IDENTIFYING PATTERNS OF WORKFLOW DESIGN RELYING ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ASPECTS

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1 IDENTIFYING PATTERNS OF WORKFLOW DESIGN RELYING ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ASPECTS Lucinéia Heloisa Thom, Cirano Iochpe Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av.Bento Conçalves, 9500, Postal Box 15064, , Porto Alegre RS Brazill Keywords: Abstract: Patterns, workflow modeling, aspects of the organizational structure Modern organizations have demands of automation of their business processes, once they are highly complex and need to be efficiently executed. For this reason the number of systems based on information technologies able to provide a better documentation, standardization and co-ordination of the business process is increasing. In this context, workflow technology has been quite efficient, mainly for the automation of business processes. However, as it is an emergent technology and in constant evolution, workflow presents some limitations. One of the main limitations is the lack of techniques that guarantee correction and efficiency to the workflow project in the phases of requisite analysis and modeling. Taking into account these problems and having accomplished some studies, we formulated the hypothesis that it is possible to infer the specific workflow (sub)processes structure from knowledge on structural aspects of the organization and vice-versa. We made the verification of such hypothesis through the identification of a set of dependency rules among the aspects of the organizational structure and workflow (sub)processes. This paper presents the set of rules and the description of the technique used for the identification. 1 INTRODUCTION An organization is a systematic arrangement composed of two or more people who share a common purpose (Chiavenato, 2000). The organization relies on a set of structural aspects (i.e. variables) which can be assessed both through the analysis of the organization s planning documents and by interviews with employees and managers (Iochpe, 2002). However, not all organizations keep these information resources up to date. This can become an obstacle in understanding how the organization is structured and the way it works. Business authors as well as business professionals argue that the organizational structure should be derived from the organization s business processes and not vice-versa (Davis, 1996). Therefore, by analyzing the organizational structure it should be possible to understand the organization s business processes. A business process is a set of either one or more dependent procedures or activities structured in some way that collectively fulfill a business objective in the context of an organizational structure (Fischer, 2001), (WMC, 1999). Modern organizations pose ever-growing demands on the automation of their business processes due to the high complexity of the latter and the need for efficiency in their execution. This fact explains the fast evolution of information technologies that provide better documentation as well as standardization, and co-ordination of business processes. In this context, the workflow technology presents itself as a good alternative for business process automation (Iochpe 2001). Though, since it is a relatively new and still evolving technology, workflow presents some limitations, especially with respect to techniques that can enforce correctness as well as efficiency during both the requirements analysis and the modeling phase of the workflow design process. Especially for these design steps, designers must acquire knowledge about the organization and its business processes. Besides the eventual obsolescence of its planning documents, designers can find it difficult to understand the organization due to both language conflicts and cultural resistance (Thom, 2002), (Hehn, 1999) that can take place during interviews with employees and managers. Most of today s workflow models as well as design techniques do not take the organizational 462

2 IDENTIFYING PATTERNS OF WORKFLOW DESIGN RELYING ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ASPECTS structure into consideration [Wfmc, 1995]. The same occurs with the workflow patterns that just describe conventional workflow mechanisms such as task sequencing, split parallelism, join synchronization and iteration (Backlund, 2001). In order to minimize these problems dependency relations between structural aspects of an organization and its typical workflow (sub)processes have been investigated. Relying on those dependencies, a set of rules can be specified to help assuring correct workflow design. Each rule expresses the relationship among either one or more specific aspects of the organizational structure and some usual workflow construction. The set of dependency relations presented in this paper was derived from a case study involving a workflow system of a specific governmental institution. A follow up research has already been started to investigate whether or not the identified apply to other organizations with similar structural aspects. This paper is organized as follows. The set of structural aspects (i.e., variables) that characterize the governmental institution is briefly discussed in Section 2. The workflow system as well as the set of dependency rules are presented in Section 3. Finally, conclusions and future work are drawn in Section 4. 2 A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANIZATION AND ITS STRUCTURE According to the business literature (Araújo, 1994), (Chiavenato, 2000) planning documents in organizations are useful sources of information about their structural aspects. However, at the governmental organization we studied, most of these documents do not exist. Basically, the organization presents an organizational chart that represents its hierarchical structure and some forms containing information used in the work process. In order to know the structural aspects of the organization in question, we have mostly taken into account interviews with employees and technical staff, systemic reports and the analysis of the workflow processes itself. 2.1 Main Structural Aspects By tuning or adjusting some structural aspects to the desired performance, the organization gets its final structure (Davis, 1996). Among the most important aspects to be dealt with in the process of structuring an organization, authors point out the degree of differentiation as well as the degree of centralization in decision-making, the types of co-ordination mechanisms used, and the degree of dependencies between activities (Crowston 2002). In the organization studied, most of these aspects were identified. For example, several activities are accomplished in the organization, mostly bureaucratic, referring to a specific activity branch. Responsibility for the activities execution is distributed trough four hierarchical levels which form its hierarchical structure, besides representing the prevalent vertical differentiation in the organization. The different organizational units, such as departments, directories and divisions make the horizontal differentiation of the organization. These units are set in the organizational chart according to the organizational scalar chain, witch specifies who is subordinated to whom (Chiavenato, 2000). Thus, at the top of the organizational chain, representing the higher level of authority for decision-making is the Presidency. At the second level there are the administrative and technical directorates. Below, with a shorter level of authority, there are the departments, divisions and services. Note that the hierarchical structure characterized above contributes to the high centralization of decision-making on higher positions of the organizational chart, such as, for example, the presidency and directorate. The delegation of authority, that is, decentralization, seldom happens between a department chief and a staff member of the same department. In order to minimize the effects caused by the high vertical differentiation, the organization uses certain co-ordination mechanisms (Mintzberg 1995) as, for example, direct supervision and standardization of skills. In the first case, an immediate superior co-ordinates the work of one or more subordinate. The other case involves the previous specification of abilities necessary to the human resources for the process execution. Last but not least, the organization, besides standardizing existing positions, keep the specification of functions linked to these positions up to date. Rules can be associated to each activity, representing restraints of legal concern and also dependencies among activities and resources. 2.2 Considerations About The Workflow System The workflow system of the governmental organization used as a basis for the case study presented in this article was developed by a 463

3 ICEIS INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION consortium between that organization and a team of researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), including the authors of the present paper. The project involved a series of technological innovations aiming at increasing the efficiency and productivity in the organization. The main functionalities of the system are: a) automation of the main internal processes of the organization, making easier the management of its flow and; b) creation of a digital document base making possible to read the main documents manipulated in the process flow. During the application development about 60 workflow sub-processes were modeled, with the Oracle Workflow Builder tool. The modeling comprised a varied set of activities, such as: user s notification, document s elaboration, authorization and scanning, besides electronic signatures. Same of the workflow sub-process modeled are presented in Figures 2, 4 and 6. The system architecture is composed of three subsystems: the database subsystem, the workflow subsystem and the image subsystem. While the database subsystem stores information about the application, the workflow subsystem controls the flow trough that. On the other hand, the image subsystem creates and manager the scanning documents. The functioning of these subsystems involves several tools as, per examples, Oracle 8i 8.1.6, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle Workflow 2.0.3, Oracle Workflow Builder e Oracle Application Server. The workflow system integrated to digital documents bases made possible to model, perform and control electronically the work processes of the organization. 3 IDENTIFICATION OF THE DEPENDENCY RULES The present research was based on the hypothesis that it is possible to infer the structure of workflow sub-processes from knowledge about the organization structural aspects and vice-versa. Hypothesis validation foresees the identification of dependency relationships between structural aspects and specific workflow schemas. We carried out several procedures to test that hypothesis. They are described with details in the next sections. 3.1 Technique Used To Identify The Dependency Rules To identify dependency rules we used a technique involving the following phases: 1. general study, based on the business literature in organizational structure aspects. Results are described in (Iochpe, 2002); 2. due to the significant number of structural aspects identified with the general study and time limit for the research conclusion, we decided to restrain the investigation to a sub-set of those aspects. For each possible combination of one or more selected aspects we identified the main activities related to them in the business process of the organization. 3. for each activity we identified the set of tasks (one or more) that implement it in the business processes. For example, centralization of decision making is implemented by a sequence of authorization tasks under the responsibility of directorate positions in several levels of the organizational chart. 4. for each set of tasks identified we investigated the best workflow schema to represent it, either through the study of workflow systems already existent in the organization or, when there aren t, through the experience of experts in workflow projects. After this phase, it was possible to identify through transitivity, dependency relations between structural aspects and workflow sub-processes, thus confirming our work hypothesis. The technique described above was applied in the study case carried out in the organization described in Section 2.1. In this organization the following set of structural aspects was identified: centralization of decision making; direct supervision; scalar chain; standardization of skills; and dependencies among activities and resources. After the identification of such aspects, we investigated their relation with workflow processes that already existed, inferring a set of dependency rules, presented below as ECA rules (Casati, 2000), (Endl 1998), (Brown, 2001), (Torrico, 2000). Rules should be interpreted as described below: Event (On): the organization has a certain set of structural aspects that imply a kind of activity. Condition (If): existence of a set of tasks, in one or more points of the business processes, these tasks reflect the activity expressed in the Event. Action (Then): to adequate, in the workflow project, the standard of specific (sub)process, annex to this rule. Note that in the workflow schemas, indicated in ECA rules, presented below, activities are indicated 464

4 IDENTIFYING PATTERNS OF WORKFLOW DESIGN RELYING ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ASPECTS by rectangles, dependencies among activities by directed arcs and iterations (loops) by lozenges. In each schema, a dotted rectangle identifies part of a workflow related to structural aspects that form the Event rule. For the identification of rules 60 workflow subprocesses were analyzed. Some of these subprocesses are presented below, as an example, according to the rule to which they are associated. End of (Sub)process Notification Process Function Wait Activity Start of (Sub)process 3.2 Rule Based On The Centralization Of Decision Making The aspect centralization of decision making causes the possibility of a centralization activity in the decision making in several points of the business processes. As a complement, direct supervision associated to the scalar chain, indicates who supervises and controls the work of whom. In the organization, we identified aspects of centralization and direct supervision in the subprocesses for documents signature. Rules that determine which positions should sign each document vary according to its class (e.g. technical report). For each document class, there is a set of rules that determine the sequence of positions that should sign it. Such sequence is defined with relation to the scalar chain of authority of the organization. For the identification of a rule, we analyzed about 80% of workflow sub-processes that implement the signature process. We observed that such sub-process present the same structure in all sub-processes analyzed. Activities linked to the signature can be repeatedly performed, once for each position, according to the document class. The execution order follows the inverse direction of the authority line of the scalar chain. After that analysis we inferred the following dependency rule: Event: centralization identified in some unity of the organization. This implies the possibility of an activity of centralization of decision-making. Condition: there is centralization in decision making with respect to a certain sub-product (e.g document) of business processes. This task is reflected in one or more points of the business processes as a sequence of signature activities. Action: to include in the workflow, at each point of decision making on the sub-product in question, the sub-process pattern shown in Figure 3. Figure 2 : Example of signature sub-process. document Review accept document Reject Annul previous signature Assign document to its autor to be redo Record signature More signatures no Continue flow Figure 3 : Rule based on the centralization of decision making. 3.3 Rule Based On The Standardization Of Skills The results of more complex activities can not be always standardized. This makes the organization to standardize abilities of the performers. That is why they usually end to be experts in specific points of the work. The standardization of skills aspect implies an action of question solving (with some expert of the organization) in the context of a complex activity. In the organization, we identified the standardization of the skills aspect, mainly in the sub-processes of doubts solving (Figure 5). Such sub-process presents the same structure in all workflow sub-processes analyzed. Besides, a position with expert s knowledge performs the doubts solving activity. After that analysis we inferred the following dependency rule: Event: standardization of skills identified in some organization unity (e.g. techniques). This implies the possibility of an activity of question solving by those who have expert s knowledge; Condition: standardization of skills is reflected in a process of reviewing and preparing the document with an activity of question solving; Action: to include in the workflow, at each point in the documents preparation and review process, the pattern of the workflow sub-process shown in Figure

5 ICEIS Information Systems Analysis and Specification Figure 4 : Example of a question solving sub-process. Prepare document answered Document Review Document Solving questions with specialist answered Continue Flow Figure 5 : Rule based on standardization of skills. 3.4 Rule Based On The Standardization Of Outputs And Dependency Among Activities The aspect dependency between the output of an activity a that serves as input for an activity b causes the possibility of a standardized action of the activity a, which is used in the execution of the activity b and of the dependency among such activities in several points of the business process. In the governmental organization we identified the output standardization aspects and dependency among activities, mainly in the sub-processes where an activity a produces a resource (e.g. document), that is used during the execution of an activity b (e.g. document signature). In all workflow sub-processes analyzed, this kind of standardization and dependency corresponds to a sequential flow where the execution of an activity b follows an activity a and the result of an activity a must be a resource (passed via parameter) that an activity b uses in its performance. After this analysis, we inferred the following rule: Event: standardization of outputs and dependency among activities identified in specific points of business processes. This implies that there is an output standardization and a previous activity a that serves as input for a following activity b. Condition: the output standardization and dependency among activities is reflected in one or more points of the business processes as a dependency relationship among an activity a, whose output is a parameter used in the execution of an activity b; Action: to include in the workflow, at each point of the business process where there is output standardization and dependency among activities of the standard of workflow sub-process of Figure 7. Figure 6: Example of sub-process of dependency among activities. Activity produces a certain resource Resource Activity uses the produced resource 4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORKS Continue flow Figure 7: Rule based on the dependency among activities. Automation of business processes is today one of the most efficient strategies to keep competitiveness in organizations. Workflow systems associated to other technologies as, for example, Intranet/Internet, electronic documents management (EDM) and database systems make feasible such automation. One of the most important phases in the development of a workflow system is modeling of 466

6 IDENTIFYING PATTERNS OF WORKFLOW DESIGN RELYING ON ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ASPECTS business processes. In order to the workflow system to represent accurately a certain business process, it should respect the aspects of the organizational structure, once such structure determines correction of such processes. Based on the study we carried out, we postulate the hypothesis that it is possible to infer the specific workflow (sub)processes from knowledge of the structural aspects of the organization and vice-versa. We verified that hypothesis through the identification of dependency rules among the organizational structure aspects and workflow (sub)processes. For the identification of dependency rules we used a technique formed of four phases. Such technique was applied in a case study which involved the analysis of several workflow subprocesses of the same organization. Initially we identified activities that the organizational structure aspects triggers in the organization. Later, we mapped such activities in tasks of the business processes. This correspondence was expressed through dependency rules in the ECA format. The result of our investigation are mainly simple and probably obvious rules. However, it is possible to forse the existance of other more complex rules that could yet further help designers of workflow processes. In order to identify these other dependency rules more case studies should be conducted in similar organizations as well as in different ones. We believe that the availability of dependency rules in workflow patterns catalogues can make the workflow design process easier, helping designers, mainly those with less experience and/or facing cultural resistance in the early phases of design, as well as those working in organizational with few documentation about their business processes. Last, but not least, the technique used in this paper for the identification of dependency rules was totally manual. An interesting and useful work would be the investigation of techniques, to (semi)automate the process of inference of rules and respective patterns of workflow. This could be carried out, through the use of data mining techniques such the one presented in (Silva, 2003). Workflows of different organization but with similar structure could be analyzed aiming the identification of common workflow sub-processes. REFERENCES Backlund P.2001, In Sixth CAiSE/IFIP8.I International Workshop on Evaluation of Modeling Methods in Systems Analysis and Design, 2001, Interlaken, Switzerland, pp I: 1-11 Barthelmes P.; Wainer J., Workflow Modeling. In: CYTED-RITOS 95. International Workshop On Groupware. Proceedings Lisboa, Portugal: [s.n.]. p Brown, G.; Talbot, S. R., Event Condition Action Framework. Spiritsoft. Casati, F., Aug Using patterns to design rules in workflows. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Journal, New York, v. 26, n. 8, p Chiavenato, I., Administração: teoria, processo e prática. 3., ed. São Paulo: Makron Books, Crowston, K., A Taxonomy Of Coordination Dependencies and Coordination Mechanisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Centre for Coordination Science. (Technical Report #174). Davis, M. R.; Weckler, D. A., A Practical Guide To Organization Design. Boston: Crisp Publications. Endl, R.; Knolmayer, G.; Pfahrer, M., Modeling Process and Workflows by Business Rules. Bern: Institute of Information Systems, University of Bern. (SWORDIES Project). Fischer, L., Workflow Handbook. Florida: Future Strategies Inc. Hehn, H. F., 1999.Peopleware: como trabalhar o fator humano nas Implementações de sistemas Integrados de Informação (ERP). São Paulo: Ed. Gente. Mintzberg, H., Criando Organizações Eficazes: estruturas em cinco configurações. São Paulo: Atlas. Iochpe, C.; Thom, L., Relying On The Organizational Structure To Model Workflow Processes. In: ICEIS 2001, International Conference On Enterprise Information Systems. Proceedings Setúbal: ICEIS Press, v.2, p Iochpe, C.; Thom, L. H., Inferring Aspects Of The Organizational Structure Through Workflow Process Analysis. In: ICEIS 2002, International Conference On Enterprise Information Systems. Proceedings Ciudad Real: ICEIS Press, v.2, p Thom, L. H. Iochpe, C.; Gus, I., Considering Human Factors in Workflow Development. In: IHC 2002, 5th Symposium On Human Factors In Computer Systems. Fortaleza, Ceará: BNB, p Torrico, F. N.; Tanaka, A. K.; Moura, A. M. C., Especificação de Regras de Negócio para Banco de Dados Relacional-Objeto Silva, C. M. S.; Iochpe, C.; Engel, P., Using Knowledge Discovery in Databases to Identify Analysis Patterns. In: ICEIS 2003, International Conference On Enterprise Information Systems. Proceedings France. Workflow Management Coalition., The Workflow Reference Model. 55p. 467