Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows for e-commerce and Web service applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying Quality of Service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows, the underlying workflow system must accept the specifications and be able to estimate, monitor, and control the QoS rendered to customers. In this paper, we present a predictive QoS model that makes it possible to compute the quality of service for workflows automatically based on atomic task QoS attributes. To this end, we present a model that specifies QoS and describe an algorithm and a simulation system in order to compute, analyze and monitor workflow QoS metrics.

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Modeling Quality of Service for Workflows and Web Service Processes

Today‘s workflow management systems (WFMS_s) are only applicable in a secure and safe manner if the business process (BP) to be supported is well-structured and there is no need for ad hoc deviations at run-time. As only few BPs are static in this sense, this significantly limits the applicability of current workflow (WF) technology. On the other hand, to support dynamic deviations from premodeled task sequences must not mean that the responsibility for the avoidance of consistency problems and run-time errors is now completely shifted to the (naive) end user. In this paper we present a formal foundation for the support of dynamic structural changes of running WF instances. Based upon a formal WF model (ADEPT), we define a complete and minimal set of change operations (ADEPT_flex) that support users in modifying the structure of a running WF, while maintaining its (structural) correctness and consistency. The correctness properties defined by ADEPT are used to determine whether a specific change can be applied to a given WF instance or not. If these properties are violated, the change is either rejected or the correctness must be restored by handling the exceptions resulting from the change. We discuss basic issues with respect to the management of changes and the undoing of temporary changes at the instance level. Recently we have started the design and implementation of ADEPT_workflow, the ADEPT workflow engine, which will make use of the change facilities presented in this paper.

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Adept _flex —Supporting Dynamic Changes of Workflows Without Losing Control

https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2096&context=knoesis

Quality of Service for Workflows and Web Service Processes

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs), which offer promising perspectives for more flexible enterprise computing. The emergence of different process support paradigms and the lack of methods for comparing existing approaches enabling PAIS changes have made the selection of adequate process management technology difficult. This paper suggests a set of 18 change patterns and seven change support features to foster the systematic comparison of existing process management technology in respect to process change support. While the proposed patterns are all based on empirical evidence from several large case studies, the suggested change support features constitute typical functionalities provided by flexible PAISs. Based on the proposed change patterns and features, we provide a detailed analysis and evaluation of selected approaches from both academia and industry. The presented work will not only facilitate the selection of technologies for realizing flexible PAISs, but can also be used as a reference for implementing flexible PAISs.

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Change patterns and change support features - Enhancing flexibility in process-aware information systems

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-642-67868-4_4.pdf

Spatial Vision in Arthropods

Usually, for a particular business process different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a reference process model to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary process management tools do not adequately support the modeling of such process variants. Either the variants have to be specified as separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods often lead to redundancies making model adaptations a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this article, we discuss selected concepts of the Provop approach for modeling and managing process variants. A particular process variant can be configured at a high level of abstraction by applying a set of well-defined change operations to a reference process model. In particular, this article discusses advanced concepts for the design and modeling of such a reference process model as well as for the adjustments required to configure the different process variants. Altogether, Provop provides a flexible and powerful solution for process variant management. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Capturing variability in business process models: the Provop approach

/pdf/capturing-variability-in-business-process-models-the-provop-1lftqe8hkn.pdf

In large organizations different users or user roles have distinguishedperspectives over business processes and related data. Personalizedviews of the managed processes are needed. Existing BPM tools,however, do not provide adequate mechanisms for building and visualizingsuch views. Very often processes are displayed to users in the sameway as drawn by the process designer. To tackle this inflexibility thispaper presents a visualization approach, which allows to create personalizedprocess views based on well-defined, parameterizable operations.Respective view operations can be flexibly composed in order to reduceor aggregate process information in the desired way. This allows us toconsider the specific needs of the respective applications (e.g., processmonitoring tools or process editors). Altogether, the realized view conceptenables advanced support for process visualization.

View-based process visualization

When designing process-aware information systems, often variants of the same process have to be specified. Each variant then constitutes an adjustment of a particular process to specific requirements building the process context. Current Business Process Management (BPM) tools do not adequately support the management of process variants. Usually, the variants have to be kept in separate process models. This leads to huge modeling and maintenance efforts. In particular, more fundamental process changes (e.g., changes of legal regulations) often require the adjustment of all process variants derived from the same process; i.e., the variants have to be adapted separately to meet the new requirements. This redundancy in modeling and adapting process variants is both time consuming and error-prone. This paper presents the Provop approach, which provides a more flexible solution for managing process variants in the process life cycle. In particular, process variants can be configured out of a basic process following an operational approach; i.e., a specific variant is derived from the basic process by applying a set of well-defined change operations to it. Provop provides full process life cycle support and allows for flexible process configuration resulting in a maintainable collection of process variants.

Managing Process Variants in the Process Life Cycle

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Thomas Bauer

Papers

Capturing variability in business process models: the Provop approach

Capturing variability in business process models: the Provop approach

View-based process visualization

Managing Process Variants in the Process Life Cycle

Managing Process Variants in the Process Life Cycle