Cross-Organizational Workflows: A Classification of Design Decisions Pascal van Eck, Rieko Yamamoto, Jaap Gordijn, Roel Wieringa University of Twente, The Netherlands Fujitsu Labs, Japan Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, Poland 1
Introduction • Research goal: • To systematically investigate design 1. Introduction decisions in cross-organizational workflows 2. Value modeling • Results: • Three areas of design decisions can be 3. Coordination distinguished modeling • Design decisions (and supporting 4. Workflow modeling techniques) differ for each of design them 5. Conclusion • Web service standards such as ebXML, BPEL4WS, and WSCI play a different role in each of them IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 2/16 Poland
Three areas of design decisions in cross- organizational workflows Value modeling 1. Introduction Business network issues: assigning 2. Value activities to economic actors modeling 3. Coordination modeling Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design Inter-business issues: inter- actions between business partners 5. Conclusion • Operations management issues Workflow design • IS applications and infrastructure issues Intra-business issues: realizing what is promised to other businesses IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 3/16 Poland
Research method: case study • Providing portals for 2 Japanese artists • Portal functionality: 1. Introduction • Providing general artist information 2. Value • Selling merchandise modeling • On-demand printing of lyrics, music scores 3. Coordination • Forums modeling • Real-time chat 4. Workflow • Business partners: design • Record companies 5. Conclusion • Printing service • Delivery (shipping) service • Settlement (payment) service IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 4/16 Poland
Value modeling technique 1/2 • Value modeling concepts • Actor: economically independent entity 1. Introduction • Value object: thing of value to the actors 2. Value • Value transfer: economical activity modeling • Value exchange: pair of value transfers Models economic reciprocity 3. Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 5/16 Poland
Value modeling technique 2/2 • Dependency paths indicate causal relations between value exchanges 1. Introduction • A dependency path is not a business process!! 2. Value modeling 3. Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 6/16 Poland
Value modeling design decisions • Which consumer needs do exist? • How are these consumer needs satisfied 1. Introduction by items of economic value that can be produced or consumed by enterprises and 2. Value end-customers, and are by definition of modeling economic value? 3. Coordination • Who is offering/requesting value objects modeling to/from the environment? • What are the reciprocal value object 4. Workflow design exchanged between enterprise/end- customers? 5. Conclusion • What bundles of value objects exist? • What partnerships do exist? IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 7/16 Poland
1. Introduction 2. Value modeling 3. Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 8/16 Poland
Coordination modeling • Coordination: interaction between actors needed to produce a result 1. Introduction • Two kinds of processes: 2. Value • Coordination processes between actors … modeling … listing steps of both actors • Business processes or workflows … 3. Coordination modeling … inside (private to) one actor … … and designed to execute steps from 4. Workflow coordination processes design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 9/16 Poland
Coordination modeling example • Coordination process between portal and web printing service 1. Introduction • This is BPMN notation 2. Value modeling 3. Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 10/16 Poland
Coordination modeling design decisions Coordination process design decisions • Which information is exchanged between business partners, and in which order? 1. Introduction • What are the trust relations between the actors? 2. Value • Are additional actors needed to resolve trust modeling issues (e.g., trusted third parties?) • Who is responsible for the coordination activities 3. Coordination at each business partner? modeling IT support design decisions • What technology to use (e.g., HTML forms, web 4. Workflow services)? design • Synchronous or asynchronous information 5. Conclusion exchange? • What is the format of the message data exchanged? IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 11/16 Poland
Process modeling standards • BPMN: 3 kinds of processes • Coordination process: similar to ours 1. Introduction • Abstract process: public part of private process 2. Value modeling Only steps of one actor, only those steps visible to business partners 3. Coordination • Internal process: similar to workflow modeling • BPEL4WS: 2 kinds of processes 4. Workflow • Abstract processes design • Internal processes 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 12/16 Poland
Workflow modeling Workflow design decisions: • Mainly concerned with issues in 1. Introduction operations management and organization theory, e.g. customer order decoupling 2. Value modeling point 3. Coordination modeling IT support design decisions: • What information systems are needed? 4. Workflow design • What functions do these information systems need to offer? 5. Conclusion • Distribution decisions, e.g. central IT facilities or facilities per location IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 13/16 Poland
Example workflow design decision • Customer-order decoupling point (CODP): • Keep e.g. song lyrics on stock … 1. Introduction • … or print them on demand (batch size 1) … 2. Value modeling • … or collect a number of orders 3. Coordination modeling • This is most probably a private, secret process step 4. Workflow design • Supporting techniques: • Standard (“old fashioned”) workflow 5. Conclusion notations and tools • BPEL internal processes • Simulation, linear programming IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 14/16 Poland
Example workflow process • Again: BPMN notation (BPEL has no graphical notation, strictly speaking) 1. Introduction • Swimlanes are departments, not economic entities 2. Value modeling 3. Coordination modeling 4. Workflow design 5. Conclusion IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 15/16 Poland
Conclusion • Three areas of design decisions can be distinguished 1. Introduction • Concerns are really different at each of them; this is not refinement 2. Value modeling • Modeling techniques differ as well 3. Coordination • Lightweight modeling approach enables modeling multidisciplinary teams of decision makers to design cross-organizational workflows 4. Workflow design • “Don’t leave all decisions to the managers …” 5. Conclusion • “… and neither to software engineers” IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, 16/16 Poland
Corresponding author: Pascal van Eck Department of Computer Science University of Twente P.O. Box 217 7500 AE Enschede The Netherlands Email: vaneck@cs.utwente.nl http://www.cs.utwente.nl/~patveck IFIP i3e Conference 26-28 October 2005, Poznan, Poland 17
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