Workflow Blog

In an interesting article http://kswenson.wordpress.com/2006/05/06/workflow-is-back/ K Swenson write about the changing of the word workflow into BPM over time and how the term workflow has gone out of favour.  In fact if you look at Google trends the searches for the words workflow has gone down a few percent over the last few years.  (Although the news items containing workflow seem to have doubled).  Is this the end for workflow as a technology?  As a name?  Well neither.

Workflow as a Technology

 I read via Gartner that workflow is still expected to increase in the 5-10% range over the next few years.  Although referred to workflow systems as Business Process Management Suites by Gartner.  Also an increasing number of companies have recognized that they need to invest in workflow systems. 

Workflow as a Name 

People are starting to use many other terms in place of workflow: such as Business Process Management, Enterprise Application Integration, Service Orchestration Architecture.  That is the way of people that work with computers.  We love a good acronym.  The marketing people also love a good acronym.  It can make their products sound better.  Instead of a workflow systems why not have a Business Process Management Application Integration Service Oriented Uber-Mega Platform.  Well there is one group that is less swayed by all the fancy talk.  The people who buy workflow systems.  Most after initial investigation realize that all these other systems are workflow but just using another name and from my experience they just want it to be called workflow. 

First off sorry that it has taken me a little bit longer then expected to come up with part two.  Let's begin shall we.

HUMAN DATA CAPTURE GATE

At each step in the process or workflow you need to determine what information is collected, displayed, allowed to be modified, validation rules, business rules the list is a bit long.

Let's start at the smallest unit at least in our system, the question.

You need to determine a lot about a question and its corresponding answer.  At a minimum you need to determine:

1. What it should look like
2. Where it should appear on the page
3. Is this question repeated
4. How should it be stored in a database
5. Where should it be stored in a database
6. How does it behave / business rules
7. Does it react to answers supplied to other questions
8. Does is have default or automatically calculated values
9. Does it have a list of static or dynamic options available as answers
10. Who gets to see, edit the answer

Once you have determined all the questions being asked you need to group them together so they can be stored in the database in a logical way. 

Here you need to determine if the groups of questions you are asking are answered only once, an indeterminate amount, a determinate amount.  This contributes to how you should layout the group of questions on the form. 

You may also need to determine if logically one group of questions can be considered as having a parent-child relationship with another group of questions.

AUTOMATIC DATA MANIPULATION GATES

In other steps of the process you may need some sort of data manipulation to happen.  I.e. data is translated from one system to another and back again.  The main things you need to be asking yourself are:

1. For each column (or field) what is it, how is it stored, does it need to be parsed in some way and where is it going.
2. For each row (or record) does it need to be broken into multiple records in the new system or do multiple rows or records need to be combined in some way into the new system.

INFORMATION DISPLAY GATES

In these types of gates where information is displayed or sent to users the questions you need answered are simply:

1. What do you want to see
2. How do you want it presented (layout, color etc)
3. Who do you want to see it
4. When do you want them to see it
5. By which method (email, webpage) do you want it presented