- Email: [email protected]
Goal-Oriented Workflows
Copyright @ IFAC Automated Systems Based on Human Skill, Aachen,Gennany,2000
GOAL-ORIENTED WORKFLOWS
Inara Sedvalde and Marite Kirikova
Systems Theory Professor's Group Riga Technical University, 1 Kalku Street RTga, LV-1658, Latvia e-mails:[email protected]@itl.rtu.lv
Abstract: In recent years workflow management systems have become a well known option of work automatisation. However, there are several disadvantages that lessen improvements in work organisation achieved by application of the workflow management systems. The main problem is the strict definitions of tasks imposed by the systems. The strictness of the definition hinders employees' productivity and creativity. Different attempts are made by workflow specialists to overcome those difficulties. The hypothesis under investigation is that the goal-oriented workflow definition can solve the problem at least partly. In the goal-oriented definition goals, not tasks are structured and assigned by the workflow adminstrator. Copyright @ 2000 IFAC Keywords: Cognitive systems, Co-operation, Dynamic systems, Group work, Information systems, Management systems, Process automation.
1. INTRODUCTION Most of workflow products that are offered in the market support structured workflows (Hales, 1997). However, processes that happen in organizations can not be foreknown fully. Therefore workflow management systems need more flexibility than the structured workflows can offer. The possibility to change a defined workflow at run-time and not after the execution of a particular task is very important. Goal-oriented workflow definition is an attempt to design more flexible workflow systems than the structured ones.
Recently workflow technology has come into many offices and organizations. This technology has gained its popularity, because it gave a possibility to automate many routine procedures in organizations (Hales, 1997). Workflow management systems provide two main functions: ( I) modelling of workflows and (2) execution of those workflows (Kamath and Ramamritham). Workflow modelling can be based on several different approaches, for example, Petri nets, Data Flow Diagramrns, PERT charts etc (Schneider and Schweitzer, Barros and Hofstede, 1998). Such approaches as Speech Act Theory also has been used for workflow modelling (Schal, 1996). In many cases the modelling is supported by special tools (usually with graphical user interfaces) that correspond to the particular approach in use (Hales, 1997).
The paper is structured as follows. Benefits and disadvantages of the existing workflow systems are listed in Section 2. Approaches to lessen the disadvantages are diScussed in Section 3. The goaloriented workflow is shortly described in Section 4. Section 5 consists of brief conclusions.
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workflow management systems more flexible is to introduce ad-hoc workflows. M. Reichert and P. Dadam offer an approach that is based on ADEPT model and provides a set of operations that can be made with defined workflow at run-time to make this workflow flexible. The set of operations consists of dynamic insertion of the task, dynamic deletion of the task and changing the task sequences at run-time. This approach determines special sequence of actions which are necessary for managing dynamic changes in workflow. The sequence anticipates insertion of null tasks, which perform no action. After the dynamic change is made, the null tasks have to be removed. The removal is done by using a set of reduction rules, that helps to preserve the defined sequence of tasks in workflow. However, not all adhoc workflows can help to solve the problem of strictly defined workflows, because not always the workflow can be defined at run-time, which is an important factor.
2. BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF WORKWLOW SYSTEMS Although workflow management systems have given new opportunities in automatisation of routine tasks, they simultaneusly have caused several serious problems with respect to working conditions of employees. Some of workflow management systems' benefits are the following ones: • due to workflow systems introduction organizations start to think about business processes that take place in them and therefore are more capable to achieve higher quality of work (Dahlgaard, et aI., 1998) • when workflow management system is introduced, there is a possibility to control the processes, e.g., it is possible to know which employee is working at which task at the particular moment of time. • standard procedures are used in organizations, that again raises the organisations capability to perform tasks at high level of quality. • the process in an organisation is well analysed and therefore employees, e.g., do not have to enter information repeatedly or perform other tasks that can be avoided by shared information spaces and automated procedures
Another way of defining workflows flexibly is Speech Act theory based approach (Schal, 1996). It asserts that there is a conversation between two persons - a customer and a supplier. According to this theory an action workflow protocol is used, which requires to follow the following four steps (I) request phase, (2) commitment phase, (3) performance phase and (4) evaluation phase. All those four phases can be considered as a closed loop in which customer and supplier communicate. In the loop the customer makes a request for some action, the supplier agrees to do that, then the supplier does the work and the customer appreciates the work that has been done. Even complex workflows can be modeled using this approach if subworkflows are involved. Speech Act based workflows concentrate on such issues as answers to the folowing questions: Who are the customer and supplier?, What are the conditions of satisfaction?, How each of four phases in the loop is carried out?, and How are the single loops related to each other?
Disadvantages of workflow management systems relevant to this paper are the following ones: • workflows are strictly defined before the work processes are accomplished, therefore it becomes hard to change the way of working in situations when a recension in the environment occurs • employees are not involved in the definition of the workflow and therefore not always can influence the outlook of the system, understand the sytem properly and adjust to it. • many important details and small tasks sometimes are omitted in the definition of the workflow • employees may have a feeling that they are observed, because they receive remainders about the tasks that they have to perform.
4. PUTTING EMPHASIS ON GOALS Although different attempts to overcome the existing disadvantages of workflows are made, the main problem still remains. It is a problem of how to introduce the well structured and transparent workflow that does not hinder employees' productivity and creativity.
The disadvantages of workflow management systems described above seriosly hinder employees' productivity and creativity.
There is a hypothesis that the goal-oriented workflow definition could solve the problem at least partly. In the goal-oriented approach workflows are defined as well structured sequences of goals not tasks. Each goal has its own restrictions and instructions. The definition of the goal sequence is very similar to the
3. OVERCOMING THE DISADVANTAGES? A considerable deal of effor\ has been put into attempts to prevent the disadvantages of workflow systems listed in the previous section (Reichert and Dadam). One of the suggested ways how to make the
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definition of business process or workflow. Up to the point of the goal sequence definition the process remains well defined, because there is no possibility to change the predefined sequence of goals. The flexibility appears at the moment when an employee or a working team receives the goal that has to be achieved. From this point on each person or a group of persons can define their own workflow by using ADEPT model for dynamic changes (see Section 3). In this way, on the one hand, the whole process is well defined, and therefore an organisation's work is well structured, and, on the other hand, each employee or working team can define their own workflow, and thus they do not have to follow predefined procedures they have never seen or heard about. Therefore the employees' creativity and high level of freedom are preserved.
5. CONCLUSIONS Goal-oriented workflow is proposed as an alternative tool for overcoming some disadvantages of current workflow systems. The purpose of the approach is to introduce the workflow sytems that do not hinder employees' creativity and freedom of action. The approach aims at both: transparency and flexibility of the workflow system. The transparency of the sytem is achieved by predefined sequence of goals. The flexibility is supported by local definition of task sequences. Futher research on practical applicability of the goal-oriented workflow is in progress.
REFERENCES There is a considerable difference between goaloriented workflow definition and Speech Act Theory based approach. Speech Act Theory mostly observes just a speech act, but doesn't concentrate on the whole environment in which those speech acts happen. Therefore the goals of each customer become clear, but the goals of organization as a whole are invisible. However, according to System Theory the system has to be observed as a whole and not as a set of independent components (Checkland and Scholes, 1996). Speech act theory characterises the system from the point of view that shows the relationships between persons, who are working in an organization, but it does not consider the system in general regarding the goals and structure of the system. In speech act theory the goals of the whole system can be divided in the goals of each employee and, if each employee through his communication sends these goals to the next one, then this approach can show the goals of the whole system just like goal-oriented workflow definition. It is important to notice that the work in organization is more like a process and not a communication between employees, therefore it is so essential to preserve the structure of this process and the sequence of achievable goals.
Barros, A.P. and A.H.M. ter Hofstede (1998).Towards the construction of workflowsuitable conceptual modelling techniques, Info Systems J, 8, 313-337. Checkland, P. and J. Scholes (1996). Soft Systems Methodology in Action, John Wiley and Sons, West Sussex, England. Dahlgaard, J.J., K. Kristensen and G.K. Kanji (1998). Fundamentals of Total Quality Management: Process Analysis and Improvement. Chapman&Hall. Hales, K. (1997). Workflow in Context. In: Workflow Handbook 1997 (Lawrence, P. (Ed)), 27-33. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Great Britan. Kamath, M., Ramamritham, K. Correctness Issues in Workflow Management. Reichert, M., Dadam, P. ADEPTflex - Supporting Dynamic Changes of Workflows Without Loosing Control. Schal, T. (1996) Workflow Management Systems for Process Organisations. Springer, Germany. Schneider, G., Schweitz, J. Workflow-ManagementSysteme koordinieren Arbeitsprozesse.
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GOAL-ORIENTED WORKFLOWS
Inara Sedvalde and Marite Kirikova
Systems Theory Professor's Group Riga Technical University, 1 Kalku Street RTga, LV-1658, Latvia e-mails:[email protected]@itl.rtu.lv
Abstract: In recent years workflow management systems have become a well known option of work automatisation. However, there are several disadvantages that lessen improvements in work organisation achieved by application of the workflow management systems. The main problem is the strict definitions of tasks imposed by the systems. The strictness of the definition hinders employees' productivity and creativity. Different attempts are made by workflow specialists to overcome those difficulties. The hypothesis under investigation is that the goal-oriented workflow definition can solve the problem at least partly. In the goal-oriented definition goals, not tasks are structured and assigned by the workflow adminstrator. Copyright @ 2000 IFAC Keywords: Cognitive systems, Co-operation, Dynamic systems, Group work, Information systems, Management systems, Process automation.
1. INTRODUCTION Most of workflow products that are offered in the market support structured workflows (Hales, 1997). However, processes that happen in organizations can not be foreknown fully. Therefore workflow management systems need more flexibility than the structured workflows can offer. The possibility to change a defined workflow at run-time and not after the execution of a particular task is very important. Goal-oriented workflow definition is an attempt to design more flexible workflow systems than the structured ones.
Recently workflow technology has come into many offices and organizations. This technology has gained its popularity, because it gave a possibility to automate many routine procedures in organizations (Hales, 1997). Workflow management systems provide two main functions: ( I) modelling of workflows and (2) execution of those workflows (Kamath and Ramamritham). Workflow modelling can be based on several different approaches, for example, Petri nets, Data Flow Diagramrns, PERT charts etc (Schneider and Schweitzer, Barros and Hofstede, 1998). Such approaches as Speech Act Theory also has been used for workflow modelling (Schal, 1996). In many cases the modelling is supported by special tools (usually with graphical user interfaces) that correspond to the particular approach in use (Hales, 1997).
The paper is structured as follows. Benefits and disadvantages of the existing workflow systems are listed in Section 2. Approaches to lessen the disadvantages are diScussed in Section 3. The goaloriented workflow is shortly described in Section 4. Section 5 consists of brief conclusions.
83
workflow management systems more flexible is to introduce ad-hoc workflows. M. Reichert and P. Dadam offer an approach that is based on ADEPT model and provides a set of operations that can be made with defined workflow at run-time to make this workflow flexible. The set of operations consists of dynamic insertion of the task, dynamic deletion of the task and changing the task sequences at run-time. This approach determines special sequence of actions which are necessary for managing dynamic changes in workflow. The sequence anticipates insertion of null tasks, which perform no action. After the dynamic change is made, the null tasks have to be removed. The removal is done by using a set of reduction rules, that helps to preserve the defined sequence of tasks in workflow. However, not all adhoc workflows can help to solve the problem of strictly defined workflows, because not always the workflow can be defined at run-time, which is an important factor.
2. BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES OF WORKWLOW SYSTEMS Although workflow management systems have given new opportunities in automatisation of routine tasks, they simultaneusly have caused several serious problems with respect to working conditions of employees. Some of workflow management systems' benefits are the following ones: • due to workflow systems introduction organizations start to think about business processes that take place in them and therefore are more capable to achieve higher quality of work (Dahlgaard, et aI., 1998) • when workflow management system is introduced, there is a possibility to control the processes, e.g., it is possible to know which employee is working at which task at the particular moment of time. • standard procedures are used in organizations, that again raises the organisations capability to perform tasks at high level of quality. • the process in an organisation is well analysed and therefore employees, e.g., do not have to enter information repeatedly or perform other tasks that can be avoided by shared information spaces and automated procedures
Another way of defining workflows flexibly is Speech Act theory based approach (Schal, 1996). It asserts that there is a conversation between two persons - a customer and a supplier. According to this theory an action workflow protocol is used, which requires to follow the following four steps (I) request phase, (2) commitment phase, (3) performance phase and (4) evaluation phase. All those four phases can be considered as a closed loop in which customer and supplier communicate. In the loop the customer makes a request for some action, the supplier agrees to do that, then the supplier does the work and the customer appreciates the work that has been done. Even complex workflows can be modeled using this approach if subworkflows are involved. Speech Act based workflows concentrate on such issues as answers to the folowing questions: Who are the customer and supplier?, What are the conditions of satisfaction?, How each of four phases in the loop is carried out?, and How are the single loops related to each other?
Disadvantages of workflow management systems relevant to this paper are the following ones: • workflows are strictly defined before the work processes are accomplished, therefore it becomes hard to change the way of working in situations when a recension in the environment occurs • employees are not involved in the definition of the workflow and therefore not always can influence the outlook of the system, understand the sytem properly and adjust to it. • many important details and small tasks sometimes are omitted in the definition of the workflow • employees may have a feeling that they are observed, because they receive remainders about the tasks that they have to perform.
4. PUTTING EMPHASIS ON GOALS Although different attempts to overcome the existing disadvantages of workflows are made, the main problem still remains. It is a problem of how to introduce the well structured and transparent workflow that does not hinder employees' productivity and creativity.
The disadvantages of workflow management systems described above seriosly hinder employees' productivity and creativity.
There is a hypothesis that the goal-oriented workflow definition could solve the problem at least partly. In the goal-oriented approach workflows are defined as well structured sequences of goals not tasks. Each goal has its own restrictions and instructions. The definition of the goal sequence is very similar to the
3. OVERCOMING THE DISADVANTAGES? A considerable deal of effor\ has been put into attempts to prevent the disadvantages of workflow systems listed in the previous section (Reichert and Dadam). One of the suggested ways how to make the
84
definition of business process or workflow. Up to the point of the goal sequence definition the process remains well defined, because there is no possibility to change the predefined sequence of goals. The flexibility appears at the moment when an employee or a working team receives the goal that has to be achieved. From this point on each person or a group of persons can define their own workflow by using ADEPT model for dynamic changes (see Section 3). In this way, on the one hand, the whole process is well defined, and therefore an organisation's work is well structured, and, on the other hand, each employee or working team can define their own workflow, and thus they do not have to follow predefined procedures they have never seen or heard about. Therefore the employees' creativity and high level of freedom are preserved.
5. CONCLUSIONS Goal-oriented workflow is proposed as an alternative tool for overcoming some disadvantages of current workflow systems. The purpose of the approach is to introduce the workflow sytems that do not hinder employees' creativity and freedom of action. The approach aims at both: transparency and flexibility of the workflow system. The transparency of the sytem is achieved by predefined sequence of goals. The flexibility is supported by local definition of task sequences. Futher research on practical applicability of the goal-oriented workflow is in progress.
REFERENCES There is a considerable difference between goaloriented workflow definition and Speech Act Theory based approach. Speech Act Theory mostly observes just a speech act, but doesn't concentrate on the whole environment in which those speech acts happen. Therefore the goals of each customer become clear, but the goals of organization as a whole are invisible. However, according to System Theory the system has to be observed as a whole and not as a set of independent components (Checkland and Scholes, 1996). Speech act theory characterises the system from the point of view that shows the relationships between persons, who are working in an organization, but it does not consider the system in general regarding the goals and structure of the system. In speech act theory the goals of the whole system can be divided in the goals of each employee and, if each employee through his communication sends these goals to the next one, then this approach can show the goals of the whole system just like goal-oriented workflow definition. It is important to notice that the work in organization is more like a process and not a communication between employees, therefore it is so essential to preserve the structure of this process and the sequence of achievable goals.
Barros, A.P. and A.H.M. ter Hofstede (1998).Towards the construction of workflowsuitable conceptual modelling techniques, Info Systems J, 8, 313-337. Checkland, P. and J. Scholes (1996). Soft Systems Methodology in Action, John Wiley and Sons, West Sussex, England. Dahlgaard, J.J., K. Kristensen and G.K. Kanji (1998). Fundamentals of Total Quality Management: Process Analysis and Improvement. Chapman&Hall. Hales, K. (1997). Workflow in Context. In: Workflow Handbook 1997 (Lawrence, P. (Ed)), 27-33. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Great Britan. Kamath, M., Ramamritham, K. Correctness Issues in Workflow Management. Reichert, M., Dadam, P. ADEPTflex - Supporting Dynamic Changes of Workflows Without Loosing Control. Schal, T. (1996) Workflow Management Systems for Process Organisations. Springer, Germany. Schneider, G., Schweitz, J. Workflow-ManagementSysteme koordinieren Arbeitsprozesse.
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