Workflow: The way things go

Nowadays, workflows are wide spread in the business world. The desire to streamline operations in any business sector and benefit from a standard approach has allowed this concept to develop and integrate components almost inevitable to the information systems.

Here is an overview of what these strange structures called "workflow" or "workflow" ...
According to Wikipedia, "A workflow is a flow of information within an organization, such as automatic transmission of documents between people."

In the following, I will try to popularize this concept, hoping to explain it and better clarify the definition given on Wikipedia.

Table of Content:

1. Definition
2. 2nd Definition
3. What?
4. Who?
5. How?
6. When?
   • Concept of "triggering" and "Notification"
7. Where?
8. "Start" and "End" activities
9. Life cycle
10. Useful links

1 - Definition

The "Workflow" is an answer to the 5 "Wh" questions:

• What?
• Who?
• Why?
• When?
• Where?

2 – 2^nd Definition

A workflow is a set of activities or tasks, each with:

• Inputs and outputs
• Actors
• A well-defined procedure
• A "Previous" task and/or a "Next" task
• A place where it is executed

3 - "What?"

The answer is a physical entity (physical object) or not (an idea or information). This entity is what will operate in a "flow" and undergo transformations or qualifications.

Example: a protocol for clinical trials is subject to several treatments before including it in a file for authorization to market a drug.

4 - "Who?"

These are actors in a process for dealing with entities that move between them. Each player has a role in defining precisely its authority to "make" and "don'ts".

Example: the submission of a clinical study protocol is

• Created / Written by the project leader of a clinical study (PL)
• Verified / Reviewed by Clinical Studies Project Manager (CSPM)
• Read by the head of the Pharmacovigilance (HPV)
• Approved by the Head of Regulatory Affairs (HRA)

Requirements will imply, for example, that the HPV can not edit the document.

5 - "Why?"

A specific activity can explain a treatment in a given process. The activity must have a clear and reproducible procedure, generally limited to a well established role.

Example: the PL "writes" the protocol of the clinical study. It has the role of "Creation / Modification" on documents of type "Protocol". Writing procedure is defined as follow:

• Copy the existing protocol or the corresponding template locally - from server to personal computer (or literally create a new blank document)
• modify the "local" content of the document (by the meantime, the original "server" copy remains available to other users)
• Save modifications to the local content
• Upload the modified content to the server and overwrite the existing version or create a new version.

(In general, the original copy is briefly locked: at the time of its copy or his crash. Reading some content is like making a local copy as if to modify it. Readers can modify their local copy but can neither "overwrite" the remote copy, nor create a new version.)

6 - "When?"

An activity takes place, in principle, "after" and/or "before" another one, hence, the "Precedence" relationship between activities. This concept is important insofar as the activities in a workflow are always ordered (kind of sequence).

Meaning of "Trigger" and "Notification":

An activity may "precede" a number of activities and / or "forward" one or more activities. Going even further, an activity can be executed when one or more or even "all" preceding activities are completed or when some conditions are verified. We, then, speak about "Triggering" condition of the activity.

If an activity is triggered, usually stakeholders are "notified" either by email or by a particular display in a list of tasks or on the home screen of an application.

Example: The "Verification" of a document can't be executed before its creation or before a new modification of a published "version" (key word ==> cf. Subsection "9 - Life cycle") of the document. But the "Writing" of a document is quite possible after a "check". "Loops" in a workflow are very common!

7 - "Where?" or "In which context?"

Each activity can be activated only when a certain number of conditions, other than the trigger itself, are met. All of these conditions is the context. Usually, those conditions are verified on the entity submitted into the workflow.

Example: If the document is already experiencing a workflow, it is not possible to "Editor" to initiate a 2nd workflow above. Moreover, a document being verified can not undergo activity approval.

8 - "Start" and "End" activities

Those "virtual" activities signify the start or end of a workflow. They handle the triggering and the activation conditions of the "start" or the "end" of the workflow.

9 - Life cycle

The "Life Cycle" (LC) of an entity is an ordered sequence of states. Each state is a set of parameters with well-defined values. The status of an entity is described through the values of these parameters. An entity undergoing a workflow will transit across different states. Executing an activity on an entity will modify its parameters. So, usually, this modification is followed by a change of state of the entity. To retrieve a document to a given state, we use the term "version". Thus, a new version of an approved document should be created before making any further changes on it.

Example: The protocol for a clinical study follows this:

• Draft: baseline or following a change
• Checked: state following a successful verification
• approved: state following a successful approval (and, usually, the modified version becomes the official or published version and replace the old version)
• Obsolete: state meaning that the document is outdated but it has existed at some point.

10 - Useful links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow
• http://java-source.net/open-source/workflow-engines
• http://www.skelta.com/ (embedded .Net components)
• http://www.nuxeo.com/
• Case study.