Alaska Simulator Supporting Empirical Evaluation of Process Flexibility

The Alaska Simulator is an interactive software tool developed at the University of Innsbruck which allows people to test, analyze and improve their own planning behavior. In addition, the Alaska Simulator can be used for studying research questions in the context of business process management and other related fields. Thereby,the Alaska Simulator uses a journey as a metaphor for business processes. In the context of business process management the simulator can be used to compare traditional rather plan-driven methods for planning and executing a business process with more agile approaches supporting different decision deferral patterns. Instead of pre-planning everything in advance decision deferral patterns allow interleaving process modeling and execution and provide mechanisms for effectively dealing with uncertainty. The biggest challenge thereby is to find the right balance between pre-planning activities and keeping options open.The Alaska Simulator allows to explore how much planning is needed under different circumstances.