Workflow Management : Models, Methods, and Systems

Rating:
Summary: Workflow design with a twist
Review: This book has significantly changed my thinking about and approach to workflow management. Prior to reading it I based workflow systems on process chains based on frameworks such as entry-task-validation-exit (ETVX) or plan-do-check-act (PDCA). While process chains are a valid approach, the only level of formality I imposed was cost and value analysis, which I realized after reading this book was not the entire picture of a workflow.

What I learned is how to view workflow as a logical network using Perti Nets, which are both graphical and based on a formal language using Boolean logic (AND and OR joins and splits), programmatic views (iteration) and analytical logic (causality). More importantly, this approach has resolved a misalignment between the design of workflow systems with which I previously used procedures and events and the development approach used by my company's software engineers who were using object-oriented methods. Petri Nets are based on states instead of events, which more naturally aligns object-oriented development of workflow systems to the underlying design. Discovering this is what so significantly changed my thinking and approach to workflow.

Although this book is heavily slanted towards Perti Nets, it also contains a wealth of material about workflow from business process and operations perspectives, and does not obviate process chain approaches. Instead, it provides you with a good grounding in the basics of workflow in general, and provides you with tools, techniques and an approach to developing workflows in a formal manner. If you are involved in process design, workflow development or business process engineering/reengineering this book is an invaluable, thought-provoking resource.