Abstract
In information-rich environments, participants can, and often must, access and use diverse sources of data to support their decision-making tasks. Modeling such environments is important, but cannot be done without effective conceptual models. A problem in information-rich environments is a disconnect between the control-flow across tasks and the information flow that must accompany these tasks. This can pose a challenge for supporting workflows in such environments. Micro-level concerns such as information seeking, sharing, recording, interpreting and hand-offs are not captured in existing workflow models. Without these information-related tasks, the control flows depicted appear to occur magically. We propose an integrated conceptual modeling technique that allows modeling both, control-flows and information-flows. The technique overloads some constructs while retaining their semantic origins, obviating the need to learn new constructs. We elaborate on the model with authentic examples drawn from ethnographic studies of healthcare practices in intensive care units. The paper demonstrates how: the proposed overloading can model information-related tasks; and help bring together conceptual modeling of control and information-flows in information-rich environments. The technique is evaluated with the help of multiple real-world examples.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aguilar, F.J.: Scanning the Business Environment. Macmillan, New York (1967)
Becker, J., Uthmann, C.V., Muhlen, M., Rosemann, M.: Identifying the Workflow Potential of Business Processes. In: Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, vol. 5. IEEE (1999)
BPMN. BPMN Information Home, http://www.bpmn.org/ (accessed on March 12, 2012)
Browne, E.D., Schrefl, M., Warren, J.R.: Goal-Focused Self-Modifying Workflow in the Healthcare Domain. In: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, vol. 6. Track 6. IEEE (2004)
Choo, C., Detlor, B., Turnbull, D.: A Behavioral Model of Information Seeking on the Web: Preliminary Results of a Study of How Managers and IT Specialists Use the Web. In: The 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science, pp. 290–302 (1998)
Dourish, P., Holmes, J., MacLean, A., Marqvardsen, P., Zbyslaw, A.: Freeflow: mediating between representation and action in workflow systems. In: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 190–198 (1996)
Ellis, C.A.: Workflow technology. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (ed.) Computer Supported Co-operative Work. Trends in Software, vol. 7, pp. 29–54. John Wiley & Sons (1999)
Ellis, D., Haugan, M.: Modelling the Information Seeking Patterns of Engineers and Research Scientists in an Industrial Environment. Journal of Documentation 53, 384–403 (1997)
Gaudioso, C.: A practical approach to breast cancer knowledge management: A tumor board perspective. Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (2010)
Hammersley, M., Atkinson, P.: Ethnography: principles in practice. Taylor & Francis (2007)
Hassell, L., Holmes, J.: Modeling the workflow of prescription writing. In: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 235–239 (2003)
Glance, N.S., Pagani, D.S., Pareschi, R.: Generalized process structure grammars (GPSG) for flexible representations of work. In: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 180–189 (1996)
Lamb, R., Kling, R.: Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research. MIS Quarterly 27(2), 197–235 (2003)
Lederman, R., Morrison, I.: Examining Quality of Care - How Poor Information Flow can Impact on Hospital Workflow and Affect Patient Outcomes. In: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, vol. 6. IEEE (2002)
Ling, S., Loke, S.W.: Advanced Petri Nets for Modelling Mobile Agent Enabled Interorganizational Workflows. In: Proceedings of the 9th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems, pp. 245–252. IEEE (2002)
Murrata, T.: Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications. Proceedings of the IEEE 77(4), 541–580 (1989); 99/02, Department of Math. and Comp. Sci. Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (1999)
Reddy, M.C., Jansen, B.J.: A model for understanding collaborative information behavior in context: A study of two healthcare teams. Information Processing & Management 44(1), 256–273 (2008)
Rieh, S.Y.: Investigating Web Searching Behavior in Home Environments. In: The 66th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, pp. 255–264 (2003)
Simon, H.A.: Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, in Martin Greenberger. In: Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD (1971)
Tan, J., Wen, H., Awad, N.: Healthcare and services delivery systems as complex adaptive systems. Communications of the ACM 48(5), 36–44 (2005)
Twidale, M., Marty, P.: Coping with errors: the importance of process data in robust sociotechnical systems. In: Proceedings of CSCW 2000, pp. 269–278 (2000)
van der Aalst, W.: Structural characterizations of sound workflow nets. Technical Report Computing Science Report 96/23, Eindhoven University of Technology. The Netherlands (1996)
van der Aalst, W.: Verification of workflow nets. In: 18th International Conference Proceedings Application and Theory of Petrinets 1997, pp. 407–426 (1997)
van der Aalst, W., Hofstede, A.T., Kiepuszewski, B., Barros, A.P.: Workflow patterns. Technical Report BETA Working Paper Series, WP47, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (2000)
van der Aalst, W., Hee, K.: Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems. The MIT Press (2002)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Stahl, C.: Modeling Business Processes: A Petri Net Oriented Approach. MIT Press, Cambridge (2011)
Verbeek, H., Basten, T., van der Aalst, W.: Diagnosing workflow processes using Woflan. Technical Report
Wong, et al.: Workflow-enabled distributed component-based information architecture for digital medical imaging enterprises. IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine 7(3), 171–183 (2003)
WFMC. WFMC.org Homepage, http://www.wfmc.org/ (accessed on April 12, 2007)
Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M.: Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco (2001)
White, S.A.: Introduction to BPMN. IBM (May 2004), http://www.bpmn.org/Documents/Introduction%20to%20BPMN.pdf (accessed on March 12, 2012)
Zisman, M.: Representation, Specification, and Automation of Office Procedures, PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1977)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Purao, S., Maass, W., Storey, V.C., Jansen, B.J., Reddy, M. (2012). An Integrated Conceptual Model to Incorporate Information Tasks in Workflow Models. In: Atzeni, P., Cheung, D., Ram, S. (eds) Conceptual Modeling. ER 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7532. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34002-4_38
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34002-4_38
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34001-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34002-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)