Accelerating Workflows with Fixed Date Constraints

Workflow systems execute workflows and assign work items to the work list of participants. As work lists usually hold multiple work items, participants have to decide which work item to handle next. When selecting a specific work item other work items must be postponed, which will in succession delay their appendant workflows. This may lead to disproportionately increased execution durations and turn around times if fixed-date constraints are defined on succeeding tasks. We propose a probabilistic method which assists the participant when deciding which work item to handle next, with the intention to decrease turnaround times and to avoid time-related escalations, by providing information about the delay to expect when postponing tasks.