Analyzing the Resource Perspective of Workflow Management Systems: Using a Meta Model and Constraints

Workflow management systems support business processes and are driven by business processes models. These models cover different perspectives including the controlflow, resource, and data perspectives. Contemporary workflow management systems offer a wide variety of mechanisms to support the resource perspective. The resource perspective is essential for the applicability of workflow management systems. This paper focuses on the resource perspective, i.e., the way the system distributes work based on the structure of the organization and capabilities/qualifications of people. Our goal is to develop a structured and exact method to serve as aid for the analysis, evaluation and comparison of various workflow management systems. First we develop models of particular workflow management systems (Staffware, FileNet, and FLOWer). Next, we develop a meta model that can be seen as the “least common multiple” of system-specific workflow models. Finally, for each particular workflow management system we develop Object Constraint Language (OCL) expressions that constrain the meta model. Each of the three constrained meta models specifies the resource perspective of a particular system and can be used for further analysis.