Supporting dynamic distributed work processes with a component and event based approach

There is a long standing tension between efforts to provide coherent models of work processes and the support for the way in which work actually takes place. The well laid groundwork of extensive research on formalisms has led to a more recent focus on supporting dynamic ad-hoc work activities that are nonetheless driven by a notion of work process (P.J. Kammer et al., 2000). The widely distributed character of the Internet expands the need for dynamic and adaptive capabilities. Process enactment may extend not only across widely distributed organizational groups, but across organizational boundaries, requiring the interaction of independently executing processes in a manageable way and support for fluidly created relationships between process participants, be they individuals, groups, or organizations. The paper proposes an approach based on lightweight ubiquitous technologies and a dynamic component based view of process, to support distributed and adaptive enactment of work activities for software development. We use the term “process architecture” to describe the run-time infrastructure relating the various process elements, for example people, artifacts, automated processes, and resources. These elements, including traditional process engines, interact though layered event based mechanisms that allow dynamic composition of process architectures on-the-fly