Simple, pragmatic workflow

An overview

Workflow and business processes

• There are many processes and tasks that have the need for some kind of workflow

– E.g. Insurance claims, New customer processes, Call centres

• We contrast workflow with task management in that:– workflow always involves more than one person, and

– there are often decisions or rules as to where the work item should next go

– Traditional workflow has previously worked well in industries with well-defined processes and organisational structures

• Workflow is often represented by Business Process Modelling (BPM) or Workflow applications

– Most of the major vendors and many specialist vendors have a workflow or BPM offering

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Typical workflow design and implementation

• The workflow is usually modelled in the tool by a Business Analyst– Involves identifying steps,

roles, and conditions for moving between steps

• The IT department deploy the modelled workflow on to a server with the workflow application

• The business users interact with the workflow

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Challenges with traditional workflow

• Traditional workflow is based on the concept of a person’s role

– This is not a person’s job title but instead a distillation of the actions they perform in the process

• These days teams and departments are often asked to do more with less

– In reality, people will play multiple roles, sometimes in the same process

– The use of offshore or nearshore teams also blurs the role boundaries

• Workflow applications that are bound up with role-based security do not adapt well to this reality

• Traditional workflow and BPM applications are not suited to adapting quickly to change

• They rely on a prescriptive and deterministic flow

– The flow tells the user what to do

• This is fine at design-time, but seldom matches reality

– Flows often have exception situations (e.g. Where a customer’s documentation might be incomplete) that require case-by-case analysis and resolution

• Modelling these as one-size-fits all makes it more difficult for staff to do their jobs

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A simple, pragmatic workflow tool

• We believe there is a need for a workflow tool that is better suited for flexible business processes

• The tool would be of use in where any of the following hold:– Business users often need to use their expertise to decide what

happens next in the business process– The business process is evolving or needs to adapt quickly to

changing circumstances– Business users need to define simple chains of tasks without the

expense or overhead of an application suite

• We believe that the majority of business processes fit these criteria and have developed a workflow tool to fit it

Slide 5

OWL: Open Workflow Light

• OWL was developed to meet the gap in a simple workflow tool. Its key principles are below:

• The user knows best– The user best knows how and where to route items in the process and they

not the workflow tool should not dictate where the task goes

• Keep a full audit trail– It’s more important to understand what has happened to a task rather than

where it will go.– Not only might this be needed for regulatory compliance but it can also aid

a user in deciding what to do next

• Fit in with the users’ working methods– The tool should integrate with the end users’ working methods not the other

way around

• The following slides explain how OWL achieves each of these principles

Slide 6

OWL: Keep a full audit trail

• OWL ensures that the audit trail for a task is available to the user a task is assigned to

• This shows:– Who has worked on the task– What they did to the task– When they worked on the task– How they categorised the task– Why they assigned it to another user (through their comments)

• This information is just as important as the task itself in enabling the user to decide what next to do with the task.

• We store all task information so it is easily and quickly accessible without burdening the task with its own history

• The audit trail is immediately available to support regulatory requirements

Slide 7

OWL: Fit in with the users’ working methods

• OWL integrates with common tools familiar to the user– Email– Chat / Instant Messenger (IM)– SMS– Microblog (e.g. Twitter)

• Users can select how and when they are notified of new tasks• Users can “watch” flows of interest to ensure that important tasks

are being addressed• Users can search for tasks, comments, or tags using familiar web-

based search interfaces

Slide 8

OWL: Technical overview

• OWL can be installed alongside your company’s applications or accessed as a service over the web

• OWL is hosted on scalable architecture provided by Google

• OWL is written using the mature, stable, and powerful Java language but can integrate with non-Java systems

• OWL is a “white label product” that can be customised to your company’s brand making it a seamless experience for the end user

• More technical details on OWL can be found at http://truenorth.gb.com/products/owl-technical

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