PAL FOR ACADEMIA
Where practice meets research.
PAL is built on PULSE, a process framework developed by practitioners and now the subject of formal research. This page is for the academic community: an honest summary of what PULSE is, and an open invitation to study it, test it, and use PAL freely in your research and teaching.
PULSE
PULSE stands for Process Unified Language for Simulation and Execution. It is the framework underneath PAL, and it exists because of a gap the team kept meeting in practice: process models that describe work accurately but cannot run it.
PULSE approaches process from the execution side. The model is not documentation of the work; the model is the artefact the work runs on. That single decision shapes everything else in the framework.
PULSE rests on four foundations:
Structure.
Processes are built from steps that carry their own definition: who owns them, what they require, what they produce. The step is the unit of work, not an annotation on a diagram.
Logic.
Decision-making lives inside the step rather than in a separate layer of gateways and symbols. The aim is a model an everyday operator can read, follow and maintain without specialist notation training.
Time.
Time is a first-class element of the framework, not metadata. Durations, deadlines and escalations are part of the model itself, because in real execution, when matters as much as what.
Execution.
A PULSE model is executable from the moment it is complete. There is no translation step between the design of a process and the running of it, which is where drift between documented and actual work traditionally begins.
We are deliberately brief here. The full framework specification, including its relationship to established process theory, is shared with researchers under agreement. If the summary above raises the questions we hope it raises, we would genuinely like to hear them.
We welcome scrutiny
PULSE is being formally validated through an executed research agreement with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, including formalisation against established process theory. We think a framework that claims to improve on decades of BPM research should be examined with the tools of that research, and we are putting PULSE through exactly that.
We do not publish results before they exist, and we will not make claims the work does not yet support. What we can offer the academic community now is access to the platform, to the framework materials under agreement, and to a dedicated team that welcomes improvement and support.
PAL is free for academic use
If you research or teach in business process management, information systems, or a related field, we will provide PAL to you at no cost.
Academic access includes a full PAL environment for research or classroom use, framework materials shared under a straightforward research agreement, and direct access to the team that built the platform.
We ask for two things in return: that use stays within research and teaching, and that you tell us what you find, especially where PULSE falls short. Critical findings are more useful to us than kind ones.
Access is arranged through a conversation, not a signup form. Every enquiry is read and answered by the founding team.
Start the conversation
Tell us who you are, where you work, and what you are interested in studying or teaching. We respond to every academic enquiry personally.