Intelligent Agents that Span the Process Management Spectrum

The process management spectrum extends from conventional workflow processes to emergent processes. Three categories of process are identified. Activity-driven processes that are managed by a single reactive agent architecture. Goal-driven processes that are managed by a multiagent system of deliberative agents. Knowledge-driven processes that are managed by augmenting the multiagent system from the goal-driven system with an approach based on task types. The idea behind task types is that if the system knows what sort of task is being worked on by the (human) users then appropriate support may be provided. Three general purpose agent architectures are described, one for each category of process. The business of process management is generally limited to the management of the processes themselves - this is appropriate for production workflows. Goal-driven and knowledge-driven processes both rely on the management of the collaboration between the human players. Collaboration management is seen here to be an important component of process management, and an agent architecture, founded on concepts from information theory, is described for it