Dealing with workflow change: identification of issues and solutions

Workflow management technology aims at the automated support and coordination of business processes to reduce costs and flow times, and increase quality of service and productivity [19, 22, 23]. A critical challenge for workflow management systems is their ability to respond effectively to changes. Changes may range from momentary (ad-hoc) modifications of the process for a single customer to a complete restructuring for the workflow process to improve efficiency. Today’s workflow management systems are ill-suited to deal with change; they typically support a more or less idealized version of the preferred process. However, the real run-time process is often much more variable than the process specified at design-time. The only way to handle changes is to go behind the system’s back. If users are forced to bypass the workflow management system quite frequently, the system is more a liability than an asset. Therefore, we take up the challenge to find techniques to add flexibility without loosing the support provided by today’s systems. To clarify terminology, we introduce the basic workflow terms using the following five perspectives: (1) process perspective, (2) organization perspective, (3) information perspective, (4) operation perspective, and (5) integration perspective*. In the process perspective, workflow process definitions (workflow schemas) are defined to specify which tasks need to be executed and in what order (i.e., the routing or control flow). A task is an atomic piece of work. Workflow process definitions are instantiated for specific cases. Examples of cases are: a request for a mortgage loan, an insurance claim, a tax declaration, an order, or a request for information. Since a case is an instantiation of a process definition, it corresponds to the execution of concrete work according to the specified routing. In the organization perspective, the organizational structure and the population are specified. The organizational structure describes relations between roles (resource classes based on functional aspects)