Time patterns in workflow management systems

Business processes running in nowadays organizations become more and more complex and need to incorporate aspects like deadlines, service level agreements, schedules, consequently various time constraints. Several conceptual models aiming to formally define workflows are available in the Business Process Management field. Nevertheless, these conceptual models do not incorporate time constraints in their definition, not allowing the process designer to model time related aspects in the business process. Moreover, the available workflow management systems supporting the enactment of business processes in organizations do not properly deal with time. The aim of the current paper is to enrich an available conceptual workflow model from literature with a set of eleven time patterns. This collection of patterns is the result of an extensive literature review and summarizes in a compact representation the patterns present in the research papers in this domain in the last ten years