ATREUS: a model for the conceptual representation of a workflow

Journal of Software Engineering and Applications

Workflow-based systems are typically said to lead to better use of staff and better management and productivity. The first phase in building a workflow-based system is capturing the real-world process in a conceptual representation suit-able for the following phases of formalization and implementation. The specification may be in text or diagram form or written in a formal language. This paper proposes a flow-based diagrammatic methodology as a tool for workflow specification. The expressiveness of the method is appraised though its ability to capture a workflow-based application. Here we show that the proposed conceptual diagrams are able to express situations arising in practice as an alternative to tools currently used in workflow systems. This is demonstrated by using the proposed methodology to partial build demo systems for two government agencies.

Scholars usually have to deal with many different type of documents spread in vary stages, especially in the case of big projects. Piles and piles of documents scattered in many folders waiting for tagging, revision, approval or whatever it is that needs to be completed. There are workflow management tools available to help us, but they often are too specialized and somewhat complex to use. So, how can we make them easier and more flexible?

Abstract Scientists increasingly use workflows to represent and share their computational experiments. Because of their declarative nature, focus on pre-existing component composition and the availability of visual editors, workflows are often seen as more “natural” than programming or scripting languages for representing data analysis procedures. However, there is still a significant gap between the naturalness of workflow representations and natural language.

2010

Supporting business processes through the help of workflow systems is a necessary prerequisite for many companies to stay competitive. An important task is the specification of workflow, i.e. the parts of a business process that can be supported by a computer-based system. "Agradece a la llama su luz, pero no olvides el pie del candil que, constante y paciente, la sostiene en la sombra". {Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder standing in the shade with constancy of patience}. Rabindranath Tagore This thesis would never have become reality without the help and suggestions of many supportive people. My biggest thanks go to Professor Dr. Jean Vanderdonckt, my supervisor, for his wisdom, invaluable guidance and professionalism from the beginning to the end in the course of my research. Professor Vanderdonckt has been an excellent mentor and has provided unfailing support throughout my Ph.D. course and my stay in Belgium.

1997

Business Process Management Journal, 2003

Workflow management includes concepts of special interest to the business organization field and for the automation of processes within a company. However, process modeling via workflow specifications and workflow management systems can be applied in any field where a workflow exists. The use of CASE tools provides a great increase in performance in information system development but, on the other hand, these tools do not support group work and make skipped steps possible in a methodology. Applying workflow management systems as a meta-CASE tool together with the use of cooperative methodologies ± that aim to capture user requirements ± can help us to solve problems related to shortcomings in monitoring, controls, and audit information system development.

ACM SIGOIS Bulletin, 1995

issue of learning and adaptation was important and that it would be worthwhile to further elaborate upon it. We will therefore suggest a workshop on this topic for the European Computer Supported Cooperative Work conference to take place on the 9th to 15th of September 1995 in Stockholm. The tentative topic will be: Presentation and discussion of ideas with respect to organizational learning-1. from the point of view of socially organized work 2. from the point of view of requirements and design of systems to support organizational, learning and memory Position papers (starred papers included in SIGOIS Bulletin v.15 n.1, December 1994): Esa Auram~iki and Mikko Kovalainen: Computer support for sharing and extending expertise in paper process. Workshop Reports and Papers: CSCW'94 Rodney Fuller: The Model Class Discovery Dilemma in Computer-Supported Work Environments-from Critical Incidents to Metrics of Coordination Sture H~igglund and Rego Granlund: Collaborative C3I Decision Making and Training. *** Christine A. Halverson: Traffic Management in Air Traffic Control-Collaborative management in Real time. *** Patricia M. Jones: Cooperative work in distributed supervisory control: Towards intelligent collaborative support. *** Carla Simone: Requirements of a technology supporting collaborative process management Yvonne W~ern: Collaboration between people, machines and computers in complex process management-some theoretical reflections Workflow = OIS? A Report of a Workshop at the CSCW'94 Conference

1997

Knowledge of the cooperative work processes characterizing an organization is a fundamental patrimony not only for people involved in their automation but also for the whole organization in performing its everyday activities. The paper focuses on workflow technology as a set of tools both supporting coordination and enhancing management of the knowledge of work and learning processes within a group of people coordinating their own activities. The paper presents a framework for the construction of coordination mechanisms whose design principles and tools make them a technology enabling the sharing of knowledge about processes and the incremental learning of people within the organization. These claims are illustrated through a working example.

Handbook of Research on Business Process Modeling

Due to the absence of commonly accepted conceptual and formal foundations for workflow management, and more generally Business Process Management (BPM), a plethora of approaches to process modelling and execution exists both in academia and in industry. The introduction of workflow patterns provided a deep and language independent understanding of modelling issues and requirements encountered in business process specification. They provide a comparative insight into various approaches to process specification and serve as guidance for language and tool development. YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) is a novel and formally defined workflow language based on workflow patterns and Petri nets, thus leveraging off both practical and theoretical insights in the field of BPM. This chapter provides an overview of this language and its corresponding open source support environment.

2019

A mathematical heuristic model was proposed to analyze the flow of information in administrative workflows. e model starts from a conceptual analysis from the perspective of probabilistic systems, information theory, and information entropy. e main parameters of the analysis are to identify theoretically a workflow as a hybrid dynamic system where the probabilistic distribution of the information, the time of information processing, and the precision with which the workflow is executed are caused by the cognitive performance of agents within a complex adaptive system. e model of analysis provides support for the search for empirical evidence in workflow investigations, highlighting the presence or absence of agent ad hoc methods and their influence on firm's productivity.

Social, Managerial, and Organizational Dimensions of Enterprise Information Systems

This chapter proposes a cooperative methodology for information system (IS) development, focusing on the end user’s collaboration in the process, providing the training and tools required to obtain the characteristics of the processes in which he/she is involved and actively integrating the user in the IS development team. Each of the steps involved in IS development is coordinated by a meta-CASE tool based on a workflow management system (WfMS). An important characteristic of the authors’ methodology is the utilization of tools that allow to realize functions of reengineering to adapt existing systems allowing to add new functionalities or modifying the already existing ones. This methodology provides a high degree of reliability in the development of the system, creating competitive advantages for the organization by reducing times and costs in the generation of the information system (IS).

Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, 2005

Executing workflows on large-scale heterogeneous distributed computing systems is a challenging task. Albeit there have been many well elaborated approaches, they are often motivated by a certain class of applications and focus on some implementation specific problems. The work presented in this paper aimed at establishing a highly abstract coordination model for distributed workflow enactment where decentralized control, autonomy, adaptation to high dynamics and partial lack of information are of primary concerns. The model is based on a nature metaphor and envisioned as a chemical reaction where molecules react autonomously according to local and actual conditions. The execution model of such chemical workflow enactment is formalized using the γ-calculus. In the γ-calculus control, scheduling, dependencies, errors and the state of the computation are all represented in a single uniform declarative formalism that has a mathematically founded clear semantics. The paper shows that the abstract coordination model expressed in γ-calculus is able to grasp all aspects of such a chemical enactment, provides a more complex and adaptive framework than most current approaches, and actual realizations may be founded on it.

This paper presents a formal semantics for the Taverna 2 scientific workflow system. Taverna 2 is a successor to Taverna, an open-source workflow system broadly adopted within the e-science community worldwide. The new version improves upon the existing model in two main ways: (i) by adding support for data pipelining, which in turns enables input streams of indefinite length to be processed efficiently; and (ii) by providing new extensibility points that make it possible to add new operators to the workflow model. Consistent with previous work by some of the authors, we use trace semantics to describe the effect of workflow computations, and we show how they can be used to describe the new features in the Taverna 2 model.

2012

began to explore the potential for cooperation in an emerging field then still referred to as 'Computational Philology.' Eventually in the School of Humanities the 'Arbeitsstelle Computerphilologie', one of the first institutions of its kind in Germany, was established.