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February 7, 2006 15:38 WSPC/111-IJCIS SPI-J073 00127International Journal of Cooperative Information SystemsVol. 15, No. 1 (2006) 23–55c ? World Scientif i c Publishing CompanyPOSEIDON: A FRAMEWORK TO ASSIST WEB PROCESSDESIGN BASED ON BUSINESS CASESJORGE CARDOSODepartment of Mathematics and EngineeringUniversity of Madeira9000-390 Funchal, Portugaljcardoso@uma.ptSystems and infrastructures are currently being developed to support Web servicesand Web processes. One prominent solution to manage and coordinate Web servicesis the use of workf l ow technology. For more than two decades now, workf l ow manage-ment systems architectures, language specif i cations, and workf l ow analysis techniqueshave been extensively studied. While these areas of research have made the develop-ment of sophisticated workf l ow systems possible, one important research area that hasbeen overlooked is the lifecycle of process application development. As a result, cur-rent process management systems support the analysis, enactment, and ad hoc designof workf l ows, but they lack the tools and methods to assist process design. The pur-pose of our study is to present a framework to assist and guide process analysts anddesigners in their task. The Poseidon framework includes a participative and an ana-lytical design method. The participative phase uses a clean sheet approach and startsby constructing a business case table which captures all the business cases representedby a process. Afterward, an analytical design phase is followed where scheduling func-tions are derived from the business case table and are used to build the structure of aprocess.Keywords: Business process design; business process redesign; business process reengi-neering; Web process; workf l ow; lifecycle of business processes.1. IntroductionWith the maturity of infrastructures that support e-commerce, it will be possiblefor organizations to incorporate Web services as part of their business processes.While in some cases where Web services may operate in an isolated form, it isnatural to expect that Web services will be integrated as part of workf l ows. 17Workf l ow systems are a valuable asset for managing e-commerce applicationsthat span multiple organizations, 33 since they are capable of integrating businessobjects for setting up e-services in an amazingly short time and with impressivelylittle cost. 31A wide spectrum of workf l ow system architectures has been developed to sup-port various types of business processes. With small changes, these systems can alsomanage Web processes. Cardoso, Bostrom et al. 6 report that more than 200 work-f l ow products are available in the market. Most of the systems provide a set of23Int. J. Coop. Info. Syst. 2006.15:23-55. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.comby ZHEJIANG INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA on 10/07/14. For personal use only.