Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
workflow activity that will be executed by a software application. At run
time, a workflow engine is the computer software that provides the
execution environment for workflows. Given a workflow definition,
the engine can start multiple workflow instances. For example, an order
processing workflow definition can have multiple instances, each of
which deals with one particular incoming customer order. There can be
many concurrent instances in a workflow engine. In a workflow instance,
each activity also has its corresponding activity instance.
The workflow technology originated from office automation (OA)
area and initially handled the documentation flow among multiple
persons or applications. In recent years, workflow has been evolved
from a pure IT technology for business process automation, to a much
broader concept called business process management (BPM) [7]. BPM
is a holistic approach to align many aspects of an enterprise, such as
organization, rules, resources, and quality management, in a process
centric manner so as to optimize overall operational efficiency and
customer satisfaction.
Figure 1.2 illustrates the life cycle of BPM. It starts with the design
phase. In this phase, first the existing processes (also known as, as-is
processes) inside an organization, both non-automated and automated
ones, are identified. Afterward the to-be processes, that is, those to be
managed by the BPM system are designed with different criteria. The
criteria can be customer satisfaction, response time, or quality of
service. A process includes not only a sequenced series of tasks, but
also the organizational unit responsible for tasks and processes, the
Automation
Design
Monitoring
Improvement
Figure 1.2
The life cycle of BPM.
