An approach to visual analysis for task flow management

Efficient management of task flow plays an important role in prediction, planning, control and optimization of tasks. In this paper, according to major indicators to evaluate during task flow management such as time performance, resource allocation efficiency and executory costs we establish a task flow management oriented business model and analyze important operations performed in evaluation, analysis, and optimization of task flow. Based on the business model, in the view of problems from multi-source and heterogeneous data without standardized description, we define a unified data model to give a description for the massive and heterogeneous task flow data. Then we further demonstrate a complex task flow oriented visualization morphology design, with corresponding layout algorithm, and introduce the Focus + Context technique to assist users in analyzing task flows and making accurate decisions. Finally, we develop a task flow management oriented visual analysis prototype system, and apply it into medical process management. Experimental results show that this system can effectively support analysis and evaluation of execution progress, time performance, resource utilization, cost, etc., which can improve efficiency of the task flow management and contribute to quick and accurate decision-making.