What credentials does the YAWL Group have?
The YAWL Group consist of people that are or have been involved in the YAWL initiative. As such they are true BPM experts that have typically conducted cutting edge research in the field. Many members of the YAWL Group hold a relevant PhD or are working on one. Many YAWL group members have collaborated with industry and exhibit the professionalism and expertise required to bring complex practical problems to a successful conclusion.
What services are offered by the YAWL Group?
The YAWL Group offers services assisting business with their use of the YAWL environment. These include:
- Training in the workflow patterns and YAWL;
- YAWL-related certification (not yet, but please let us know if you are interested);
- Development of specific extensions to or adaptations of the YAWL environment;
- Support for the deployment of YAWL in a specific business, including required process modelling activities.
What infrastructure do I need to deploy YAWL?
YAWL requires Java (latest version requires version 1.5 or higher) and Apache tomcat. While various databases can be used in conjunction with YAWL, the default is PostgreSQL. YAWL can be deployed in an environment that uses free and/or open source software exclusively.
Why should I consider the use of YAWL in my business?
The general benefits of the use of BPM solutions are well-known. These include potentially substantial savings in terms of time and money, compliance, and increased agility in order to deal with a rapidly changing business environment. Many BPM solutions exist, but we believe the YAWL environment stands out for the following reasons:
- The YAWL language was derived from the Workflow Patterns initiative where a rigorous analysis was performed of the capabilities of a large number of languages, systems, and (proposed) standards for BPM. As such, YAWL can be considered the world’s most powerful workflow language.
- Petri nets, a formal theory for concurrency, form another pillar of the foundation of YAWL. They were extended in order to deal more suitably with some of the more complex workflow patterns. Petri nets have a few key advantages for workflow modelling that include direct support for the notion of state, a proper mathematical foundation, and the existence of a number of analysis techniques. YAWL leverages off these advantages.
- YAWL is to our knowledge the only BPM environment that offers sophisticated support for design time analysis. This is important as errors in workflows may come to light well and truly after deployment and may be very costly to correct.
- The YAWL environment is made available as open source software. This means that it is free and that one can choose to participate in the further development of this environment thus developing deep insight into the code base. There is typically no need to keep hiring expensive consultants whose goal is to sell more software and services. Vendor-lock in can also be avoided. The YAWL Foundation guarantees integrity of the codebase.
- The YAWL environment has a service-oriented architecture which makes it possible to develop elaborate extensions without the need to modify core components of the system.
- YAWL offers a unique solution to the problems of exception handling (what happens if an event occurs that I did not think of in advance?) and dynamic workflow (what happens if I would like to modify parts of a deployed workflow?).
- YAWL has been developed in collaboration with a number of industry partners and is used in production at the enterprise level.
- YAWL is one of the few workflow offerings that has a proper mathematical foundation. Practically speaking, this rock solid foundation guarantees that models have an unequivocal interpretation so no time needs to be waisted during modelling as a result of obtuse nuances concerning language constructs and that there will be no surprises during execution!
- YAWL has been designed to make it as straightforward as possible for software analysts to specify and deploy workflows capturing complex business processes. This way analysts are not distracted by unnecessary technological considerations.
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