ML-DEWS: Modeling Language to Support Dynamic Evolution within Workflow Systems

Abstract

Organizations that are geared for success within today's business environments must be capable of rapid and continuous change. Dynamic change is a large and pervasive problem which surfaces within organizational workflowsas well as within soft ware engineering, manufacturing, and numerous other domains. Procedural changes, performed in an ad hoc manner, can cause inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and catastrophic breakdowns within organizations. This document is concerned with change, especially dynamic change, to organizational procedures. We explain a taxonomy of change modalities, and present a modeling language for the unambiguous specification of procedural change. This language, call ML-DEWS , complements the formal model of dynamic change previously presented by the authors. Issues of exception handling, temporal specification, and participatory change are conveniently handled within the framework presented in this document.