Workflow management systems

Vol. 1096 T. Schal, Workflow Management Systems for Process Organisations. XII, 200 pages. 1996. 

We have developed an approach to integrate workflow processes into the overall design process and have realized a coupling of workflow management systems with AHEAD for use within an organization. Our approach is characterized by the following properties ... 

In order to reduce the effort for the integration of multiple workflow management systems, we make use of the neutral exchange format XDPL from the Workflow Management Coalition [1059]. The transformation between... 

There are several alternatives for the mapping of predefined partial workflow processes into dynamic task nets. On the one hand, the whole workflow process can be represented as a single task in the dynamic task net. Its activation reflects the start of the workflow instance within the workflow management system, while the termination of this task reflects the termination of the work-flow instance. In this case, the fine-grained activity structure of the workflow process is hidden black-box approach). This simple form of integration is sufficient in many situations, but because of the encapsulation it is impossible to monitor the progress of the activities in the workflow process within AHEAD. 

The AHEAD system and the workflow management system SHARK from... 

Workflow Instantiation. AHEAD automatically contacts the workflow management system and requests the creation of an instance of the corresponding workflow process deflnition. A new instance of the workflow deflnition is created and a reference to the instance is handed back to AHEAD (5). After all defined input data is transferred and provided as actual parameters to the workflow instance, the workflow is Anally started. 

Process Traceability. After the termination of the last workflow activity, the workflow instance is terminated in the workflow management system automatically. In AHEAD, the workflow fragment is still visible with all terminated workflow tasks of this fragment. All documents produced during the course of the workflow remain accessible in AHEAD. This allows for traceability of the overall process regardless if a part has been executed in AHEAD or in a workflow management system. 

The realization of the view-based cooperation model has required a number of extensions to this coupling mechanism with respect to the coupling of AHEAD systems and workflow management systems [129, 471]. Mainly, the application logic of AHEAD was substantively changed and extended in order to realize the new view-based concepts for process views, cooperation relationships, flexible configuration support, as well as the needed user interfaces for a view editor environment. 

AHEAD project management systems workflow management systems product management systems... 

Furthermore, the model contains the required process knowledge in case some workflow management system should be installed for supporting repetitive sub-processes of the overall design process. An efficient usage of these systems is often impeded by insufficient and imprecise definitions of the work-flows to be supported. 

In the next step, additional aspects of the work process are added to the model or described in a more precise way (2). Both the choice of aspects and the degree of detail depend on the intended applications of the work process model. For example, if a design process model is supposed to guide an inexperienced designer, behavioral aspects of the design process (such as the sequence of activities to be performed and conditions for their execution) can be expressed in natural language. In contrast, if the work process model is intended, for example, as input specification for a workflow management system, a formal and detailed description of behavioral aspects is required. 

Due to these features, AHEAD is ahead of state of the art systems for project, workflow, or document management. In particular, these systems cover only parts of the managerial configuration and do not integrate the managerial with the technical level. Common workflow management systems lack the support of dynamic changes within the task structure, which occur frequently in development processes. 

In the following subsection, we describe preliminary work for the transfer. We show how a commercial workflow management system can be used to execute task nets that are defined in the AHEAD system. After that, we describe the integration of the AHEAD system with various existing systems for project planning, email communication, and document management. 

The planned workflow management system for AMB-Informatik meets both issues. First, it provides support for the definition at build-time of work-flows and conformance rules via the conformance rules editor. Second, laws or domain specific regulations are enforced at runtime by checking dynamic changes of a workflow instance by a conformance checker before these changes actually take effect in the workflow instance. 

As described above, the workflow management system for AMB-Informatik... 

Like the process management system for Comos PT, the workflow management system for AMB-Informatik resides on top of an existing system. Hence, it has to be realized in an a-posteriori manner. In contrast to Comos PT, which focuses on product-related aspects of design processes, WebSphere BPMS mainly covers activity-related parts of a business process. WebSphere BPMS is therefore used as a building block for the new workflow management system for AMB-Informatik. It should be possible to substitute this block. 

The realization of the workflow management system is beneficial both in economic and research respect. The workflow management system empowers AMB-Informatik to support dynamic business processes, which WebSphere BPMS does not provide itself. The workflow management system does not replace WebSphere BPMS but extends it such that subsequent integration problems can be avoided. 

Hagen, C., Alonso, G. Exception handling in workflow management systems. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 26(10), 943-958 (2000)... 

Heinl, P., Horn, S., Jablonski, S., Neeb, J., Stein, K., Teschke, M. A comprehensive approach to flexibility in workflow management systems. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 24(2), 79-88 (1999)... 

Weske, M. Formal foundations and conceptual design of dynamic adaptations in a workflow management system. In Proceedings of the 34 Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Maui, Hawaii, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2001)... 

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