Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
“A business process is a way of combining efforts of several people for reaching a
(well or not so well defined) goal”.
Accepting this view, we consider only those business processes in which people
play a role of the driving force behind the processes, leaving totally automated
processes, and processes where people are used just for well-defined operations aside.
Such processes require extensive communication between the participants of each
process instance in order to reach the operational goal of the instance.
By a BPS system, we understand a system that helps process participants to run their
process instances according to a process (type) definition. From the communication
point of view, a BPS system with shared spaces differs from a pure workflow system by
the kind of “information logistics” the system employs for providing process
participants with instructions and information needed to complete their tasks in the
frame of a process instance [6]. The workflow-type BPS systems use a so-called
“conveyor belt” logistics [6] in which instructions, and information that is needed are
sent to the “next in-line”.
A BPS system with shared spaces employs a so-called “construction site”
information logistics [6]. Such a system has no explicit data/information flow. A
shared information space is created for each process instance to hold all information
that is relevant to the process instance, e.g., documents received and sent, information
on tasks planned and completed, reports on results achieved when completing these
tasks, etc. All this information is easily available each time a process participant is
invited to visit this space and complete some task related to it. Thus, a shared space is
similar to a construction site where different kinds of workers are invited to complete
their own tasks and leave the rest to the others.
The functioning of a BPS system based on shared spaces can be described in the
following way:
When a new process instance starts, a new shared space is created. It gets a unique
name, an owner (responsible for the instance), and possibly, an instance team.
When the process instance reaches its operational goal, the shared space is closed
(sealed), but remains accessible for reading (an instance goes to the archive).
A person who is assigned a task in the frame of the process instance “goes” to this
instance's shared space to get information he/she needs for completing the task and
reports the results achieved in the same space.
The “construction site” information logistics via shared spaces has certain advantages
compared to the traditional communication schemes for those business processes in
which instances can vary considerably from one to another. In such a situation, it is
difficult to decide what and how much information needs to be sent to a person
completing a certain task. When a person is invited to visit a certain part of a shared
space, he/she oversees not only this local part, but also everything adjacent to it, and
can use this additional information when completing his/her task without being
explicitly told to do so. In other words, if using a traditional communication scheme
you send one document to a person, and this is all he/she gets. If you send a person to
work on a certain document placed in some corner of a shared space, he/she can
access not only this document, but also other documents in this corner, or anywhere
else in the whole shared space. More detailed justification of using shared spaces in
BPS systems from the business point of view can be found in [7].
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