Modelling the Dynamic Relationships Between Workflow Components

Whether the economy is strong or weak, competition is fierce. The need for business change to maintain a competitive edge comes faster in this rough business environment causing the business process model to get more dynamic and complex. However, one has to manage it so the efficiency of business processes are maximised. This paper develops a modelling approach for dynamic business processes, defining exceptions and enabling business strategies to be captured vigorously while simultaneously allowing changes to be handled. We introduce the MAO workflow model, and we propose the automation of workflow components using MDA 1 EXISTING WORKFLOW MODELS General Organisational Workflow Models In general, we found that most workflow modelling and workflow design are only concentrated on the operational aspects of the organisation (Siebert, 1996) (Sheth et al., 1998) (Marshak , 1994) (http://www.loria.fr/~skaf/cours/ workflow/workflow/sld00.htm) . Although operational aspects of workflow design are crucial to the organisation, we note that they are passive in changes and they are not dynamic. They only change when there is a management decision. Collaborative workflow is a new type of workflow that has to be integrated into the existing operational workflow. Marshak Organisational Workflow Model As per the paper by Marshak, R.T.: (Marshak , 1994), in any organisation, a workflow can be disseminated into three categories. a Ad-hoc workflows involve human coordination, collaboration, co-decision, and often appear in office processes such as product documentation or sales proposals. b Administrative workflows involve repetitive, predictable processes with simple task coordination rules, such as routing an expense report or travel request through an authorisation process. c Production workflows (automated tasks being performed repeatedly) production workflow encompasses an information process often involving interaction to one or more distributed/heterogeneous/autonomous information systems. Dr Hala Skaf-molli Workflow Model According to Dr Hala Skaf-molli (http://www.loria.fr/~skaf/cours/workflow/workflow/sld0 0.htm), workflow can be categorised into four groups. Figure 1: Categories of Workflow by Dr Hala Skaf-molli Lano’s Classification Figure 2: Lano’s Classification 495 Pudhota L., Chang E. and Davis J. (2004). MODELLING THE DYNAMIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN WORKFLOW COMPONENTS. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 495-500 DOI: 10.5220/0002628004950500 Copyright c © SciTePress According to Lano’s Classification, we see that supplier, customer, delivery and order are external to the organisational boundary and purchasing, operational and selling are classified as part of organisational boundary. This model is suitable for some organisations and may not be standard across other organisations. 2 ISSUES IN ORGANISATIONAL WORKFLOW COMPONENTS We find that an organisation would contain a number of organisational units and divisions, such as management, administration, operation and customer service. Each one of these organisational units could comprise of a number of smaller functional units for which each may have one or many workflow components for which they carry out specific tasks, responsibility and workflow processes. Therefore, an organisational workflow is a composition of a number of workflow components. Some workflow components are active when changes take place and some are passive. So far, no analysis has been done in literature for the classification of workflow components, their interrelationships or formal definition of their attributes and processes. There has been some existing workflow modelling techniques used in literature to help modelling the workflow and dynamic aspect of the workflow, such as Petri Nets (Aalst et al., 999), Event-driven Models, State Event and Action Rules (Nutt, 996) (Aalst et al., 2000), UML Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams and Extended Activity Diagrams (Gautama et al., 2000) (Gantama et al., 2003). We found that these techniques allow for modelling for existing processes. However, a. They don’t model the inter-relationship between the workflow components. Some aspect of concurrency and asynchronous execution of the different workflow process (i.e. multi-threading); and b. Their current use does not deal with the dynamic aspect of workflow models or provide a clear indication where the flexibility is allowed, when changes occur or how the organisation can adapt the changes at Just-In-Time; and c. These modelling techniques only model one aspect of organisational workflow, and sometimes have too low a level of representation and they are basically not applicable at the conceptual level of development of complex organisational workflow systems (Bossidy et al., 2003) (Chang et al., 2003). The necessity for modelling the workflow at a higher level of granularity that involves many subworkflow components and workflow processes, their interfaces, interaction and relationships 3 MAO MODEL [MANAGERIAL, ADMINISTRATIVE AND OPERATIONAL] In our study, we have found that there are many workflow components within an organisation and these workflow components interact with each other to achieve the organisation goals and objectives. Therefore, we disseminate the organisation workflow into following levels (refer to figure 3:) Operational workflow relates to the core business operations. It is usually measured by its performance and by the volume of its output. The operational workflow is the main source of value generation for the organisation. Administrative control workflows are involved in making decisions and prioritising tasks and scheduling tasks. The administrative task workflow is measured by its efficiency. Managerial workflow carries out business decisions, which in turn control entire business administration and is measured by the financial and final results. 3.1 MAO in Collaborative Workflow Environment The advent of the Internet has provided mechanisms to allow organisations to bind together, for carrying out sales over great distances at any time. It has created new modes for operation service and marketing and enabled partnerships previously inconceivable within a wide array of businesses as well as other human activities. A consequence of this connectivity and information richness is that one is faced with an increasingly dynamic business environment and workflow. Several factors characterise this collaboration (Chang et al., 2003), namely: A strong information infrastructure that extends beyond the original closed walls of the individual enterprise. High connectivity and electronic handling of information, of all sorts including data and documents. ICEIS 2004 INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION