A sequence of operations is depicted by the term of workflow. Workflow is declared as work of a person, work of a group of persons, work of a simple or complex mechanism, work of an organization of staff, or machines. Any abstraction of real work, segregated in work share, work split or whatever types of ordering, may be seen as a workflow. Workflow can be used for control purposes, and in this view it means a real work under a chosen aspect, serving as a virtual representation of actual work.
A workflow may be seen as a model to represent real work for further assessment, or, in the simplest way, for describing a reliably repeatable sequence of operations. In a more abstract view, a workflow is a pattern of activity. This activity is enabled by a systematic resources-organization, defined roles and energy, information and mass flows, and all these elements are transformed into a work process that can be documented and learned. When there is need to achieve processing intents of some sort, such as service provision, physical transformation or information processing, workflow is a perfect tool designed for this purpose.
There are other concepts used to describe organizational structure, such as functions, silos, teams, projects, hierarchies and policies that are closely related to the concepts of workflow. Viewed as one primitive building block of organizations, workflow has a close relationship among these concepts and they are described in many articles.
In computer programming, the term workflow is used to capture and develop human to machines interaction. Workflow software goals are to provide end users with an easier way to describe and manage complex processing of data in a visual and accessible form. It is much like flow charts but without the need to understand programming or computer in general.
|
|
