Workflow Quality of Service

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In ecommerce processes, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of service. Management of such QoS directly impacts success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Organizations operating in modern markets require an excellent degree of quality of service management. Products and services must be available to customers with well-defined specifications. A good management of quality leads to the creation of quality products and services, which in turn fulfills customer expectations and achieves customer satisfaction. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflow processes, the underlying WfMS must accept the specification, be able to predict, monitor, and control the QoS rendered to customers. To achieve these objectives the first step is to develop an adequate QoS model for workflow processes and develop methods to compute QoS.