Many aspects of the consistency of an organizational process can be checked mechanically, if only the process representation contains the knowledge in the right structure. Workflow management systems contain this knowledge, both the static knowledge about processes and dynamically changing knowledge about the cases in processes. Representation of process knowledge will therefore become an important issue. Once we have learned how to control and coordinate work in the context of a single process, the next challenge is to control and coordinate processes themselves in the context of a dynamically changing world. New technological issues will emerge once the current issues of interoperability, flexibility and robustness are resolved.
Examples are security, authorization, and integration of organizational resources.
Security is an issue whenever a process crosses the boundary of one domain of authority to the next. A person responsible for a given domain of authority will not tolerate a workflow server from another domain to coodinate work within his or her domain, unless hard evidence is provided that access restrictions to data, procedures and resources are respected. Authorization is an issue, because an organization will not tolerate a workflow system that schedules work to persons who are not authorized to do that work. Current systems often make crude assumptions about authorizations, leaving most of the work to the application developer. Integration of organizational resources will be an issue once integration of technological resources is sufficiently resolved.