Is it possible to make workflow management systems flexible? Dynamical systems approach to business processes

Abstract

One of the potential sources of the inflexibility in WFMS is the literal interpretation of the term workflow. This term suggests a special view on business process, i.e. "flow of work". This view works very well for manufacturing-like processes, but it is not very suitable for more soft, office processes. The authors suggest viewing the business process differently, namely, regard it as a trajectory, in the space of all possible states, i.e., state flow. The state-oriented presentation of processes is widely accepted in theory. Application of this approach to business processes gives another perspective to solving the flexibility problem. The execution control in the proposed approach is realized via the notion of valid state, where the state includes activities currently planned for the given process. If the process is not in a valid state, the activities can be added/removed to convert it into a valid one.

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