Configurable Workflow Models

Abstract

Workflow modeling languages allow for the specification of executable business processes. They, however, typically do not provide any guidance for the adaptation of workflow models, i.e. they do not offer any methods or tools explaining and highlighting which adaptations of the models are feasible and which are not. Therefore, an approach to identify so-called configurable elements of a workflow modeling language and to add configuration opportunities to workflow models is presented in this paper. Configurable elements are the elements of a workflow model that can be modified such that the behavior represented by the model is restricted. More precisely, a configurable element can be either set to enabled, to blocked, or to hidden. To ensure that such configurations lead only to desirable models, our approach allows for imposing so-called requirements on the model's configuration. They have to be fulfilled by any configuration, and limit therefore the freedom of configuration choices. The identification of configurable elements within the workflow modeling language of YAWL and the derivation of the new "configurable YAWL" language provide a concrete example for a rather generic approach. A transformation of configured models into lawful YAWL models demonstrates its applicability.

Automatic Generation of Questionnaires for Supporting Users during the Execution of Declarative Business Process Models

“…In most cases these variants share many commonalities, and hence, can be combined in a CBP model leading to a compact representation [15,16,12]. CBP models are typically created by hand (1) from scratch, (2) from an existing BP model by including possible adaptations [8], or (3) by merging some BP models related to the same or similar goals which already exist [15]. In the latter case, there exist approaches focused on automatically merging different BP models into a CBP model [14,15].…”

“…To analyze the behavior of the method against different complexities, the 259 configurable nodes were grouped considering OB. In particular 4 groups were considered: OB ∈ [2, 5), OB ∈ [5,8), OB ∈ [8,11) and OB ∈ [11,14) (cf. Table.…”

Guaranteeing Soundness of Configurable Process Variants in Provop

“…correct) execution behavior can be guaranteed for them [3], [4], [5], [8]. 1 Though there exists considerable work on how to ensure structural and behavioral soundness of single process models [9], issues related to the correct configuration of a whole process family have been neglected so far.…”

“…A similar approach is presented in [8]. Here the concepts for configuring a reference process model (i.e., to enable, hide or block a configurable process element) are transferred to workflow models.…”

A Foundational Approach for Managing Process Variability

“…Recently, approaches to control the creation of process variants based on well-defined change patterns [2,3,4] or configurations [5,6] have been presented. However, enforcement of such a controlled variability of processes is hard to achieve once process variants are created independently in different organisational units.…”