Flexibility Issues in Workflow Management Systems

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Flexibility Issues in Workflow Management Systems

• BPMDS'05 Workshop
• Portugal, June 2005

Michael Dobrovnik michi_at_groiss.com Groiss
Informatics Klagenfurt, Austria

• Elke Hochmüller
• E.Hochmueller_at_cti.ac.at
• Carinthia Tech Institute
• Klagenfurt, Austria

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Motivation

• Todays ever changing turbulent business reality
  requires flexibility
• fast process definition
• user involvement in process definition
• fast reaction to changed organizational or
  environmental constraints
• efficient and effective handling of special cases
  and unforeseen situations

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Flexibility Issues Requirements in WFMSs

• Environmental Flexibility Requirements
• highly heterogeneous environments are in a
  constant state of flux
• maximum of operational flexibility by minimizing
  technical environmental constraints
• Organizational Flexibility Requirements
• global economy calls for constant continuous and
  proactive adaptation of organizational structures
• complex reorganizations must be carefully planned
  and implemented
• Process Flexibility Requirements
• it is not feasible to try to prescribe everything
  in advance
• construction support of process versions and
  variants

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Environmental Flexibility Requirements 1

• Location Flexibility (Mobility)
• process support independent of the users current
  location
• web-access, (temporarily) disconnected operation
• Device and Media Flexibility
• coping with technical limitations of
  light-weight equipment (PDA, cell-phone, )
• providing user-adequate interfaces
• Distribution and Platform Flexibility
• device independency requires concurrent
  availability of the system on different platforms
• location independency requires a distributed
  architecture of communication subsystems
• ?Ubiquitous Process Support

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Environmental Flexibility Requirements 2

• Consequences on the system architecture
• distribution/platform flexibility and
  device/media flexibility
• issues quite the same as those posed on
  traditional enterprise information systems
• Impacts in areas of security, scalability,
  availability, maintainability,
• mobile disconnected users
• implications on the work organization and
  workflow type design
• shared role worklists / team worklists with
  "pull assignment"
• explicit assignment of work items "push style"
• by a particular coordinating instance
• manifested as special dispatch or resource
  allocation step in a process definition

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Organizational Flexibility Requirements 1

• Wide range of different organizational changes
• routine, simple, day-to-day, minimal impact vs.
• complex, seldom, deep impact
• Substitutions for Users
• simple delegations of whole business cases
• temporal or permanent substitution of a user
  (planned/leave, unplanned/ sickness)
• substitution for all or of a subset of their
  roles
• Departmental Restructuring
• change place in hierarchy, splitting and merging
  of organizational units
• flexible role system
• adapting the organizational scope of running
  process instances (competence transfer)
• traceability of finished processes

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Organizational Flexibility Requirements 2

• Organizational Restructuring
• enterprise-wide restructuring
• company mergers
• "big bang" (discreet point in time)
• Temporal Organizational Units
• With limited lifetime in special circumstances
• process teams or ad-hoc task forces

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Organizational Flexibility Requirements 3

• Consequences on the System Architecture
  (User/Role/Organizational Model)
• to cope with versions and temporal variations
• preserving historic information about prior
  organizational constellations for
• monitoring
• traceability

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Process Flexibility Requirements 1

• Support for versions and variants
• process execution policies may and will vary over
  time
• continuous adoption and improvement
• Anticipated Flexibility (flexibility by
  selection)
• actual execution path determined by selecting one
  of the predefined alternatives
• calculated or by user choice / judgment
• predefined must have been accounted for
• must have been dealt with during req.spec /
  analysis
• ? ask for the standard-case, but also ask for
  special/complex cases
• limited variability, but arbitrary conditions and
  restrictions can be applied

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Process Flexibility Requirements 2

• Standard Ad-hoc Extension Mechanisms
• re-execution of tasks (go back with possible
  compensation)
• reassignment of tasks to other users
• omission of (non-essential) tasks
• augmentation by adding single tasks or new parts
  of execution path
• send copy to someone
• process templates (cf. flexibility by adaptation)
  "Schimmelakt / Simile"

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Process Flexibility Requirements 3

• Ad-hoc Execution and Ex-Post Process Definition
• highest degree of flexibility
• complete ad-hoc execution of process instances in
  an explorative manner
• analysis of historical process instance data for
  ex-post process definition

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Process Flexibility Requirements 4

• Consequences on the System Architecture
• transition rules to facilitate instance migration
  between versions of process definitions
• explicit language elements distinguishing various
  kinds of flexibility lead to enhanced
  comprehension
• if system evaluated condition
• choice user selected process path
• communication support for transparent user
  decisions
• notes stating the reasoning behind decisions,
  comments for successor participants
• control mechanisms which limit the permissible
  ad-hoc modifications
• "static" user rights
• dynamic conditions on process instance state or
  data
• extension framework exposed via API allows for
  programmatical and even reflexive process
  instance adaptation

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Conclusion

• Workflow Management Systems are meant to
  support/enact business processes
• Should provide technological framework for a
  process oriented organization
• make it easier / feasible to incorporate
  continuous organizational improvements
• Must be flexible
• technology-neutral
• support fluctuations in organizational structure
• provide process flexibility
• versions
• (controlled) ad-hoc mechanisms