A Tool for Supporting Ad-Hoc Changes to Object-Aware Processes

Process management systems are often criticized for not being flexible enough, as they restrict the actions of users to those defined in a process model. When unforeseen events occur during process execution, deviation from the actions the process model permits may become necessary. Such ad-hoc changes to process execution are not widely supported by process management systems as they pose significant challenges. This work presents a new prototypical addition to the PHILharmonicFlows process engine that allows for ad-hoc changes to processes following the object-aware process support paradigm. We demonstrate the extensions to the preexisting PHILharmonicFlows modeling and runtime user interfaces that enable users to change the underlying process models of process instances they are executing. The demonstration is intended to not only show off the ad-hoc change capabilities in the context of object-aware process management, but also inspire other researchers to employ similar ideas in other process support paradigms.