Workflow-based process monitoring and controlling-technical and organizational issues

Workflow management systems enable the exact and timely analysis of automated business processes through the analysis of logged audit trail data. Within the research project CONGO, we develop a process analysis tool (PISA) that can be employed to analyze the audit trail data of different workflow management systems in conjunction with target data from business process modeling tools. A working prototype has been completed that integrates data of the ARIS Toolset and IBM MQSeries Workflow. The analysis focuses on three different perspectives: processes and functions, involved resources, and process objects. We outline the economic aspects of workflow based process monitoring and control and the current state of the art in monitoring facilities provided by current workflow management systems and existing standards. After a discussion of the three evaluation perspectives, sample evaluation methods for each perspective are discussed. The concept and architecture of PISA are described and implementation issues are outlined before an outlook on further research is given.