Service Oriented Application System Architetcture: Business Process Management Meets Workflow Management

The research field “Services Science” deals with the opportunities and challenges of service sectors inside and outside organizations, aiming at the industrialization (global division of labor and automation) of these sectors. This goal can only be reached when the performance know-how an individual needs to execute a task can be language-critically reconstructed and managed with the aid of computers, like is the case with application software. By transforming the performance know-how into a linguistic schema that has been set up according to a human task, this “materialized know-how” –through the linguistic carrier– becomes available like a serviceable tool. Such materialization may take the form of a detailed process description through modeling languages. It can be managed –together with the IT supported processes– by business process management. The controlling of process execution can be conducted through workflow management systems. That way the process control logic is established on a technological basis.