Pre-modelled Flexibility for the Control-Flow of Business Processes - Requirements and Interaction with Users.

At process-aware information systems (PAIS), it is sometimes necessary to deviate from the predefined process. Otherwise the users are restricted too much. This paper presents an approach that allows to pre-model predictable flexibility already at build-time. An advantage, compared to completely dynamic changes at run-time, is that the effort for the end users necessary to trigger a deviation is reduced significantly. Furthermore, process safety is increased since, for instance, it can be predefined which users are allowed to perform which modifications. The corresponding requirements for the control-flow perspective are presented in this paper, with a special focus on the kind of information that shall be predefined at build-time. Examples from practice are presented in order to illustrate the necessity of the requirements. Furthermore, the interaction with the users is explained in order to show that triggering a flexible deviation causes only little effort at run-time.