Today's non-tayloristic work environments call for flexible work
practices supported by dynamic IT systems. Changing and optimising
business processes has become an important 'adaptation mechanism' in
this context. However, process models cannot capture every conceivable
real-life situation, and firms' software infrastructures often do not
provide the flexibility required for supporting 'design-in-use' through
effective tailoring processes. The involvement of business users in the
continuous redesign of business processes is a beneficial solution for
these problems, as it enhances decision processes by making specific
information available more quickly. However, involving business users in
these redesign processes requires specific design tools. This book
presents the development of an environment that enables business users
to independently model business processes and workflows. The environment
reduces the technical skills required for modelling business processes
and workflows to enable business users to tailor heterogeneous software
infrastructures. It also provides improved documentation facilities. The
facilities add usage-related information about Web services to the
existing functional metadata, which is already included in current Web
service standards and workflow modelling tools. The environment enables
business users to create this usage-related information cooperatively,
which leads to a domain-specific documentation of Web services. Based on
this information, it provides an enhanced search system that identifies
related services and service functions. The evaluation of the
environment showed that users had a positive perception of modelling
business processes and workflows. They considered this to be useful for
the visualisation and automation of business processes as well as for
the creation of calculations since it could enhance the efficiency and
efficacy of their work.
