Defining Flexible Workflow Execution Behaviors

In this paper, we focus on the definition and adaptation of the execution behavior of a task in order to support flexible workflows in the presence of distributed workflow enactment. We argue that an adequate behavior definition is the basis for both, modeling less-restrictive workflows in advance as well as supporting dynamic workflow changes. We show how different control flow dependency types can be specified in our approach and can be used to define less-restrictive workflows. Furthermore, we discuss the definition of an adequate behavior for dynamic modifications in different situations. In particular, we describe how the application of and reaction to dynamic changes can be adapted in our approach depending on the process context and the behavior of a task itself.