Caramba—A Process-Aware Collaboration System Supporting Ad hoc and Collaborative Processes in Virtual Teams

Abstract

Abstract. Organizations increasingly define many business processes as projects executed by "virtual (project) teams", where team members from within an organization cooperate with "outside" experts. Virtual teams require and enable people to collaborate across geographical distance and professional (organizational) boundaries and have a somewhat stable team configuration with roles and responsibilities assigned to team members. Different people, coming from different organizations will have their own preferences and experiences and cannot be expected to undergo a long learning cycle before participating in team activities. Thus, efficient communication, coordination, and process-aware collaboration remain a fundamental challenge. In this paper we discuss the current shortcomings of approaches in the light of virtual teamwork (mainly Workflow, Groupware, and Project Management) based on models and underlying metaphors. Furthermore, we present a novel approach for virtual teamwork by tightly integrating all associations between processes, artifacts, and resources. In this paper we analyze (a) the relevant criteria for process-aware collaboration system metaphors, (b) coordination models and constructs for organizational structures of virtual teams as well as for ad hoc and collaborative processes composed out of tasks, and (c) architectural considerations as well as design and implementation issues for an integrated process-aware collaboration system for virtual teams on the Internet.

Supporting Dynamic, People-Driven Processes through Self-learning of Message Flows

“…Premature Documents : For premium customers, shipping becomes independent of billing thus the DeliveryN ote message (8) potentially occurs before Invoice (7). Shifted Documents : To guarantee that the Invoice (7) always exactly reflects the packaged goods, the ERP system no longer issues the Authenticationof Invoice message (6). Instead the P repareShipment (F) step triggers this message.…”

“…We then apply following rules to determine whether the message conditions on an arc can be considered satisfied (GO) or not (N OGO): (6) always occur thus their probability is 1. Assume (5b) arrives then rule 2 applies, as we are still waiting for (6). Once message (6) arrives, rule 3 would consider the arc conditions satisfied and subsequently enable activity [G].…”

“…Assume (5b) arrives then rule 2 applies, as we are still waiting for (6). Once message (6) arrives, rule 3 would consider the arc conditions satisfied and subsequently enable activity [G]. When the observed messages suffice to activate the underlying arc, we iterate through all non-observed alternative messages (that still reside in state Scheduled, Expected, or M issing) and switch them to N otExpected as we no longer require their appearance.…”

Worklets: A Service-Oriented Implementation of Dynamic Flexibility in Workflows

“…Nevertheless, there are some interesting commercial products that offer innovative features with respect to flexibility. Caramba [35] supports virtual teams in their ad hoc and collaborative processes by enabling links between artifacts (for example, documents and database objects), business processes (activities), and resources (persons, roles, etc.). FLOWer supports the concept of case-handling; the process model only describes the preferred way of doing things and a variety of mechanisms are offered to allow users to deviate in a controlled manner [1].…”

On Supporting the Design of Human-Provided Services in SOA

“…The model defines human activities which are mapped into actions (cf. [6]) performed using Web services. 5.…”