Even though currently available workflow management systems (WFMSs) offer sophisticated modeling tools for specifying and analyzing workflow processes, their time management support is rudimentary. Existing time management functionality mainly addresses process simulations (to identify process bottlenecks, analyze execution durations, etc.), assignment of deadlines to acti-vities, and triggering of process-specific exception-handling acti-vities (referred to as escalations) when deadlines are missed du-ring process execution. In this paper, we address the crucial role of time management in the lifecycle of workflow processes. In par-ticular, we describe how structural (i.e. execution order depen-dent) and explicit (i.e. fixed-date, periodic, upper- and lower-bound) time constraints can be modeled during process definition, validated during modeling and instantiation-times and, finally, monitored and managed during execution time.

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Future Strategies INC. in association with Workflow Management Coalition

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