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VAN DER AALST, WIL, KEES VAN HEE. 2002. Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 368 pp. $40.00.
The authors' purpose in Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems is to describe the management of business processes in contexts in which people use generic software products to handle the information logistics of the processes. These generic software products, also called Work-Flow Management Systems (WFMSs), support and enhance business processes by ensuring that the right information is moved to the right persons and computer applications at the right time and in the right format. One should not be confused by the term work flow. The authors use it as a synonym for business processes. The term is meaningful because it helps readers to distinguish WFMSs from other kinds of business process software products, for example those that are useful only for representing, redesigning, analyzing, and simulating processes. WFMSs do not perform any of the tasks of a business process; rather they rely on other application software for the execution of process tasks. The authors suggest that the availability of WFMSs gives people an opportunity to change the traditional procedures used to design and implement business processes. Generally, the logic of a traditional procedure is to first organize a process before computerizing it. The authors argue that WFMSs enable process engineers to follow a new approach. They propose that engineers could first design business processes in an abstract manner without considering the specifics of the implementation. Thereafter, the process engineer would design the information systems and the organization concurrently. This separation of the design phases implies that the designer would have the option of allocating process tasks either to persons or to information systems. The WFMS hence serves as the link that enables the creation of the work flows and the implementation of the abstract work-process design. The authors have done an excellent job of presenting an innovative and potentially valuable approach and its underlining theory, framework, and tools in a clear and understandable manner.
The book is divided into seven chapters. In the first, the authors introduce a reference framework that...