How to handle dynamic change and capture management information? An approach based on generic workflow models

Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, the workflow management syst em is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the wo rkflow process is supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowe d or handled outside of the workflow management system. This paper addresse s two notorious problems related to adaptive workflow: (1) providing manage ment information at the right aggregation level, and (2) supporting dynamic change, i.e. migrating cases from an old to a new workflow. These two prob lems are tackled by using generic process models. A generic process model d escribes a family of variants of the same workflow process. To relate membe rs of a family of workflow processes we propose notions of inheritance. The se notions of inheritance are used to address the two problems mentioned bo th a design-time and at run-time.