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Chapter 4
Dynamic Workflow

Michael Adams

4.1 Introduction

Change is an accepted part of every modern workplace. To remain effective and
competitive, organizations must continually adapt their business processes to man-
age the rapid changes demanded by the dynamic nature of the marketplace or service
environment.
However, workflow management systems are generally designed to support the
modeling of rigidly structured business processes, which in turn derive well-defined
workflow instances. The proprietary process definition frameworks often imposed
make it difficult to support (1) dynamic evolution and adaptation (i.e., modify-
ing process definitions during execution) following unexpected or developmental
change in the business processes being modeled; and (2) deviations from the
prescribed process model at runtime.
The term flexibility is used to denote the degree to which a workflow system
is able to support or handle expected or unexpected deviations in the execution of
process instances, both from within the context of the instance or from the exter-
nal environment, without negatively impacting on the essence of the process or its
expected completion.
Historically, there is generally little or no flexibility provided by systems to
accommodate the natural evolution of the work process or organizational goals.
Manual interventions into workflow processes become increasingly frequent as
staff attempt to manipulate workflow inputs and outputs to conform with changes
in workplace practices. These manual intrusions necessitate reduced productivity
and increased processing time. Since it is undertaken in an ad-hoc manner, man-
ual handling incurs an added penalty: the corrective actions undertaken are not
added to “organizational memory,” and so natural process evolution is not incor-
porated into future iterations of the process. In fact, after initial deployment, the
inevitable system changes are often handled so haphazardly that they can lead to
major work disruptions and increasing dissatisfaction to the point where the entire
system implementation is considered a failure.

M. Adams
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
e-mail: mj.adams@qut.edu.au
A.H.M. ter Hofstede et al. (eds.), Modern Business Process Automation, 123
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-03121-2 4, c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010