Unstructured business process support: Meta model approach

Business environments have become exceedingly dynamic and competitive in recent times. Workflow technology is currently one of the most promising fields of research in business process automation. However, workflow systems to date do not provide the flexibility necessary to support the dynamic nature of business processes. For many business processes it is nearly impossible to consider all possible task sequences already at the design level. To adequately support dynamic workflows, it is important to understand why processes change and which kinds of changes may occur. In this paper we outline a meta model approach for modeling unstructured business processes. Exemplary, an workflow reference meta model is presented, which helps users in specifying their requirements for a dynamic workflow management system.