ABSTRACT In order to understand some problems associated with work- flow, we set out an analysis of workflow systems, identifying a number of basic issues in the underlying tech- nology. This points to the conflation of temporal and dependency information as the source of a number of these problems. We describe Freeflow, a prototype which addresses these problems using a variety of technical innovations, including a rich constraint-based process modelling formalism, and the use of declarative dependency relationships. Its focus is on mediation between process and action, rather than the enact- ment of a process. We outline the system and its design principles, and illustrate the features of our approach with examples from ongoing work. Keywords: workflow, process support, process description, constraints, dependencies, temporal organisation. INTRODUCTION Workflow systems, in one form or another, have been with us for over ten years. Workflow systems embody representa- tions of working processes, as a basis for supporting those processes, potentially distributed in time and across multiple people. Workflow systems offer to “relieve users of the burden of coordination”, by managing task coordination within the system, so that users can focus on the constituent work activities. The development and introduction of workflow systems has not been unproblematic, to say the least. Early experiences led to considerable problems with user communities, and terms such as “naziware” are testament to some of these troubles. Studies of work have increasingly observed that the “coordination” of work is, itself, work; but this coordination is taken as unproblematic in workflow process representa- tions, so that control over coordination can be passed from users to systems. Similarly, studies of people following both paper-based and technologically-represented processes have highlighted the flexibility with which they interpret the pro- cesses in order to get their work done [2, 8]. Observations such as these have led to the identification of various issues to be addressed in future workflow systems [1]. Recently, and most obviously, a debate between Lucy Such- man and Terry Winograd in the pages of the CSCW Journal [9, 11] and subsequently a host of responses and commentar- ies from other researchers in the area [3] have again brought some of these issues to the fore, concentrating not only on the appropriateness of particular formulations of multi- person behaviour, but also on wider political issues in cate- gorisation and the formalisation of work. None the less, as these debates continue in the research community, workflow technologies are increasingly becoming part of everyday life for many people, going hand-in-hand with the popularity of Business Process Re-engineering. What should be concluded from these debates? Should we, perhaps, decide that the undeniable popularity of workflow technologies as business tools adequately demonstrates their validity, and that their opponents are arguing abstract, theo- retical points, too distant from practice to be of relevance? Or should we work to halt the seemingly inexorable progress of technologies which seem to deny and defeat the very work- ing practices by which organisational life and work proceeds? The Freeflow project has been in progress since late 1994, and is ongoing. In this paper, we will present some prelimi- nary results of work conducted at RXRC over the past eighteen months 1 . Our starting point is not to reject the potential value of process representations in collaborative work. Instead, drawing on a variety of approaches including ongoing ethnographic investigations of the use of process technologies, we concentrate primarily on the mediation between working activity and process representations. 1. We focus here on the technical developments, and the motiva- tion behind them. Field investigations are reported elsewhere [7]. Copyright © ACM 1996. This paper appears in Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Coopera- tive Work CSCW’96 (Boston, Nov. 1996) and is distributed by permission of the ACM. Freeflow: Mediating Between Representation and Action in Workflow Systems Paul Dourish 1 , Jim Holmes 2 , Allan MacLean 2 , Pernille Marqvardsen 3 and Alex Zbyslaw 2 1 Apple Research Laboratories Apple Computer, Inc. 1 Infinite Loop MS:301-4UE Cupertino CA 95014 USA jpd@research.apple.com 2 Rank Xerox Research Centre Cambridge Lab (EuroPARC) 61 Regent Street Cambridge CB2 1AB United Kingdom surname@europarc.xerox.com 3 Dept. of Information Science Aarhus University Neils Juelgade 84 8200 Aarhus N Denmark pernille@imv.aau.dk