OfficeObjects® WorkFlow – an Example of the 2nd Generation BPM Environment

The Business Process Management (BPM) technologies enabling the prevalently growing importance of the process-oriented management paradigm play an important role in advanced architectures of modern information systems. One can only recall importance of the database management technologies, supporting data independence of the application software, to realise that the underlying workflow management paradigm freeing the application programs from the business process status data represents a comparable advance in the software engineering field.

Our aim is to provide practical information to design and implement advanced information systems availing of the modern BPM technologies. We focus on the use of the OfficeObjects® WorkFlow product to provide its users with sufficiently detailed technical information, yet the breadth of presented material constitutes a solid methodological base for use of any standards-compliant Business Process Management System (BPMS). The proudly claimed compliance with the feature requirements of the 2nd generation BPMS grounds on formal semantic foundations, to be addressed during the tutorial.

The tutorial provides a well balanced mixture of sound theoretical BPM knowledge, deep insight into relevant standards, practical experiences of the workflow engine development and best practices in process-oriented information system commercial deployments.

OfficeObjects® WorkFlow ontology based on standard BPM terminology and workflow process as well as process instance meta-model,
methodological base - process-oriented information system life-cycle,
integration with third parties conceptual design software tools,
workflow process control features
dynamic work participant assignment (WPA) rules,
business process query language (BPQL),
time modelling and monitoring,
formal semantics defined with the use of the Petri Net formal model,
compliance with workflow patterns,
team collaboration management (TCM),
mapping of MS Project-like schedules to process definitions,
dynamic process modification,
data container, process data model, and the user-visible functions,
visualisation of the process instance execution,
archiving workflow process history,
business process reporting and analysis

The presentation is supported by a running workflow process example spanning all phases of the BPM project life-cycle.

Presenters Bio’s

Witold Staniszkis
Rodan Systems S.A. President and CEO. PhD on databases in Central School of Planning and Statistics. MSc in University of Gdañsk. Industry experience on positions ranging from programmer to project leader in Polish and abroad companies (Computer Center of the Polish United Shipyards, National Bureau for Informatics, Logica London Ltd., Zeto-Rodan Ltd.). Research work on University of Maryland, Polish Research and Development Center for Informatics. Director of the Applied Research Division in Consorzio per la Ricerca e le Applicazioni di Informatica (CRAI). Teaching experience on Polish Academy of Sciences, The UNESCO Computer Science School, Dept. of Engineering of University of Calabria, Warsaw School of Economics. Recently, President of Rodan System, and then Rodan Systems (more than 30 successful medium size turn key systems development projects). Experience in several European research projects (coordinator of IST-2001-32429 ICONS - Intelligent CONtent Management System, www.icons.rodan.pl). Senior architect of the OfficeObject® product line (a group of products for content, document, knowledge, workflow management). Member of several conference programme committees. Over 60 published scientific and technical papers and 2 books (co-author).
Bartosz Nowicki
PhD in software engineering in Technical University of Gdañsk. MSc in local networks computer protocols in Technical University of Poznan. Currently, the head of Research and Development Department in Rodan Systems S.A. Previously responsible for software process improvement and quality assurance. Involved, on different positions, in several development and consulting projects. Consultant on knowledge, content and workflow management, software engineering, software process improvement, quality assurance, project management, requirements engineering and object orientation. Author and co-author of more than 20 papers presented on national and international conferences. Experience in several European sponsored research projects (Copernicus, Environment, Information Society Technologies). Head of Polish part of the IST-2001-32429 ICONS research and development project. Supervision and consultancy for Polish teams of the FP6-2003-IST-2 4617 ASG – Adaptive Services Grid, IST-1999-20162 COMPONENT + and IST 2001-33529 INFOMIX research and development projects. Member of the Polish National Conference on Software Engineering programme committee.
Mariusz Momotko
MSc in Advanced Computer Science on University of Birmingham and MSc in Computer Science on Technical University of Gdañsk. Project manager of the document and workflow management system for public administration (OfficeObjects®DocMan) and general use workflow engine (OfficeObjects®WorkFlow). Special focus on databases (Oracle, INGRES, MS SQL), object oriented analysis, design and programming as well as workflow technology. Several TEMPUS sponsored scholarships. The author of several Polish as well as international publications on workflow systems. Responsible for procedural knowledge representation in the IST-2001-32429 ICONS project. Project manger of Polish part of the IST- IST-1999-20162 COMPONENT + and ASG FP6-2003-IST-2-004617 projects. Currently doing PhD research at Institute of Computer Science, The Polish Academy of Sciences on tools for monitoring workflow processes to support dynamic workflow changes.