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Business Process Modelling and Workflow Patterns

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Business Process Modelling and Workflow Patterns Business Process Modelling and Workflow Patterns Arthur ter Hofstede Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia R a university for the real world © 2008, www.yawlfoundation.org Acknowledgement • This presentation uses slides prepared by the following people: – Wil van der Aalst, TUE & QUT – Michael Adams, QUT – Lachlan Aldred, QUT – Arthur ter Hofstede, QUT – Marcello La Rosa, QUT – Nick Russell, QUT – Petia Wohed, SU/KTH – Moe Wynn, QUT R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 2 Outline • Background – WfMS and PAIS • Conceptual Foundation - the Workflow Patterns Initiative – Part I • Control-flow patterns • Data patterns • Resource patterns • Next-Generation Business Process Management with YAWL – Part II • The YAWL language • The YAWL system R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 3 Terminology • WF – “The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action according to a set of procedural rules.” WfMC, Terminology & Glossary, WFMC-TC-1011 3.0, February 1999 • PAIS – “A software system that manages and executes operational processes involving people, applications, and/or resources on the bases of process models.” M. Dumas, W. van der Aalst, A. ter Hofstede, Process-Aware Information Systems: Bridging People and Software through Process Technology, John Wiley & Sons, 2005 R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 4 The PAIS life cycle Business diagnosis process Process design Modelling Tools Project Management Tools Workflow process process Management enactment implementation Systems M. Dumas, W. van der Aalst, A. ter Hofstede, Process-Aware Information Systems: Bridging People and Software through Process Technology, John Wiley & Sons, 2005 R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 5 Setting the scene – Workflow: What and Why? • Support for coordination of humans and applications in performing business activities • Explicit representation of control flow dependencies and resourcing strategies • Benefits: – Improved efficiency (time, cost) – Compliance – Improved responsiveness R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 6 Perspectives • Control-Flow – Which tasks need to be executed and in what order • Data – What data elements exist, to whom are they visible, how are they passed on • Resources – Who is authorised to execute certain tasks, are tasked assigned by the system or can participants volunteer for their execution, on what basis is work assigned Sometimes these perspectives are explained in terms of Who (Resource), What (Data) and When (Control-flow) These perspectives follow S. Jablonski and C. Bussler’s classification from: Workflow Management: Modeling Concepts, Architecture, and Implementation. International Thomson Computer Press, 1996 R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 7 Workflow Animation © Wil van der Aalst, Vincent Almering and Herman Wijbenga R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 8 Problems in the field of Workflow/BPM • Lack of commonly accepted conceptual foundations • Lack of proper formal foundations (this despite the amount of buzz …) • No lack of proposed standards … • Tools are typically hard to use, expensive and not easily integrated • Lack of support for processes that need to change on-the-fly • Lack of proper support for exceptions • Limited support for design time analysis (verification and validation) • Resource perspective particularly underwhelming • Insufficient support for inter-process communication R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 9 Lack of commonly accepted conceptual foundations How do various workflow environments deal with this? Β Α AND OR D C • Forbid • Execute D once, ignore second triggering • Execute D twice • Execute D once or twice depending on execution … R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 10 Workflow Patterns Initiative • Started in 1999, joint work TU/e and QUT • Objectives: – Identification of workflow modelling scenarios and solutions – Benchmarking • Workflow products (MQ/Series Workflow, Staffware, etc) • Proposed standards for web service composition (BPML, BPEL) • Process modelling languages (UML, BPMN) • Open Source BPM offerings (jBPM, OpenWFE, Enhydra Shark) – Foundation for selecting workflow solutions • Home Page: www.workflowpatterns.com • Primary publication: – W.M.P. van der Aalst, A.H.M. ter Hofstede, B. Kiepuszewski, A.P. Barros, “Workflow Patterns”, Distributed and Parallel Databases 14(3):5-51, 2003. • Evaluations of commercial offerings, research prototypes, proposed standards for web service composition, etc R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 11 The Workflow Patterns Framework time 2000 2003 Jun 2005 Oct 2005 SepJun 20062006 revised Control-flow P:s 20 Resource P:s - 43 Data P:s - 40 Control-flowException P:s P:s 43 W. van der Aalst N. Russell N. Russell N.N. RussellRussell A. ter Hofstede W. van der Aalst A. ter Hofstede A.W. tervan Hofstede der Aalst B. Kiepuszewski A. ter Hofstede D. Edmond W.A. tervan Hofstede der Aalst A. Barros D. Edmond W. van der Aalst N. Mulyar The ordering of Resource definition Data representation Exception- 23 new patterns handling activities in a & work distribution and handling in a in- Formaliseda process in process in a process process CPN notation CoopIS’2000 CAiSE’2005 ER’2005 TRCAiSE’2006 DAPD’2003 R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 12 The Workflow Patterns Framework time 2000 2003 Jun 2005 Oct 2005 Control-flow P:s 20 Resource P:s - 43 Data P:s - 40 Ex E COSA Domino Workflow Staffware Staffware Staf v FLOWer Visual Workflow WebSphere MQ MQSeries We a Eastman Forte Conductor FLOWer FLOWer FLO l Meteor MQSeries/Workflow COSA COSA CO iPla u Mobile SAR R/3 Workflow iPlanet I-Flow Verve Workflow a Staffware Changengine t InConcert I o n XPDL, BPEL4WS, BPML, BPEL4WS XPDL, BPEL4WS XPD s WSFL, XLANG, WSCI, UML AD 2.0 UML AD 2.0, BPMN BPE UML AD 1.4 UML AD 2.0, BPMN BPMN L a n g u a g e D e v e l o p m e n t: YAWL/newYAWL R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 13 Impact of the Workflow Patterns Systems inspired or directly influenced by the patterns FLOWer 3.0 of Pallas Athena Ivolutia Orchestration Bizagi of Vision Software OpenWFE (an open source WFMS) Staffware Process Suite Zebra (an open source WFMS) Pectra Technology Inc.’s tool Alphaflow (an open source WFMS) Lynx Workflow by InsuraPro jBPM (a free workflow engine) Use of the workflow patterns in selecting a WFMS the Dutch Employee Insurance Administration Office the Dutch Justice Department Other Pattern-based evaluations (e.g. ULTRAflow, OmniFlow, @enterprise, BPMN) Citations (1000+ according to Google Scholar) Education (used in teaching at 10+ Universities) R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 14 Why revisit control flow? • Lack of precision – Solution: CPN formalisation + Context conditions • Merging of various concepts – Solution: A number of patterns were split • Certain patterns missing – Solution: Addition of those patterns R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 15 Approach • All original patterns were reviewed • All continue to serve a valid purpose – Some were retained in original form but with more explicit context conditions and detailed semantics – Others were subdivided along different dimensions (the most basic interpretation replaced the original pattern, the others were added) • New patterns were identified and included • Explicit evaluation criteria were added • Evaluations were completely revised R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 16 The New Control-flow Patterns • Basic Control-flow Patterns • Multiple Instances (MI) Patterns capture elementary aspects of delineate situations with multiple control-flow (similar to the threads of execution in a workflow concepts provided by the WFMC). which relate to the same activity. • Advanced Branching and • State-based Patterns Synchronization Patterns reflect situations which are most describe more complex branching easily modelled in WF languages and synchronization scenarios. with an explicit notion of state. • Iteration Patterns • Cancellation Patterns describe various ways in which categorise the various cancellation iteration may be specified. scenarios that may be relevant for a workflow specification. • Termination Patterns address the issue of when the • Trigger Patterns execution of a workflow is catalogue the different triggering considered to be finished. mechanisms appearing in a process context. R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 17 Structure of a Control-flow pattern • Description: what is it? • Synonym(s) • Example(s) • Motivation: why needed? • Context: conditions + CPN formalisation • Implementation: how typically realised? • Issues: what problems can be encountered? • Solutions: how and to what extent can these problems be overcome? • Evaluation criterion R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 18 Sequence An activity in a workflow process is enabled after the completion of a preceding activity in the same process. R © 2008,a university www.yawlfoundation.org for the real world 19 Basic Control-flow Patterns • Pattern 2: Parallel split, initiation of parallel threads • Pattern 3: Synchronisation, wait for all incoming threads – context assumption:
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