Museum Process Implementation - ICOM CIDOC

Objective

The working groups aims at implementing reference workflows for main business processes as found in museums, galleries and similar organisations. The elaborated work flows should constitute a basis on which museums of different kind and size can build up their own workflows adapted to their special needs. The design of the workflows is based on the BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation) which has been standardized in 2010 by OMG (Object Modelling Group). To elaborate the workflows an open source tool will be used which converts the graphical design into an XML presentation which directly can be executed by native BPMN processing engines.

Work Programme

The working Group (WG) identifies core processes which are used in museums and develops generic workflow models derived from these core processes. These models will be elaborated using a graphical open source tool (“BPMN Designer”) and implemented on open source BPMN processing engine. The models are reference models (aka “CIDOC Process References ” – CPR) which can be adapted to the needs of museums using a BPMN Designer. The WG will test the elaborated models in praxis and will develop guidelines how to implement the workflow models in museums (“CPR – Best Practice Guide”). The models will be tested against existing standards.

In a second phase the process models will be extended by a data model comprising all data to be entered during different steps of different processes delivering a reference model for collection management systems.

Tasks for 2012/2013

Preparation of the cooperation platform
Introduction in business process management methodology (BPM)
Modelling of a training process and preparation of a tutorial
Analysis of common used processes in museums

CIDOC Museum Process Implementation Working Group Report 2013

The Museum Process Implementation Working Group (MPI-WG) “aims at implementing reference workflows for main business processes as found in museums, galleries and similar organisations” (1). The activities carried out since the foundation of this group (CIDOC Conference 2011) consisted primarily in defining a baseline concept and setting up a collaborative environment for the working group. The concept and the available tools have been presented in two courses in 2012. Since the work of this group is based on existing standards the framework of SPECTRUM (2) was used as basis for the initial concepts: steps as defined in SPECTRUM have been used to set up a demo sub process (“object delivery”) being part of the “SPECTRUM procedure” “object entry”. Such a sub process can be defined very precisely and modelled in a highly structured way and it is possible to use BPM (Business Process Management) methodologies for designing and implementing such a sub process. But a lot of activities found in museums cannot be modelled in a structured way only. For that reason other complementary methods have been investigated, especially used in the knowledge workers’ domain. As of summer 2013 the methodology which complements BPM is just under development in the Adaptive Case Management (ACM) domain (3). A standard (CMMN (4): Case Management Model And Notation) supporting this methodology has been developed in a beta version and published by the Object Management Group in the first half of 2013 (5). At the moment of writing this report there are no tools available, especially in the public domain, which support the design and the implementation of CMMN based models for describing museum related activities. Because of this situation after the kick-off of the Working group at CIDOC 2012 no further meetings have been organised.

(1) https://cidoc.mini.icom.museum/working-groups/museum-process-implementation/ 2017-05-08

(2) http://collectionstrust.org.uk/spectrum/ 2017-05-08

(3) http://www.xpdl.org/nugen/p/adaptive-case-management/public.htm (not available any more) 2013-08-06

(4) http://www.omg.org/spec/CMMN/ 2013-08-06

(5) http://www.omg.org/news/releases/pr2013/05-06-13.htm 2013-08-06

Walter Koch

6 August 2013

Programme for 2013 – 2016

The chair of the MPI working group is following the international activities in the field of ACM and BPM and the development of the forthcoming standard CMMN. It can be expected that until CIDOC 2014 in Germany practical result in the field of Adaptive (Advanced) Case Management will be available which can be used by the CIDOC-MPI-WG (especially a stable version of CMMN). It is proposed to have the next meeting of this WG at CIDOC 2014.

Walter Koch

6 August 2013