الفهرس 
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Abstract
This research addresses the problem of software flexibility. Specifically, it deals with managing change in workflow management systems. A large change in business requirements naturally leads to large change in the supporting software. However, a small change in business requirements may lead to a huge change in the supporting software. This is a result of software systems that are built with no consideration to flexibility.
The aim of this work is to develop a framework for a flexible workflow management system which could adapt changes in business environments. The proposed framework combines a flexible modeling component with an exception handling mechanism to accommodate ad-hoc changes in business requirements.
This thesis is structured into six chapters. Chapter one overviews the represented work, states the research problems and motivations. Furthermore, chapter one demonstrates the research objective, the major contributions of this thesis and outlines the thesis contents.
Workflow Management Systems [WFMSs] are the leading technology for supporting business processes. AWFMS is mainly composed of two parts .The Process Modeling Component is responsible for defining tasks, ordering, data, resources, and other aspects of the process. The Process Runtime component is responsible for interpreting and executing the defined model into running workflow instances. Chapter Two introduces a background to the research subject by defining WFMS, its components, types and features, as well as explaining the philosophy of Software as a Service [SAAS], its model and advantages.
Although business processes frequently require change over time, currently WFMSs provide little support for adaptive and flexible processes. Chapter Three defines the research problems. Existing workflow management systems have a limited ability to respond to change in a convenient way. The used modeling techniques fail to adapt themselves to required frequent changes; such changes may require the change of a huge part of the model. Furthermore, they fail to model incomplete and semi structure processes. Such processes cannot be specified exactly at design time, as their behaviors depend on the running circumstances and situations. At runtime, numerous running instances with different progresses could exist concurrently. The Runtime components are inefficient to manage dynamic changes, and to propagate change to running instances while maintaining system consistency. The addition or deletion of tasks or relationships or rules at runtime, may cause system incorrectness, and inconsistence especially when changes are done in an ad-hoc manner