Weak dependencies in business process models

Abstract

Business process management systems (BPMS) have proven to be effective in high-volume, repetitive production processes. However, the rigid structure of process models used in BPMS hinders their use in less repetitive processes performed by information workers, where a high degree of flexibility is required. In this paper, an extension to the traditional process models is presented, where ad hoc, runtime changes to process instances are enabled. The extension, weak dependencies, is motivated by business cases presented in the paper. Additionally, formal description of weak dependencies as well as a proof-of-concept prototype are presented. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.