WfMS

A workflow management system (WfMS) is software that defines, executes, monitors, and optimizes the flow of tasks and data across people, applications, and organizations. It aims to coordinate activities, route information, enforce process rules, and provide visibility into process performance.

A typical WfMS includes a workflow engine that executes process definitions, a design or modeling tool to create those definitions, task management for human work, data handling to move and transform information, and integration capabilities to connect with external systems. Security, auditing, and provenance features track who did what and when, while dashboards and reporting support monitoring and continuous improvement. Workflows usually model sequences of activities, decision points, parallel tasks, and exception handling, and can involve both human tasks and automated system tasks.

Standards and modeling play a central role in WfMS. BPMN 2.0 is a widely adopted notation for modeling processes, while executable formats such as BPEL and interchange formats like XPDL have supported interoperability. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) provided an early reference model describing the architecture and interfaces of workflow systems. Modern platforms often combine BPMN-based modeling with engine-driven execution and connectors to enterprise applications and services.

Applications and scope vary from enterprise business processes and document routing to data processing pipelines and scientific workflows. Typical benefits include improved visibility, consistency, and reusability, faster adaptation to changing requirements, and better compliance. Challenges can include design complexity, governance over process changes, integration overhead, and ensuring security and scalability in heterogeneous environments. Examples of WfMS-enabled platforms include open-source and commercial offerings that emphasize process modeling, execution, and analytics.