Abstract
The increasing importance of unstructured, knowledge-intensive processes in enterprises is largely recognized. Conventional workflow solutions do not provide adequate support for the management and optimization of such processes. Therefore the need for more flexible approaches arises. This paper presents a conceptual framework for unobtrusive support of unstructured, knowledge-intensive business processes. The framework enables modeling, exchange and reuse of light-weight, user-defined task structures. In addition to the person-to-person exchange of best-practices, it further enables ‘outsourcing’ of dynamic task structures and resources in personal workspaces and organizational units where these are managed according to local domain knowledge and made available for reuse in shared repositories. The delegation of tasks enables the generation of enterprise process chains, spreading beyond the boundaries of a user’s personal workspace. The structures emerging from user-defined tasks, task delegations and on-demand acquisition of dynamic, externally managed tasks and resources adequately represent agile, human-centric business processes. Thereby the framework facilitates effective knowledge management and fosters proactive tailoring of underspecified business processes through end users in a light-weight, unobtrusive manner. The presented concepts are supported within the Collaborative Task Manager (CTM), a novel prototype for emailintegrated task management.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aalst, W.M.P.v.d., Basten, T., Verbeek, H.M.W., Verkoulen, P.A.C., Verhoeve, M.: Adaptive Workflow: On the interplay between flexibility and support. In: Proceedings of the first International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Setubal, Portugal, pp. 353–360 (1999)
Aalst, W.M.P.v.d., Weske, M., Grünbauer, D.: Case Handling: A New Paradigm for Business Process Support. Data and Knowledge Engineering 53(2), 129–162 (2005)
Abbott, K.R., Sarin, S.K.: Experiences with Workflow Management: Issues for the Next Generation. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 113–120. ACM Press, New York (1994)
Bardram, J.E.: Plans as Situated Action: An Activity Theory Approach to Workflow Systems. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Lancaster, UK, p. 1732 (1997)
Bellotti, V., Dalal, B., Good, N., Flynn, P., Bobrow, D.G., Ducheneaut, N.: What a To-Do: Studies of Task Management towards the Design of a Personal Task List Manager. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 735–742. ACM Press, New York (2004)
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I.: Taking Email to Task: The Design and Evaluation of a Task Management Centered Email Tool. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, pp. 345–352. ACM Press, New York (2003)
Bernstein, A.: How Can Cooperative Work Tools Support Dynamic Group Processes? Bridging the Specificity Frontier. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 279–288. ACM Press, New York (2000)
Gaffar, A., Sinnig, D., Seffah, A., Forbig, P.: Modeling patterns for task models. In: Proceedings of the 3rd annual Conference on Task Models and Diagrams, pp. 99–104. ACM Press, New York (2004)
Grebner, O., Ong, E., Riss, U., Brunzel, M., Bernardi, A., Roth-Berghofer, T.: Task Management Model (Last visited September 01, 2007), http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/D3-1
Gruen, D., Rohall, S.L., Minassian, S., Kerr, B., Moody, P., Stachel, B., Wattenberg, M., Wilcox, E.: Lessons from the ReMail Prototypes. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 152–161. ACM Press, New York (2004)
Holz, H., Rostanin, O., Dengel, A., Suzuki, T., Maeda, K., Kanasaki, K.: Task-based process know-how reuse and proactive information delivery in TaskNavigator. In: Proceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, pp. 522–531. ACM Press, New York (2006)
Jennex, M.E., Olfman, L., Addo, T.B.A.: The Need for an Organizational Knowledge Management Strategy. In: HICSS 2003. Proceedings of the 36th annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, p. 117.1. IEEE Computer Society, Washington (2003)
Jorgensen, H.D.: Interactive Process Models. Ph.D. Thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway (2004)
Palanque, P., Basnyat, S.: Task Patterns for Taking into Account in an Efficient and Systematic Way Both Standard and Abnormal User Behaviour. In: IFIP 13.5 Working Conference on Human Error, Safety and Systems Development, Toulouse, France, pp. 109–130 (2004)
Paternó, F.: Model-Based Design and Evaluation of Interactive Applications. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)
Ribak, A., Jacovi, M., Soroka, V.: “Ask Before You Search”: Peer Support and Community Building with ReachOut. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 126–135. ACM Press, New York (2002)
Riss, U., Rickayzen, A., Maus, H., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Challenges for Business Process and Task Management. Journal of Universal Knowledge Management 0(2), 77–100 (2005)
Schwarz, S., Abecker, A., Maus, H., Sintek, M.: Anforderungen an die Workflow-Unterstützung für wissensintensive Geschäftsprozesse. In: Proceedings of 1st Conference for Professional Knowledge Management (WM 2001), Baden-Baden, Germany (2001)
Siu, N., Iverson, L., Tang, A.: Going with the Flow: Email Awareness and Task Management. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 441–450. ACM Press, New York (2006)
Wiig, K.M.: People-focused knowledge management: How effective decision making leads to corporate success. Elsevier Butterworth–Heinemann (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Stoitsev, T., Scheidl, S., Spahn, M. (2007). A Framework for Light-Weight Composition and Management of Ad-Hoc Business Processes. In: Winckler, M., Johnson, H., Palanque, P. (eds) Task Models and Diagrams for User Interface Design. TAMODIA 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4849. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77222-4_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77222-4_17
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-77221-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-77222-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)