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Delegating work should be automated as you may perform the same task or process often. Each repetition typically involves the same downstream role or workgroup, and it is thus wise to optimize workflows accordingly. However, in the real world, such repetitions occur often because many companies are not working at optimal workflow. This means you have to make adjustments with regards to how to automate the delegation of work. Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes are good groupware applications that ease (though not by much) the delegating of work between workgroups. |
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A workgroup can often be equivalent to a department or business group within an organization, but this is not always necessarily true. A role sometimes is associated with a particular user. However, because the structure of companies changes often, it is generally wise not to tightly couple a workgroup with a traditional department or a role with a user. Workgroups in a workgroup model are not typically hierarchical, though they certainly can encapsulate rules associated with a traditional hierarchy. Roles can be performed by more than one user, and a user can perform more than one role. Any application you design that incorporates any of the concepts of workflow needs the ability to route each task to a specific role instead of an individual user/employee. This separation of concerns between a role and user mitigates the likely risk of a user changing job functions, thus encapsulating your application from such attrition issues. |
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One of the most important but understated functions of a good workflow solution is the ability to handle exceptions, which are rampant in every organization. When evaluating workflow automation solutions, most users underestimate the complexity of even the simplest business processes and the importance of exception handling. |
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Explaining all of the complexities of workflow automation and modeling every kind of workgroup structure is beyond the scope of this book. However, the following sections give you some insights into concepts such as |
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As suggested in the section Concepts of Workgroups and Workflow many, if not most, business processes and tasks are not performed serially. That is, they are not often performed one at a time where one process or task must follow another. Many processes and tasks occur in parallel, with some being done serially as needed. The routing of workflow follows this general pattern. |
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