Pattern-based knowledge workflow automation: concepts and issues

Abstract

As the result of business process automation, more and more knowledge is codified and stored in knowledge repositories and scattered in employees' computers across functionally and geographically separated business units. While several alternative mechanisms such as chat rooms, search engines, recommender systems exist to retrieve and access knowledge, satisfying a knowledge requirement often involves the coordination of multiple tasks and the use of several technologies. However, there is no existing technology for orchestrating various collaboration, communication and information retrieval components to satisfy the knowledge needs in corporations. In order to address this gap, we propose the approach of pattern-based knowledge workflow that can enable the automation of knowledge flows across an organization. In this paper, we present an overview of the patternbased knowledge workflow approach and propose extensions to the conventional workflow paradigm. We demonstrate the feasibility of implementing knowledge workflows by means of a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) specification for executing knowledge workflows in a business setting. We then discuss the engineering challenges and research issues that need to be addressed to further develop this approach.

Knowledge Waste in Organizations: A Review of Previous Studies

“…Petter et Vaishnavi (2008) used the narratives to improve knowledge reuse among software project managers. Sarnikar et Zhao (2008) proposed a pattern-based knowledge framework for automating the knowledge flow at organizations. Tserng et al (2009) proposed and approach to extract knowledge and develop a project's risk ontology.…”

An Architecture for Collaboration Patterns in Agile Event-Driven Environments

“…In this respect, we extend research on activity patterns [9] and propose CPats as a type of design patterns applicable to event-based systems [10]. Regarding our architectural proposition, we extend previous research on event-based architectures for cross-organizational coordination [11], as well as efforts that adopt patterns for knowledge workflow management [12].…”

A review of patterns in collaborative work

“…Sarnikar et al [35] proposed pattern-based knowledge workflows for enabling the automation of knowledge flows across an organization. This approach addresses the problem of orchestrating various collaboration, communication and information retrieval components such as search engines, recommender systems and chat rooms in order to satisfy the knowledge needs in corporations.…”