A “light” distributed OO Workflow Management System for the creation of OO Enterprise System Architectures in BPR environments

Abstract

BPR and object oriented technology are — and have been for the last few years, some of the two most important business and technical currents. However, it is often seen that applications developed independently for each business process result in “system architecture silos”. Therefore, the implementation of OO enterprise architectures brings ample business benefits in BPR environments such as: increased “enterprise conceptual integrity”, reusability, generativity, and increased business effectiveness (cost, quality, service or speed). However, the simultaneous implementation of OO architectures and BPR also demands many changes in the business organization, its software development organization and its enterprise architecture. In particular, it requires a workflow manager to be present in the system architecture. This paper briefly presents a “light” OO workflow management system for such an environment, and a brief description of a compatible: 1) a “business engineering” method, 2) a collection of business architecture patterns, and 3) a collection of software development patterns.