Configuration for Adaptation – A Human-centered Approach to Flexible Workflow Enactment

Abstract

The advantages of today's processmanagement, such as efficiency and quality aspects,are achieved by enforcing detailed models of workprocesses. However, real world processes can beplanned to a limited degree only and sometimes plannedparts of the process must be changed,creating a need for additional, unforeseen activities.This paper suggests an approach that configuresparts of a detailed process model with differentsupport strategies. The explicit modelling of thesesupport strategies allows them to be changed ifdemanded by the situation. When enacting such aprocess model it is then possible to vary the degreeto which the model determines the work ofindividuals. The concept is based on an earlierenactment concept which allowed workers to freelychoose methods for their tasks according to thesituation. Besides the incorporation of differentsupport strategies, the extended enactment strategygives workers the opportunity to negotiate aboutchanging a currently too restrictive support strategy,giving scope for deviations from the plannedprocess where additional actions are required.