Dynamic and Context-Aware Process Adaptation

Abstract

This chapter re-examines the principles that underpin business process technologies to derive a novel approach that moves beyond the traditional assembly-line metaphor. Using a set of principles derived from activity theory, a system has been implemented, using a service oriented architecture, that provides support for dynamic and extensible flexibility, evolution and exception handling in business processes, based on accepted ideas of how people actually perform their work tasks. The resulting system, called the worklet service, makes available all of the benefits offered by process aware information systems to a wider range of organisational environments.