Publikation
Workflow-Kontext zur Realisierung prozessorientierter Assistenz in Organisational Memories
Heiko Maus
PhD-Thesis, TU Kaiserslautern, dissertation.de - Verlag im Internet GmbH, 2007.
Zusammenfassung
Many initiatives to introduce knowledge management in companies fail, because they are not integrated in the employees' daily work processes and do not adequately support their knowledge-intensive tasks.
The work in hand presents potentials of workflow management systems -- in spite of their primary focus to process automation -- for the process-oriented assistance within organisational memories, which is able to support employees embedded in processes in their knowledge-intensive work.
Thus, the problems of companies with the efficient and effective handling of knowledge in the daily processes can be challenged by a process-oriented approach of knowledge management.
However, contemporary workflow management systems show deficits which complicate or hinder the realisation of these potentials. Especially, there is no such concept for context from workflows which could dynamically exploit process context for the assistance.
By using the term 'context' it should be made clear that we are interested in all information related to workflows which are relevant for the problem at hand and could make the assistance more efficient and effective.
The goal of the work is therefore the development of a concept for context from workflows -- the so-called 'workflow context' -- and its realisation by means of information technology.
The workflow-context represents a means to establish a process-orientation of organisational memories and based on this to realise a process-orientated assistance.
The book evolves the topic of workflow context along two prototypical implementations for different kind of processes:
First, on the basis of a system for knowledge-based Document Analysis and Understanding (DAU) it is shown detailed how context from workflows can be used for the process-orientation of a knowledge-based system embedded in an Organisational Memory.
The developed solution focuses on classical, commercial workflow management systems - i.e., automating strongly-structured processes - which do not allow internal adaptations for realising a concept for workflow context.
With that it is shown, how companies can realise some of the identified potentials by using an already available, i.e., a legacy workflow management system.
Even more potential is provided by workflow context for the process-oriented assistance of knowledge work. However, knowledge work includes weakly-structured processes whose characteristics make it impossible to support it with classical workflow systems. In order to realise an adequate support, the concept of weakly-structured workflows has been developed with participation of the author, allowing a process-oriented assistance for the knowledge work based on the workflow paradigm. This new kind of workflows also require a new, more flexible and dynamic concept for workflow context.
Considering the resulting special requirements for such a concept, a more detailed discussion of the term context and its usage in system design is given with the focus on process-oriented assistance in Organisational Memories.
From these observations, design criteria are formulated concerning the workflow context model, its creation, representation, and usage which form the basis for the workflow context concept which is explained in detail.
The realisation of workflow context-aware services based on this concept shows the potentials of the workflow context for the process-oriented assistance in Organisational Memories which contribute to solutions for the identified problems of companies with knowledge-intensive work.
Many initiatives to introduce knowledge management in companies fail, because they are not integrated in the employees' daily work processes and do not adequately support their knowledge-intensive tasks.
The work in hand presents potentials of workflow management systems -- in spite of their primary focus to process automation -- for the process-oriented assistance within organisational memories, which is able to support employees embedded in processes in their knowledge-intensive work.
Thus, the problems of companies with the efficient and effective handling of knowledge in the daily processes can be challenged by a process-oriented approach of knowledge management.
However, contemporary workflow management systems show deficits which complicate or hinder the realisation of these potentials. Especially, there is no such concept for context from workflows which could dynamically exploit process context for the assistance.
By using the term 'context' it should be made clear that we are interested in all information related to workflows which are relevant for the problem at hand and could make the assistance more efficient and effective.
The goal of the work is therefore the development of a concept for context from workflows -- the so-called 'workflow context' -- and its realisation by means of information technology.
The workflow-context represents a means to establish a process-orientation of organisational memories and based on this to realise a process-orientated assistance.
The book evolves the topic of workflow context along two prototypical implementations for different kind of processes:
First, on the basis of a system for knowledge-based Document Analysis and Understanding (DAU) it is shown detailed how context from workflows can be used for the process-orientation of a knowledge-based system embedded in an Organisational Memory.
The developed solution focuses on classical, commercial workflow management systems - i.e., automating strongly-structured processes - which do not allow internal adaptations for realising a concept for workflow context.
With that it is shown, how companies can realise some of the identified potentials by using an already available, i.e., a legacy workflow management system.
Even more potential is provided by workflow context for the process-oriented assistance of knowledge work. However, knowledge work includes weakly-structured processes whose characteristics make it impossible to support it with classical workflow systems. In order to realise an adequate support, the concept of weakly-structured workflows has been developed with participation of the author, allowing a process-oriented assistance for the knowledge work based on the workflow paradigm. This new kind of workflows also require a new, more flexible and dynamic concept for workflow context.
Considering the resulting special requirements for such a concept, a more detailed discussion of the term context and its usage in system design is given with the focus on process-oriented assistance in Organisational Memories.
From these observations, design criteria are formulated concerning the workflow context model, its creation, representation, and usage which form the basis for the workflow context concept which is explained in detail.
The realisation of workflow context-aware services based on this concept shows the potentials of the workflow context for the process-oriented assistance in Organisational Memories which contribute to solutions for the identified problems of companies with knowledge-intensive work.
Projekte
ADIB - Adaptive Informationsbeschaffung,
EPOS - Evolving Personal to Organizational Knowledge Spaces,
CoMem - Corporate Memory
EPOS - Evolving Personal to Organizational Knowledge Spaces,
CoMem - Corporate Memory