Cross-Organizational Workflows: A Classification of Design Decisions

• Published in: Challenges of Expanding Internet: E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government pp. 449 - 463
• Main Authors: van Eck, Pascal, Yamamoto, Rieko, Gordijn, Jaap, Wieringa, Roel
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, MA Springer US
• Series: IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
• Subjects: cross-organizational workflows; process design; web services
• ISBN: 0387287531; 9780387287539
• ISSN: 1571-5736
• DOI: 10.1007/0-387-29773-1_30

Web service technology enables organizations to open up their business processes and engage in tightly coupled business networks to jointly offer goods and services. This paper systematically investigates all decisions that have to be made in the design of such networks and the processes carried out by its participants. Three areas of different kinds of design decisions are identified: the value modeling area, which addresses economic viability of the network, the collaboration modeling area, which addresses how business partners interact to produce the goods or services identified in the value modeling area, and the workflow modeling area, which addresses the design of internal processes needed for the interactions identified in the collaboration modeling area. We show, by reporting on a real-world case study, that there are significant differences between these areas: design decisions are unique for each area, IT support for collaboration processes is orthogonal to IT support for workflows, and the role of web choreography standards such as BPEL4WS differs for both of them.