Validation of Agile Workflows using Simulation

Increasing automation of business processes and industrial demand for complex workflow features have led to the development of more flexible and agile workflow concepts. One of those concepts is the use of goal-oriented workflows, which rely on ideas derived from agent technology like describing the workflows based on a goal hierarchy. While this reduces the gap between business view and IT view and allows for easy implementation of contengencies, the concepts have greater conceptual abstraction obscuring the control flow and reducing the ability of workflow engineers to identify specification flaws in the workflow. This paper shows an approach to address this problem by presenting a system for testing and validating workflows within a specified parameter space. The system allows the definition of test cases (scenarios), each of which contains parameter states applied during workflow execution. The workflow engineer can define a set of scenarios for a workflow testing specific situation that are likely to occur during operation or are otherwise interesting corner cases, allowing automated tests and correction of faults before deployment of the workflow in production environments.