1 Workflow/Business Process Management Introduction business process management and workflow management Eindhoven University of Technology Faculty of Technology Management Department of Information Systems P.O. Box MB Eindhoven The Netherlands Wil van der Aalst

2 Overview of this course Workflow management Relation with BPR Techniques for business process modelling (Re)design of workflows Analysis of workflows Resource management Workflow management systems Staffware Protos Concepts With or without WFMS Logistical aspects Guidelines process mining Adaptive workflow Interorganizational workflow Business Process Management FLOWer Simulation Patterns

3 Relevant WWW sites

4 WARNING It is not sufficient to understand the workflow models. You have to be able to design them yourself !

5 WARNING Start early with the assignment and tools: You really need the time !!

6 Context - role of models and trends -

7 Focus on models

8 Some trends in Information Systems 1.From programming to assembling 2.From data orientation to process orientation 3.From design to redesign and organic growth operating system generic applications domain specific applications tailor-made applications

9 Before BPM: WFM - workflow management -

10 Workflow management Goal To manage the flow of work such that the work is done at the right time by the proper person. Definitions A workflow management system (WFMS) is a software package that can be used to support the definition, management and execution of workflow processes. A workflow system (WFS) is a system based on a WFMS that supports a specific set of business processes through the execution of computerized process definitions

11 Relevance of workflow management systems Trend : Processes: are becoming more important (BPR) are subject to frequent changes are becoming more complex are increasing in number Workflow Management System  OS DBMS appl. DBMS WFMS appl. UIMS

12 The basic idea: separation of processes, resources and applications focus on the logistics of work processes, not on the contents of individual tasks processesresources applications WFMS

13 BPM: The next step - business process management -

14 Business Process Management (BPM) “True Business Process Management is an amalgam of traditional workflow and the 'new' BPM technology. It then follows that as BPM is a natural extension of – and not a separate technology to – Workflow, BPM is in fact the merging of process technology covering 3 process categories: interactions between (i) people-to-people; (ii) systems-to-systems and (iii) systems-to-people – all from a process-centric perspective. This is what true BPM is all about.” Jon Pyke, CTO Staffware. “…a blending of process management/workflow with application integration.” David McCoy, Gartner Group

15 Alternative view on BPM: The BPM life-cycle

???

20 BPR, CPI, Office logistics - relationships to other domains -

21 Business Process Reengineering (BPR) (Business Process Redesign) Hammer and Champy: "Reengineering the corporation" (1993) Keywords: –fundamental –radical –dramatic –process The "organize before automate"-principle is replaced by "process thinking".

22 Processes and the organization

23 Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) Instead of of seeking a radical breakthrough, optimizing the process by continuous, incremental improvements. Part of the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach ("doing it right the first time", "eliminate waste",...) high low high impact frequency BPR CPI chaos stagnation change time BPR CPI BPR and CPI are both process centric and can be supported by a WFMS.

24 Differences between information logistics and production logistics Making a copy is easy and cheap. There are no real limitations with respect to the in-process inventory. There are less requirements with respect to the order in which activities are executed. Quality is difficult to measure. Quality of end-products may vary. Transportation of electronic data is timeless. Production to stock is seldom possible. Loops or rework occurs frequently in administrative processes, but are very seldom or even impossible in production processes. The customer (can) influence(s) the handling in an administrative process. The difference between design and control is fading!

25 History and CSCW - the WFM/BPM market -

26 Historical overview of systems (Zur Muehlen, 2003)

27 Workflow management is already 25 years old (cf. OfficeTalk, Skip Ellis/Xerox)! The WFM hype is over …, but there are more and more applications, and WFM is adopted by many other technologies (ERP, Web Services, etc.). (Zur Muehlen, 2003)

28 CSCW spectrum

29 Refined view (without datbase applications)

30 Trade-offs

31 human oriented system oriented groupware workflow transaction processing P2P = Person To Person A2P = Application To Person A2A = Application To Application

32 Focus on "classical" workflow management systems, but... Four types of "workflow-like" systems: 1.Information systems with hard-coded workflows (process& organization specific). 2.Custom-made information systems with generic workflow support (organization specific). 3.Generic software with embedded workflow functionality (e.g., the workflow components of ERP, CRM, PDM, etc. systems). 4.Generic software focusing on workflow functionality (e.g., Staffware, MQSeries Workflow, FLOWer, COSA, Oracle BPEL, Filenet, etc.).

33 WFM architecture - reference model and example -

34 Reference model of the Workflow Management Coalition What? When? Who?

35

36

37

38

39 Workflow perspectives - processes dominate! -

40 Workflow perspectives Process perspective (tasks and the routing of cases) Resource perspective (workers, roles, 4-eyes principle, etc.) Case/data perspective (process instances and their attributes) Operation/application perspective (forms, application integration, etc.)...

41 Process perspective: Protos (extended Petri nets)

42 Process perspective: Staffware

43 Process perspective: COSA (Petri nets)

44 Process perspective: Baan DEM

45 Process perspective: Event driven process chains (ARIS/SAP)

46 (Oracle) BPEL

47 Petri nets as a basis The process perspective is the most dominant one. There are many modeling techniques and tools –BPEL, BPMN, DFD, ISAC, SADT, PN, HLPN, PA, FC, UML,... –Simulation tools, design tools, CASE tools, WFMS,... Focus on the essential concepts rather than (system-)specific languages. Approach in this course (1) first master workflow modeling in terms of workflow nets (a subset of Petri nets), and (2) only then look into mappings to and from (system-)specific languages.

48 Example of a process model: A Petri net modeling order processing

49 Play the token game …

50 Test Exercise: Dining philosophers 5 philosophers sharing 5 chopsticks: chopsticks are located in-between philosophers A philosopher is either in state eating or thinking and needs two chopsticks to eat. Model as a Petri net.