Facilitating Flexibility and Dynamic Exception Handling in Workflows through Worklets

Abstract

This paper presents the basis of an approach for dynamic e xibility, evolution and exception handling in work o ws through the support of e xible work practices, based not on proprietary frameworks, but on accepted ideas of how people actually work. A set of principles have been derived from a sound theoretical base and applied to the development of worklets, an extensible repertoire of self-contained sub-processes that can be applied in a variety of situations depending on the context of the particular work instance.

1 Introduction

Work o w systems are used to con gure and control structured business processes from which well-de ned work o w models and instances can be derived [ 1, 2 ]. However, the proprietary frameworks imposed make it dif cult to support (i) dynamic evolution (i.e. modifying process instances during execution) following unexpected or developmental change in the business processes being modelled [ 3 ]; and (ii) deviations from the process model at runtime [ 4 ].

These limitations mean a large subset of business processes do not easily map to the rigid modelling structures provided [ 5 ], due to the lack of e xibility inherent in a framework that, by de nition, imposes rigidity. Process models are ‘system-centric’, or straight-jacketed [ 6 ] into the supplied framework, rather than truly re ecting the way work is actually performed. As a result, users are forced to work outside of the system, and/or constantly revise the static process model, in order to successfully support their activities, thereby negating the ef cienc y gains sought by implementing a work o w solution in the rst place. It is therefore desirable to extend the capabilities of work o w systems by developing an approach based on natural work practices.

This paper introduces the concept of ‘worklets’, an extensible repertoire of selfcontained sub-processes and associated selection and exception handling rules, and grounded in a formal set of work practice principles called Activity Theory, to support the modelling, analysis and enactment of business processes. It is organised as follows: Section 2 surveys issues of dynamic evolution and exception handling in work o ws, provides a brief overview of Activity Theory, then introduces the worklet paradigm. Section 3 describes how the worklet approach utilises Ripple Down Rules to achieve contextual, dynamic selection at runtime. 2

Achieving Flexibility through Worklets

Rather than continue to try to force business processes into in e xible frameworks (with limited success), a more e xible approach is needed that is based on accepted ideas of how people actually work.

A powerful set of descriptive and clarifying principles that describe how work is conceived, performed and re ected upon is Activity Theory, which focusses on understanding human activity and work practices, incorporating notions of intentionality, history, mediation, collaboration and development [ 7 ]. (A full exploration of Activity Theory can be found in: [ 8, 9 ]). In [ 10 ], the authors undertook a detailed study of Activity Theory and derived from it a set of principles that describe the nature of participation in organisational work practices. Brie y , the relevant principles are: 1. Activities (i.e. work processes) are hierarchical (consist of one or more actions), communal (involve a community of participants working towards a common objective), contextual (conditions and circumstances deeply affect the way the objective is achieved), dynamic (evolve asynchronously), and mediated (by tools, rules and divisions of labour). 2. Actions (i.e. tasks) are undertaken and understood contextually. A repertoire of actions is maintained and made available to any activity, which may be performed by making contextual choices from the repertoire. 3. A plan is not a prescription of work to be performed, but merely a guide which is modi ed during execution depending on context. 4. Exceptions are merely natural deviations from a plan, and will occur with every execution, giving rise to learning experiences which can then be incorporated into future instantiations of the plan.

Consideration of these derived principles have led to the conception of a exible worko w support system that: – regards the process model as a guide to an activity’s objective, rather than a prescription for it; – provides for a dynamic repertoire (or catalogue) of actions to be made available for each task at each execution of a process model; – provides for choices to be made dynamically from the repertoire at runtime by considering the speci c context of the executing instance; and – allows those contextual choices to be made, not only for each task, but for appropriate exception handling techniques using the same selection and invocation mechanism, thus incorporating process exceptions, not only as part of the model, but as normal and valuable events that lead to natural process evolution.

Each task of a process instance is linked to a extensible repertoire of actions, one of which is contextually chosen at runtime to carry out the task. In this work, we present these repertoire-member actions as “worklets”. In effect, a worklet is a small, selfcontained, complete work o w process which handles one speci c task (action) in a larger, composite process (activity). A sequence of worklets are chained to form an entire work o w process. Note that in Activity Theory terms, a worklet may represent one action within an activity, or may represent an entire activity. Indeed, a top-level or manager worklet is developed that captures the entire work o w at a macro level. From that manager process, worklets are contextually selected and invoked from the repertoire of each task.

In addition, for each exception (an event that is not expected to occur in most instances), a complementary worklet for handling the event may be de ned, to be dynamically incorporated into a running work o w instance on an as-needed basis. Further, worklets to handle these potential events are constructed in exactly the same way as those for standard processes. Importantly, the method used to handle an exception is captured by the system, and so a history of the event and the method used to handle it is recorded for future instantiations. In this way, the process model undergoes a dynamic natural evolution. At the same time, a repertoire for each task is dynamically constructed as different approaches to completing a task are developed, derived from the context of each process instance. 3

Context and Worklet Selection

In order to realise the worklet approach, the situated contextual factors relevant to each case instance are required to be quanti ed and recorded [ 11 ] so that the appropriate worklet can be ‘intelligently’ selected from the repertoire at runtime.

The types of contextual data that may be recorded and applied to a business case may be categorised as follows (examples are drawn from a Conference Proceedings process): – Generic (case independent): data attributes that can be considered likely to occur within any process (of course, the data values change from case to case). Such data would include descriptors such as created when, created by, times invoked, last invoked, current status; and agent or worker descriptors such as experience, skills, rank, history with this worklet and so on. Process execution states also belong to this category. – Case dependent with a-priori knowledge: that set of data that are known to be pertinent to a particular case or instantiation. Generally, this data set re ects the data objects of a particular process instance. Examples are: the dates invitations, papers and reviews sent and received; timeouts both approaching and expired; and actual committee member, reviewer and paper data. – Case dependent with no a-priori knowledge: that set of data that only becomes known when the case is active and deviations from the process occur. Examples in this category may include data that describe a missing paper, a request to withdraw a paper or a conference cancellation.

Each worklet is a representation of a particular situated action, the runtime selection of which relies on the relevant context of each case instance, derived from case and historical data. The worklet selection process is achieved through the use of modi ed Ripple Down Rules (RDR), which comprise a hierarchical set of rules with associated exceptions, rst devised by Compton and Jansen [ 12 ].

The fundamental feature of RDR is that it avoids the dif culties inherent in attempting to compile, a-priori, a systematic understanding, organisation and assembly of all knowledge in a particular domain. Instead, it allows for general rules to be de ned rst with re nements added later as the need arises [ 13 ].

An RDR Knowledge Base is a collection of simple rules of the form “if condition then conclusion”, conceptually arranged in a binary tree structure ( g. 1). Each rule node may have a false (‘or’) branch and/or a true (‘exception’) branch to another rule node, except for the root node, which contains a default rule and can have a true branch only. If a rule is satis ed, the true branch is taken and the associated rule is evaluated; if it is not satis ed, the false branch is taken and its rule evaluated [ 14 ]. When a terminal node is reached, if its rule is satis ed, then its conclusion is taken; if its rule is not satis ed, then the conclusion of the last rule satis ed on the path to that node is taken. This tree traversal provides implied locality - a rule on an exception branch is tested for applicability only if its parent (next-general) rule is also applicable.

1 ClaimAmount > $10,000

ReferToManager Condition not satisfied

Condition satisfied 0 true AssessClaim 2 ClaimsYTD >= 1 InvestigateClaim condition conclusion 3 AssessorRank >= “Senior”

AssessClaim 4 ClaimAmount < $3,000 AssessClaim 6 ClaimAmount > $50,000

ReferToManager 7 StormDamage ExpressPayment 5 ClaimantStatus = “Suspect”

Investigate

If the conclusion returned is found to be unsuitable for a particular case instance, a new rule is formulated that de nes the contextual circumstances of the instance and is added as a new leaf node. In essence, each added exception rule is a re nement of its parent rule.

Each node incorporates a set of case descriptors, called the ‘cornerstone case’, which describe the actual case that was the catalyst for the creation of the rule. The condition for the new rule is determined by comparing the descriptors of the current case to those of the cornerstone case of the returned conclusion and identifying a sub-set of differences. Not all differences will be relevant – it is only necessary to determine the factor or factors that make it necessary to handle the current case in a different fashion to the cornerstone case to de ne a new rule. The identi ed differences are expressed as attribute-value pairs, using the normal conditional operators. The current case descriptors become the cornerstone case for the newly formulated rule; its condition is formed by the identi ed attribute-values and represents the context of the case instance that caused the addition of the rule.

The Selection Process. When a process model is created, it is stored as a template of ‘placeholders’. Each placeholder corresponds to a particular chain of RDRs within which are referenced a repertoire of worklets, one of which will be selected and assigned to the placeholder dynamically. Initially, the RDR chain for each placeholder will consist of a single node containing a default rule and a conclusion referencing the one worklet de ned. Note that whenever the model is viewed by a stakeholder, each placeholder in the template is lled with a reference to the conclusion of the default rule (i.e. the default worklet) for that placeholder.

Suppose that, after a while, a new business rule is formulated. In conventional worko w systems, this would require a re-de nition of the model. Using the worklet approach, it simply requires a new worklet to be added to the repertoire and a new rule added as a re nement to the appropriate RDR, negating the need to explicitly model the choices and repeatedly update the model (with each iteration increasingly camou aging the original business logic).

In all future case instances, the new worklet de ned would be chosen for that placeholder if the condition de ned by choosing the attribute differences occur in that instance’s case data. Over time, the RDR chain for the placeholder grows as re nements are added to the rule base ( g. 1).

Exception Handling. Worklets may also be de ned and used to provide exception handling capabilities for events that occur during the execution of a case instance. When such an event occurs, a corresponding global system event is triggered that passes an appropriate message to all active worklets. Each worklet has a second, separate RDR rule base for exceptions, which is interrogated when a message is received. If the default condition in an exception RDR chain is an identi er for the message received, then the worklet will handle that exception by invoking an appropriately selected exception handling worklet (which may modify the current state of its parent worklet when activated (e.g. suspend it), and again on completion, as required). If there is no RDR de ned for that exception, it is simply ignored.

Exceptions may be triggered by a combination of (a) system generated messages (e.g. deadline reached, state change of another worklet, etc); (b) domain dependent data (e.g. unmet thresholds, missing data etc.); and (c) external triggers (i.e. user interactions). Exception handling is passed hierarchically through the execution tree to each parent worklet in turn until all ‘interested’ worklets have handled the exception. This method ensures that all exception handling tasks are de ned and performed locally and in a distributed manner.

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