Workflow

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Workflow

Workflow at its simplest is the movement of documents and/or tasks through a work process. More specifically, workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure: how tasks are structured, who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked. As the dimension of time is considered in Workflow, Workflow considers "throughput" as a distinct measure. Workflow problems can be modeled and analyzed using graph-based formalisms like Petri nets.

While the concept of workflow is not specific to information technology, support for workflow is an integral part of document management and imaging software.

Distinction can be made between "scientific" and "business" workflow paradigms. While the former is mostly concerned with throughput of data through various algorithms, applications and services, the latter concentrates on scheduling task executions, including dependencies which are not necessarily data-driven and may include human agents.

Scientific workflows found wide acceptance in the fields of bioinformatics and cheminformatics in the early 2000s, where they successfully met the need for multiple interconnected tools, handling of multiple data formats and large data quantities. Also, the paradigm of scientific workflows was close to the well-established tradition of Perl scripting in life-science research organizations, so this adoption represented a natural step forward towards a more structured infrastructure setup.

Business workflows are more generic, being able to represent any structuring of tasks, and are equally applicable to task scheduling within a software application server and organizing a paper or electronic document trail within an organization. Their origins date back to the 1970s, when they were purely paper-based, and the principles from that period made the transition to modern IT infrastructure systems.

As a way of bridging the gap between the two, significant effort is being put into defining workflow patterns that can be used to compare and contrast different workflow engines across both of these domains.

Workflow components

Single steps or components of a workflow can basically be defined by three parameters:

input description
transformation rules, algorithms
output description

Components can only be plugged together, iff the output of one previous (set of) component(s) is equal to the mandatory input requirements of the following component. Thus, the essential description of a component actually comprises only in- and output, that are described fully in terms of data types and their meaning (semantics). The algorithms or rules description need only be included when there are several alternative ways to transform one type of input into one type of output, possibly with different accuracy, speed, etc..

Especially when the components are non-local services that are invoked remotely via a computer network, like Web services, additional descriptors like QoS, availability, etc. have to be considered, too.

Workflow systems

Workflow diagram systems are defined as "systems that help organizations to specify, execute, monitor, and coordinate the flow of work cases within a distributed office environment".

The system contains two basic components:

the workflow modeling component (sometimes called specification module , design environment or build time system) which enables administrators and analysts to define process and activities, analyze and simulate them, and assign them to people.
the workflow execution component, sometimes called the run-time system which most often consists of an
- execution interface seen by end-users and
- a workflow engine. The workflow engine is an execution environment which assists or performs the coordination of processes and activities. (See also: Load balancing (computing))

Workflow specification languages

Workflow diagrams rely on the use of standardized graphical notations to describe workflow structures. The Business Process Modeling Notation is an example for these graphical notations. Their language representations cover a wide range:

Workflow OSID
Job Definition Format
Web Service Composition Languages:
- BPEL, YAWL, BPML, WSFL, XLANG, SWSL
XPDL
Windows Workflow Foundation

Workflow application

A Workflow Application is where various applications, components and people must be involved in the processing of data to complete an instance of a process. For example, consider a purchase order that moves through various departments for authorization and eventual purchase. The orders may be treated as messages, which are put into various queues for processing. A workflow process involves constant change and update. You can introduce new components into the operation without changing any code.

References

Layna Fischer: Workflow Handbook 2005, Future Strategies, ISBN 0-9703509-8-8
Layna Fischer: Excellence in Practice, Volume V: Innovation and Excellence in Workflow and Business Process Management, ISBN 0-9703509-5-3
Holly Yu: Content and Work Flow Management for Library Websites: Case Studies, Information Science Publishing, ISBN 1591405343
Wil van der Aalst, Kees van Hee: Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems, B&T, ISBN 0-262-72046-9
Marlon Dumas, Wil van der Aalst, Arthur ter Hofstede: Process-Aware Information Systems, Wiley, ISBN 0-471-66306-9
Setrag Khoshafian, Marek Buckiewicz: Introduction to Groupware, Workflow and Workgroup Computing, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-02946-7
Rashid N. Kahn: Understanding Workflow Automation: A Guide to Enhancing Customer Loyalty, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-061918-3
Dan C. Marinescu: Internet-Based Workflow Management: Towards a Semantic Web, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-43962-2
Frank Leymann, Dieter Roller: Production Workflow: Concepts and Techniques, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-021753-0
Michael Jackson, Graham Twaddle: Business Process Implementation: Building Workflow Systems, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-17768-4
Alec Sharp, Patrick McDermott: Workflow Modeling, Artech House Publishers, ISBN 1-58053-021-4
Toni Hupp: Designing Work Groups, Jobs, and Work Flow, Pfeiffer & Company, ISBN 0-7879-0063-X
Gary Poyssick, Steve Hannaford: Workflow Reengineering, Adobe, ISBN 1568302657
Dave Chaffey: Groupware, Workflow and Intranets: Reengineering the Enterprise with Collaborative Software, Digital Press, ISBN 1-55558-184-6
Wolfgang Gruber: Modeling and Transformation of Workflows With Temporal Constraints, IOS Press, ISBN 1586034162
Andrzej Cichocki, Marek Rusinkiewicz, Darrell Woelk: Workflow and Process Automation Concepts and Technology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 0792380991
Alan R. Simon, William Marion: Workgroup Computing: Workflow, Groupware, and Messaging, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0070576289
Penny Ann Dolin: Exploring Digital Workflow, Delmar Thomson Learning, ISBN 1-4018-9654-5
Gary Poyssick: Managing Digital Workflow, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0130109118
Frank J. Romano: PDF Printing & Workflow, Prentice Hall, ISBN 013020837X
James G. Kobielus: Workflow Strategies, Hungry Minds, ISBN 0764530127
Alan Rickayzen, Jocelyn Dart, Carsten Brennecke: Practical Workflow for SAP, Galileo, ISBN 159229006X
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Angela Ashenden: E-process: Workflow for the E-business, Ovum, ISBN 1902566653
Stanislaw Wrycza: Systems Development Methods for Databases, Enterprise Modeling, and Workflow Management, Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, ISBN 0-306-46299-0
Database Support for Workflow Management, Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 0-7923-8414-8
Clarence A. Ellis: Workflow technology, Computer Supported Co-operative Work, M. Beaudouin-Lafon (ed.), John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1999, pp. 29-54
Matthew Searle: Developing With Oracle Workflow

External links

Workflow patterns
"Knowledge Based Techniques to Increase the Flexibility of Workflow Management" by Barbara Dellen, Frank Maurer, Gerhard Pews
The State of Workflow May 2004 article by Tom Baeyens
Business Process Modelling vs. Workflo Management

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