An agile approach to workflow management

Abstract

In today's dynamic and uncertain business environment workflow management systems must react quickly to change. This paper suggests extending workflow management with case-based reasoning (CBR) to allow just-in-time updates to the predefined workflow model and to provide flexibility by keeping (real) options open rather than freezing them early on. First an initial workflow model is created, covering only the economically justifiable details of a business process. The decision how to model a business process precisely is delayed until the company's needs are more clearly understood and business value can be achieved. When changes become necessary during run-time, the predefined workflow model is extended with additional knowledge in the form of cases. This feedback supports continuous process improvement, resulting in more manageable and more efficient business processes over time. When the knowledge encoded in cases becomes frequently reused, it is refactored into rules and therefore explicitly included in the workflow model.