Workflows IRL?

[brucellino]

So, here's the deal : you want to run an event (say a hackfest). You have done this a few times, you know the deal... but - do others ? You figure, no stress, I'll just write a real-life playbook for running this thing, with a list of tasks and things to keep in mind at various stages of the event, a-la Software Carpentry. You start writing a bunch of checklists, making a list of tools you'll need... next you're coding up the preparation of the event - fork website repo, update vars, deploy, template out emails, pull in data, fire off updates, run checks, open issues, close issues... it gets kinda hot in the kitchen, but you figure : "I got this".

Then you realise you're working on a real life workflow, with all kinds of links between nodes (actions), conditions, repetitions etc - and it would be nice to have it coded up into something that can be visualised and executed.

This is one for @biocrusoe. The workflow I have in mind is mostly interactions with REST APIs, via execution of ruby scripts. These scripts try to encode "real-life" scripts (like, the ones that actors have). Does anyone know about running workflows IRL ?

[biocrusoe]

Hello @brucellino,

What you are describing is often called Business Process Management. I don't have any personal experience with them, though. It is a deep rabbit hole, enjoy!

[brucellino]

hi @biocrusoe thanks for the feedback. That post of mine was written in a bit of a rush, and without any actual context - I guess an apology, as well as thanks, are in order.

After having read through the BPM link you posted, I guess you're right. I need the "design", "modelling" and "execution" bits of it, really.

The notation is actually quite useful for what I want, in terms of providing a visual representation of the execution of a hackfest... @biocrusoe sorry to squeeze your brain again, but you may save me some hours of googling - is there an analogy between what CWL tries to implement in terms of a common language, and the BPM "modelling" bit , or am I just barking up the wrong tree ?

[biocrusoe]

In the context of BPM, documents conforming to the Common Workflow Language standard describe command line computer programs (typically computation data analysis) and the workflows made from them in an interoperable, portable, and executable manner.

That is to say, they represent the computer parts of a specific business (research) process. CWL does not represent any non-computational processes.

If one fully documented a business process then one could use CWL to describe the computer bits.

The definition of BPM modeling at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management#Modeling is a bit unclear to me. The "what-if analysis" is not a part of CWL for sure: CWL isn't for predicting the output of a process, but for running the process. One could use a CWL definition of a process to aid in resource planning, however.