A HIERARCHICAL MEASUREMENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMATED BUSINESS PROCESSES

Abstract

The problem of performance evaluation of business processes supported by Workflow Management Systems is a recent research issue. In this paper we propose a measurement framework in which several aspects concerning the timing and working of a business process, either as a whole or in terms of its components, can be precisely quantified. Our approach is based on the workflow model introduced by the Workflow Management Coalition and introduces some fundamental measures from which a number of derived measures can be hierarchically obtained. The paper describes the basic structures and the primitive operators of the framework as well as the fundamental and derived measures. Techniques for the evaluation of complex processes are also discussed. The proposed framework is quite general and can be applied to research and commercial workflow management systems with relatively little implementation effort.