Controllability in temporal conceptual workflow schemata

Abstract

Workflow technology has emerged as one of the leading technologies in modelling, redesigning, and executing business processes. Currently available workflow management systems (WfMS) and research prototypes offer a very limited support for the definition, detection, and management of temporal constraints over business processes. In this paper, we propose a new advanced workflow conceptual model for expressing time constraints in business processes and, in particular, we introduce and discuss the concept of controllability for workflow schemata and its evaluation at process design time. Controllability refers to the capability of executing a workflow for any possible duration of tasks. Since in several situations durations of tasks cannot be decided by WfMSs, even tough the minimum and the maximum durations for each task are known, checking controllability is stronger than verifying the consistency of the workflow temporal constraints. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.