Chapter 3. The Workflow

Workflow, at its simplest, is the movement of documents, artifacts, and/or tasks through a work process. More specifically, workflow is the operational aspect of a work procedure:

• How tasks are structured

• Who performs them

• What their relative order is

• How they are synchronized

• How information flows to support the tasks

• How tasks are being tracked

Because the dimension of time is considered in workflow, workflow considers “throughput” as a distinct measure. Workflow problems can be modeled and analyzed using graph-based formalisms such as Petri nets and UML activity diagrams.

In Wikipedia a workflow management system is defined as “a computer system that manages and defines a series of tasks within an organization ...

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