Flexible Workflow Management Systems: An Approach Based on Generic Process Models

Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with change. Since change is a fact of life, this limits the application of these systems. As a result, the workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow process is supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. This paper addresses this problem and tackles it by using generic process models. A generic process model describes a family of variants of the same workflow process. The approach presented in this paper allows for both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. It is a first step in the direction of truly flexible workflow management systems. It turns out that the trade-off between flexibility and support raises challenging questions and that generic processes can answer some of these questions.

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