WORKFLOW MODELLING IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROCESSES: APPLICATION TO THE EU OPERATIONAL PROGRAM FOR THE ENERGY SECTOR Gregory Mentzas NTUA, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 42, 28 th October str., 10682 Athens, Greece, email: gmentzas@softlab.ntua.gr Christos Halaris NTUA, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 42, 28 th October str., 10682 Athens, Greece, email: chala@cc.ece.ntua.gr Stylianos Kavadias INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance 77305 F/Bleau France e-mail : stylianos.kavadias@insead.fr ABSTRACT In the new globalised business environment workflow technologies have been developed, to support effective management of organisation's processes. At the same time effective Project Management is increasingly identified as key success factor for organisations. The ability of supporting project management processes reengineering and/or streamlining, using workflow systems is investigated in this paper. For this purpose, we use two commercial workflow management systems to model project management processes a multi-annual European Union (EU) operational program. The reason for using two systems is attributed to the different modelling techniques. The results of these efforts are discussed in order to examine whether workflow techniques could used as adequate modelling tools. INTRODUCTION Since, today’s dynamic global business environment is driving a new extended enterprise, competitive companies are focusing their management on processes as the key to their success. [1] [9] To this end workflow management technologies have been developed, involving process modelling, process reengineering and workflow implementation and automation. On the other hand effective project management is one of the most important success factors for organisations. Since information flow between the participants in a project becomes more and more important in project's implementation, the possible use of workflow management tools in modelling and reengineering of project management processes seems to be very helpful. MAIN WORKFLOW TECHNIQUES Based on the method used for process modelling, Workflow Management Systems are divided into three main categories, as follows:. • communication-based techniques , which reduce every action in a workflow of four phases based on communication between a customer and a performer: preparation; negotiation; performance and acceptance. • activity-based techniques , which focus on modelling the tasks involved in a process and their dependencies. • hybrid techniques, which can be considered as a combination of the communication-based and the activity-based techniques; see Georgakopoulos and Rusinkiewicz, VLDB, Athens, August 1997. MODELLING THE EU OPERATIONAL PROGRAMME FOR THE ENERGY SECTOR The Operational Program for the Energy Sector, subsidies the construction of new electricity plants, energy saving investments in the industry, the promotion and use of Energy Renewable Sources and geotechnical research activities, with the total budget of 946,5 million ECU for the years 1994-1999. The major functions of the Program’s Management System include program planing, program breakdown to projects, progress monitoring, financial management and program evaluation. For the purposes of the paper we present the modeling of the Subsidy Payment process using the Action Workflow Process Builder software package (communication – based WFMS) and the Jetform software package (activity –based WFMS). This procedure involves five roles, the Secretariat of the Steering Committee, the Ministry of National Economy, the Project Manager, the Bank of Greece and the Beneficiary. Modelling using Activity-based Techniques The process, is modelled using the “JetForm Workflow Builder” as shown in figure 1. The activities are divided into two levels – tasks represented by the large boxes and concluding actions represented by the smaller ones. Six tasks and eleven actions are related in order to reproduce the whole process. For each task the organisational role, which performs the related activities, is presented at the