On the interplay between flexibility and support

Today’s information systems do not support adaptive workflow: either the information system abstracts from the workflow processes at hand and focuses on the management of data and the execution of individual tasks via applications or the workflow is supported by the information system but it is hard to handle changes. This paper addresses this problem by classifying the types of changes. Based on this classification, issues such as syntactic/semantic correctness, case transfer, and management information are discussed. It turns out that the trade-off between flexibility and support raises challenging questions. Only some of these questions are answered in this paper; most of them require further research. Since the success of the next generation of workflow management systems depends on the ability to support adaptive workflow, it is important to provide answers for the questions raised in this paper.