Automating handover in dynamic workflow environments

Workflow technology has been widely used in business process modelling, automation and reengineering. In order to meet the fast-changing business requirements, to remain competitive in the market, an enterprise may constantly refine the workflow models of its business processes. The most challenging issue in evolution of a workflow model is the handover of its running instances from the old specification to the new specification. Such a handover depends on the semantics of a workflow model as well as the execution information of its running instances. A handover policy, therefore, needs to be specified for this purpose. In this paper, we propose a simple yet effective handover policy specification language. Using this language, a designer can easily specify a handover policy which reflect exactly what a workflow administrator needs to react to when a workflow model evolves. Criteria for the correct specification of handover policies are also addressed. Finally, a framework for automating handover of workflow instances is presented.