industrial practice. This year, five papers were selected after careful review, and each paper is between 20 and 25 pages long, to allow for the presentation of details.

The topics covered include enterprise architecture, business and IT alignment, and business process management and evaluation.