Workflow-supported social networks: Discovery, analyses, and system

Park, M.,Ahn, H.,Kim, K.P. Academic Press 2016 Journal of network and computer applications Vol.75 No.-

<P>Technology-supported social networks have been penetrating many aspects of our lives from friendships/blogging sites to working places. The recent BAI (business analytics and business intelligence) systems have also supported the activities of analyzing the social networking issues on employees of companies and their work-sharing relationships, and have used the analyzed issues as a sort of organizational knowledge to deliver quantum improvements in decision-makings and organizational performances. Accordingly this paper focuses on a special type of social networking knowledge called 'workflow-supported social network' that is formed through the deployments and operations of workflow and BPM (business process management) technologies on a workflow-supported organization. In this paper, we formalize a theoretical framework coping with discovery phase and analysis phase, and conceive a series of formalisms and algorithms for representing, discovering, and analyzing the workflow-supported social network. As a theoretical basis, it uses the conceptual methodology of information control nets that used to formally describe workflow procedures and business processes. The theoretical framework is expansively implemented in the name of a systematic framework that is able to automatically discover a workflow-supported social network from an XPDL-based workflow package, construct SocioMatrices from the discovered workflow-supported social network, analyze the SocioMatrices, and visualize the workload centrality measures of all the actors in the corresponding workflow-supported social network. In order to verify the correctnesses of all the discovery algorithms, analysis equations, and the implemented system, we carried out two operational examples. One is for the theoretical framework, the other is for the systematic framework. We applied the theoretical framework to an information control net model of the typical enterprise Hiring workflow procedure, and presented its analyzed results and visualizations. At the same time, by the implemented. system we analyzed an XPDL-based workflow package fulfilled by 17 participants, which comprises two imaginary workflow models: Hiring workflow procedure and Presentation workflow procedure consisting of 17 activities and 7 activities, respectively. The analyzed outputs are presented via a series of the captured screen-snapshots produced from the system. Finally, the paper summarizes the implications of the workflow-supported social networking knowledge and how much it is worth in improving decision-makings and organizational performances of workflow-supported organizations and enterprises. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</P>

Formal approach for discovering work transference networks from workflow logs

Ahn, Hyun,Kim, Kwanghoon Pio Elsevier science 2020 Information sciences Vol.515 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>This paper proposes a formal principle for discovering work transference networks of workflow-supported organizational employees from workflow enactment histories contained in event logs. This originates from the strong belief that those work transference networks, hidden in workflow enactment activities and histories, can both connote the degree of work sharing and work relevancy between workflow performers and denote their degree of work intensity. In this paper, we devise a series of formal definitions and algorithms for discovering a work transference network from a workflow procedure, and from its enactment histories in event logs. The final goal of the paper is to theoretically build the principle of fidelity into workflow human resource planning and its performance, via a novel concept of work transference networks that can be discovered from a workflow model and, moreover, rediscovered from its enactment history. In deploying the proposed principle, we base the formal representation on information control net theory, which can graphically and mathematically represent workflow procedures. We apply directed graph theory to formally and graphically define the work transference network model proposed in this paper. For the sake of verifying and validating the proposed concepts and algorithms, we implement a work transference network rediscovery system, and apply it to a workflow enactment event log dataset, in an experimental study. Finally, we describe the implications of discovering and rediscovering work transference networks, as a human resource management and evaluation technique, in workflow-supported enterprises and organizations.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> A formal definition of a novel concept of the work transference networks. </LI> <LI> A discovery algorithm for discovering a work transference network. </LI> <LI> A rediscovery algorithm for mining a work transference network from workflow enactment event logs. </LI> <LI> A conceptual and formal discovery framework. </LI> </UL> </P>

An XPDL-Based Workflow Control-Structure and Data-Sequence Analyzer

( Kwanghoon Pio Kim ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2019 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.13 No.3

A workflow process (or business process) management system helps to define, execute, monitor and manage workflow models deployed on a workflow-supported enterprise, and the system is compartmentalized into a modeling subsystem and an enacting subsystem, in general. The modeling subsystem’s functionality is to discover and analyze workflow models via a theoretical modeling methodology like ICN, to graphically define them via a graphical representation notation like BPMN, and to systematically deploy those graphically defined models onto the enacting subsystem by transforming into their textual models represented by a standardized workflow process definition language like XPDL. Before deploying those defined workflow models, it is very important to inspect its syntactical correctness as well as its structural properness to minimize the loss of effectiveness and the depreciation of efficiency in managing the corresponding workflow models. In this paper, we are particularly interested in verifying very large-scale and massively parallel workflow models, and so we need a sophisticated analyzer to automatically analyze those specialized and complex styles of workflow models. One of the sophisticated analyzers devised in this paper is able to analyze not only the structural complexity but also the data-sequence complexity, especially. The structural complexity is based upon combinational usages of those control-structure constructs such as subprocesses, exclusive-OR, parallel-AND and iterative-LOOP primitives with preserving matched pairing and proper nesting properties, whereas the data-sequence complexity is based upon combinational usages of those relevant data repositories such as data definition sequences and data use sequences. Through the devised and implemented analyzer in this paper, we are able eventually to achieve the systematic verifications of the syntactical correctness as well as the effective validation of the structural properness on those complicate and large-scale styles of workflow models. As an experimental study, we apply the implemented analyzer to an exemplary large-scale and massively parallel workflow process model, the Large Bank Transaction Workflow Process Model, and show the structural complexity analysis results via a series of operational screens captured from the implemented analyzer.

상황인지 워크플로우 통합을 위한 모델의 설계

최종선,조용윤 한국경영교육학회 2009 경영교육연구 Vol.58 No.-

최근 서비스 자동화를 위해 워크플로우 기술을 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에 적용하려는연구들이 시도되고 있다. 그러나 기존의 상황인지 워크플로우 기술은 독립적으로 존재하는 다수의 단일 워크플로우를 조합할 수 있는 모델을 포함하지 않으므로, 좀 더 복잡하고큰 규모의 복합 워크플로우를 위한 모델을 제공하는데 한계가 있다. 이를 위해 본 논문에서는 기본 워크플로우 패턴들을 조합하여 복합 워크플로우를 구성하고, 이를 바탕으로 상황인지 워크플로우를 통합할 수 있는 워크플로우 모델을 제안한다. 제안하는 모델은 다수의 상황인지 워크플로우를 통합할 수 있는 복합 워크플로우를 표현할 수 있다. 서비스 개발자는 제안하는 모델을 이용하여 여러 사용자에게 다중 워크플로우를 제공할 수 있다. 또한 새로운 복합 워크플로우를 기술하는 과정에서, 사전에 작성된 워크플로우를 재사용할 수 있어 자동화 응용 서비스의 개발 노력을 줄일 수 있다. 따라서 개발자는 제안하는모델을 통해 상황인지 서비스의 자동화를 위한 응용 개발을 촉진시킬 수 있을 것이다. In recent years, there have been several researches applying workflow technologies for service automation on ubiquitous computing environments. However, most context-aware workflows do not offer a method to compose several single workflows in order to get a more large-scaled or complicated workflow, because those do provide not composite workflow model but single workflow one. In this paper, we propose a model to integrate context-aware workflows by making a composite of them, which are described with the basic workflow patterns. The suggested workflow model is able to express composite workflows to integrate various context-aware workflows, which consist of various flow patterns such as a simple, a split, a parallel, and a sub. With the suggested model, developers can easily reuse some existing workflows to describe a new context-aware workflow. So, they can save the development time and efforts of context-aware workflows and increase the workflow reusability. Therefore, the suggested workflow model is expected to make it easy to develop applications related to context-aware workflow services on ubiquitous computing environments.

다중-워크플로우를 지원하는 상황인지 워크플로우 언어의 설계

최종선 ( Jongsun Choi ),조용윤 ( Yongyun Cho ),최재영 ( Jaeyoung Choi ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2009 인터넷정보학회논문지 Vol.10 No.6

최근 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서의 서비스 자동화를 위해 워크플로우 기술을 적용하려는 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 그러나 대부분의 기존 상황인지 워크플로우 언어들은 단일 워크플로우 처리만을 고려하기 때문에, 다수의 워크플로우 조합을 통한 복합적이고 다양한 상황인지 서비스 지원에 제약이 있다. 본 논문은 다수의 워크플로우에 존재하는 개별적인 서비스 흐름을 하나의 워크플로우로 통합 표현할 수 있는 상황인지 기반의 워크플로우 언어인 CAWL (Context-Aware Workflow Language)을 소개한다. CAWL은 사용자가 원하는 서비스를 제공하기 위해 결합 가능한 다수의 워크플로우를 자연스럽게 연결하여 다양한 형태의 상황인지 워크플로우 서비스를 표현할 수 있다. 또한 개발자는 새로운 워크플로우 개발을 위해 기존에 존재하는 다수의 워크플로우를 다시 사용할 수 있기 때문에, 상황인지 워크플로우의 개발 노력을 줄이고 워크플로우의 재사용성을 높일 수 있다. 따라서 CAWL은 다수의 사용자 워크플로우가 공존하는 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경에서 상황인지 서비스자동화와 관련된 응용 개발에 큰 도움이 될 것으로 기대된다. In recent years, there have been several researches applying workflow technologies for service automation on ubiquitous computing environments. However, most context-aware workflow languages have difficulties in supporting composite workflows composed of single workflows, because these languages are still in its early stage and they only provide single workflow services to their users. This paper introduces CAWL, which is a context-aware workflow language. CAWL is for describing individual service workflows to make integrated service workflows. By using CAWL, service developers are able to reuse existing workflows to develop new context-aware workflow services. Therefore, development efforts and time can be saved and workflow resusability also increased. CAWL is expected to make it easy to develop applications related to context-aware workflow services on ubiquitous computing environments.

복합 워크플로우 서비스를 위한 CAWL 기반 상황인지 워크플로우 시스템

최종선,조용윤,최재영 한국정보처리학회 2010 정보처리학회논문지. 컴퓨터 및 통신시스템 Vol.17 No.2

There are many complicated situations which could be occurred in users' surroundings, so it is required to develop automation services to provide users with appropriate services in ubiquitous computing environments. However, most of the current context-aware workflow systems express context-aware services only with a single workflow. Therefore, they have difficulties in providing users with various and composite services by combining different workflows. In this paper we propose a CAWL-based context-aware workflow system, where CAWL is a context-aware worflow language to express a composite workflow model by describing individual service workflows. The proposed system can provide users with various composite workflow services based on a service scenario, which is described with CAWL. And by reusing a number of single workflows to construct composite workflow services, it is possible to save time and effort to develop context-aware workflows. 유비쿼터스 환경에서는 사용자의 주변 환경에서 발생할 수 있는 상황이 매우 다양하므로, 이에 대응하기 위한 자동화 서비스의 개발이 요구된다. 그러나 기존의 상황인지 기반 워크플로우 시스템들은 단일 워크플로우 서비스만을 제공할 수 있으므로, 다수의 워크플로우 조합을 통해 복합적이고 다양한 서비스를 제공하는데 제약이 있다. 이를 위해 본 논문에서는 다수의 워크플로우에 존재하는 개별적인 서비스 흐름을 하나의 워크플로우로 통합 표현할 수 있는 상황인지 기반의 워크플로우 언어인 CAWL(Context-Aware Workflow Language)를 기반으로 하는 워크플로우 시스템을 제안한다. 제안하는 시스템은 CAWL를 이용하여 작성한 시나리오를 바탕으로 사용자에게 다양한 복합 워크플로우 서비스를 제공할 수 있다. 또한 각각 존재하는 다수의 워크플로우를 복합 워크플로우 서비스를 구성하기 위한 일부로써 재사용할 수 있으므로, 자동화 서비스 개발의 효율성을 증대시킬 수 있다.

A GraphML-based Visualization Framework for Workflow-Performers` Closeness Centrality Measurements

( Min-joon Kim ),( Hyun Ahn ),( Minjae Park ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2015 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.9 No.8

A hot-issued research topic in the workflow intelligence arena is the emerging topic of “workflow-supported organizational social networks.” These specialized social networks have been proposed to primarily represent the process-driven work-sharing and work-collaborating relationships among the workflow-performers fulfilling a series of workflow-related operations in a workflow-supported organization. We can discover those organizational social networks, and visualize its analysis results as organizational knowledge. In this paper, we are particularly interested in how to visualize the degrees of closeness centralities among workflow-performers by proposing a graphical representation schema based on the Graph Markup Language, which is named to ccWSSN-GraphML. Additionally, we expatiate on the functional expansion of the closeness centralization formulas so as for the visualization framework to handle a group of workflow procedures (or a workflow package) with organizational workflow-performers.

Modeling, Discovering, and Visualizing Workflow Performer-Role Affiliation Networking Knowledge

( Haksung Kim ),( Hyun Ahn ),( Kwanghoon Pio Kim ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2014 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.8 No.2

This paper formalizes a special type of social networking knowledge, which is called “workflow performer-role affiliation networking knowledge.” A workflow model specifies execution sequences of the associated activities and their affiliated relationships with roles, performers, invoked-applications, and relevant data. In Particular, these affiliated relationships exhibit a stream of organizational work-sharing knowledge and utilize business process intelligence to explore resources allotting and planning knowledge concealed in the corresponding workflow model. In this paper, we particularly focus on the performer-role affiliation relationships and their implications as organizational and business process intelligence in workflow-driven organizations. We elaborate a series of theoretical formalisms and practical implementation for modeling, discovering, and visualizing workflow performer-role affiliation networking knowledge, and practical details as workflow performer-role affiliation knowledge representation, discovery, and visualization techniques. These theoretical concepts and practical algorithms are based upon information control net methodology for formally describing workflow models, and the affiliated knowledge eventually represents the various degrees of involvements and participations between a group of performers and a group of roles in a corresponding workflow model. Finally, we summarily describe the implications of the proposed affiliation networking knowledge as business process intelligence, and how worthwhile it is in discovering and visualizing the knowledge in workflow-driven organizations and enterprises that produce massively parallel interactions and large-scaled operational data collections through deploying and enacting massively parallel and large-scale workflow models.

Fragment-Driven 워크플로우 모델링 방법론

문기동 ( Ki-dong Moon ),김형목 ( Hyung-mok Kim ),김광훈 ( Kwang-hoon Kim ),백수기 ( Su-ki Paik ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2005 인터넷정보학회논문지 Vol.6 No.2

최근에 업무효율성 향상에 대한 요구가 정보관리기술 분야의 핵심이슈로 대두되면서 많은 기업들이 워크플로우 관리 시스템의 도입을 통한 업무프로세스 자동화에 주력해 오고 있다. 특히, 기업내부 업무프로세스 즉 워크플로우 프로세스에 대한 자동화에 이어 기업간의 업무프로세스 상호연동을 필요로 하는 비즈니스 모델이 전자상거래, 전자무역 등의 급속한 확산과 더불어 활성화되면서 새로운 형태의 워크플로우 프로세스인 기업간 글로벌 워크플로우 모델을 위한 워크플로우 관리 시스템의 확장을 필요로 하고 있다. 본 논문에서는 기업간 글로벌 워크플로우 모델을 효과적으로 지원할 수 있는 새로운 형태의 기업간 워크플로우 모델링 방법론으로서 Fragrment-driven 워크플로우 모델링 방법론을 제안한다. Fragment-Driven 워크플로우 모델링 방법론은 실제 조직에서 엑티비티를 수행하게 될 각 참여자가 자신의 조직에 연관된 엑티비티들만을 정의하게 한 후에 그들의 통합을 통해하나의 기업간 글로벌 워크플로우 프로세스의 모델링을 가능하게 하는 Bottom-Up방식이다. 이 방식은 각 조직의 참여자들이 자신들의 정보만을 이용하여 모델링하는 방법이기 때문에 각 조직의 독립성을 유지하면서도 모델링 작업을 단순화 시킬 수 있는 장점을 기대할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 Fragment-driven 워크플로우 모델링 방법론의 이론적 배경과 내용을 기술하며, 이 방법론을 기반으로 하는 협업적 스림레인 워크플로우 모델링 시스템을 구현한다. Many organizations have been recognizing the necessity of workflow automation technologies according to the rapid expansion of business process oriented applications, such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, electronic approval management, and so on. Thus, they have started adopting workflow management systems as an essential technological solution for their workflow processes. However, we need some technological extensions and improvements on them in order to accommodate a new type of workflow processes, which is called cross-organizational global workflow processes that require a certain level of collaborations between the organizations engaged in the global workflow processes. Fragment-driven workflow modeling methodology is a Bottom-Up methodology composing a global workflow by defining each organization`s own activities, which is called a fragment, through a realtime cooperative system. The approach is able to not only simplify the modeling work but also keep each organization`s independence in modeling a global workflow. In this paper, we describe the fragment-driven workflow modeling methodology and realize the methodology through the implementation of a cooperative swimlane workflow modeling system.

워크케이스 기반 워크플로우 엔진의 초대형성 성능 평가

안형진 ( Hyung-jin Ahn ),박민재 ( Min-jae Park ),이기원 ( Ki-won Lee ),김광훈 ( Kwang-hoon Kim ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2008 인터넷정보학회논문지 Vol.9 No.6

최근 기업 및 조직들은 대규모 엔터프라이즈 환경에서 발생하는 대량의 업무 인스턴스들을 안정적으로 처리해줄 수 있는 초대형 워크플로우 관리 시스템 도입에 대한 활성화를 요구하고 있다. 워크플로우 벤더들은 초대형 워크플로우 서비스를 제공하는데 적합한 워크플로우 엔진을 구현하기 위해, 하드웨어들의 추가적인 연계를 통한 워크플로우 엔진의 물리적 성능 확장에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 그러나 워크플로우 엔진의 소프트웨어적인 아키텍처를 고려하지 않은 단순한 물리적 성능 확장은 불필요한 서비스 구축 시간 및 비용의 낭비를 야기할 수 있다. 이러한 한계를 개선하기 위하여, 본 논문에서는 워크플로우 엔진을 구성하는 소프트웨어 아키텍처를 고려하는 논리적 관점에서의 성능 향상을 위한 접근 방법을 모색한다. 이를 위해 워크플로우 서비스의 하드웨어 인프라를 전형적인 단위 클라이언트-서버 구조를 채택하고 있다고 가정하고, 대다수의 워크플로우 벤더들이 채택하고 있는 액티비티 인스턴스 아키텍처 기반 워크플로우 엔진과 본 논문에서 제안하는 워크케이스 아키텍처 기반 워크플로우 엔진의 성능을 비교 측정한다. 우리는 성능 측정의 분석 결과를 통해 논리적인 소프트웨어 아키텍처가 워크플로우 엔진의 초대형성에 많은 영향을 미칠 수 있음을 보여주고자 한다. Recently, many organizations such as companies or institutions have demanded induction of very large-scale workflow management system in order to process a large number of business-instances. Workflow-related vendors have focused on physical extension of workflow engines based on device-level clustering, so as to provide very large-scale workflow services. Performance improvement of workflow engine by simple physical-connection among computer systems which don`t consider logical-level software architecture lead to wastes of time and cost for construction of very large-scale workflow service environment. In this paper, we propose methodology for performance improvement based on logical software architectures of workflow engine. We also evaluate scalable performance between workflow engines using the activity instance based architecture and workcase based architecture, our proposed architecture. Through analysis of this test`s result, we can observe that software architectures to be applied on a workflow engine have an effect on scalable performance.