Interorganizational workflow execution based on process agents and ECA rules

Flexibility, adaptation and distribution have been regarded as major challenges of modern interorganizational workflow. To address these issues, this paper proposes an interorganizational workflow execution framework based on process agents and ECA rules. In our framework, an interorganizational workflow is modeled as a multiagent system with a process agent for each organization. The whole execution is divided into two parts: the intra-execution, which means execution within a same organization, and the inter-execution, which represents interaction between organizations. For intra-execution, we use the method of transforming the graph-based local workflow into block-based workflow to design general ECA rules. ECA rules are used to control internal state transitions and process agents are used to control external state transitions of tasks in the local workflows. Inter-execution is realized by process agent interaction protocols. The proposed approach can provide flexible execution of interorganizational workflow with distributed organizational autonomy and adaptation. A case study of offshore software development is illustrated for the proposed approach.