Identifying Patterns of Workflow Design Relying on Organizational Structure Aspects

Modern organizations have demands of automation of their business processes, once they are highly complex and need to be efficiently executed. For this reason the number of systems based on information technologies able to provide a better documentation, standardization and co-ordination of the business process is increasing. In this context, workflow technology has been quite efficient, mainly for the automation of business processes. However, as it is an emergent technology and in constant evolution, workflow presents some limitations. One of the main limitations is the lack of techniques that guarantee correction and efficiency to the workflow project in the phases of requisite analysis and modeling. Taking into account these problems and having accomplished some studies, we formulated the hypothesis that it is possible to infer the specific workflow (sub)processes structure from knowledge on structural aspects of the organization and vice-versa. We made the verification of such hypothesis through the identification of a set of dependency rules among the aspects of the organizational structure and workflow (sub)processes. This paper presents the set of rules and the description of the technique used for the identification.