Modeling coordination as resource flow: An object-based approach

Workflow management systems provide guidance to individuals performing tasks in an organization. This is typically achieved via a central workflow engine that executes descriptions of organizational processes in order to guide and coordinate activities of individuals in the organization. In this paper, we present a process modeling approach in which processes are modeled as independent "process fragments" that represent activities performed by a single actor. Each fragment is a specification of the control flow from one activity to the next, that leads to the completion of a task. Coordination among concurrent activities performed by different actors is modeled as resource flow: dependencies among coordinated activities are represented by the resources shared by concurrent activities. This allows processes performed by autonomous process performers distributed across a network to be coordinated without sacrificing individual autonomy.