A learning component for workflow management systems

In order to compete in today's rapidly changing business environments, an organization has to be able to continuously adjust to new requirements and situations. Two strategies towards achieving this goal are organizational memory and organizational learning. At an abstract level, organizational memory means to store and manage the information an enterprise acquires during performance of their business processes. Organizational learning on the other hand means to use this information in order to continuously improve the knowledge about business performance. The topic of the paper is the support of organizational memory and organizational learning by workflow management systems (WFMSs). A WFMS implements the process definition/instantiation/enactment paradigm and thus relies on an explicit representation of knowledge about how to perform business processes. The authors propose the storing, managing and reuse of this knowledge in order to realize a learning organization.

[1]  Donald A. Schön,et al.  Organizational Learning: A Theory Of Action Perspective , 1978 .

[2]  Dieter Merkl,et al.  Classifying software process models based on natural language descriptions , 1996, Proceedings of 7th International Conference and Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications: DEXA 96.

[3]  Ivar Jacobson,et al.  The object advantage - business process reengineering with object technology , 1994 .

[4]  Reidar Conradi,et al.  A conceptual framework for evolving software processes , 1993, SOEN.

[5]  Charles W. Krueger,et al.  Software reuse , 1992, CSUR.

[6]  J. Dewey.  Logic, the theory of inquiry , 1938 .

[7]  Massimo Marraffa,et al.  Organizational learning II: Theory, method and practice , 1998 .

[8]  L. Christman.  Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness , 1977 .

[9]  W. Edwards Deming,et al.  Out of the Crisis , 1982 .

[10]  Donald A. Schön,et al.  Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice , 1995 .

[11]  Reidar Conradi,et al.  Concepts for evolving software processes , 1994 .

[12]  Minder Chen,et al.  A framework for integrated CASE , 1992, IEEE Software.

[13]  Dieter Merkl,et al.  A Connectionist View on Document Classification , 1995, Australasian Database Conference.

[14]  Teuvo Kohonen,et al.  Self-Organizing Maps , 2010 .

[15]  A Min Tjoa,et al.  Process model reuse to promote organizational learning in software development , 1996, Proceedings of 20th International Computer Software and Applications Conference: COMPSAC '96.

[16]  Jorma Laaksonen,et al.  SOM_PAK: The Self-Organizing Map Program Package , 1996 .

[17]  Carlo Ghezzi,et al.  A framework for formalizing inconsistencies and deviations in human-centered systems , 1996, TSEM.

[18]  Gustavo Stubrich.  The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization , 1993 .

[19]  Victor R. Basili,et al.  Support for comprehensive reuse , 1991, Softw. Eng. J..

[20]  Mark Dowson,et al.  Towards Requirements for Enactment Mechanisms , 1994, EWSPT.