Completed research on cross-organization workflow of Agile telecom

In order to promote the core competitive power for telecom operating enterprises to face market fine operation, this article will analyze and compare six kinds of mode of cross-organization workflow in details. Extension case transmission mode (ECTM) and loosen couple mode (LCM) have become the major workflow modes in coordinating commerce application for their better flexibility. By comparing loosely coupled architecture (LCA) mode with extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) mode, we can grasp conditions in which these two modes fit for. Besides, we can keep the semantics of public flow mode and try our best to modernize workflow by improving the poor task complexity, information transparency and operating controllability of LCA mode through positive feedback system and by improving ECTA mode through Petri net system.


INTRODUCTION
The principles of scale on investment, network and market fit the growing process of telecom operators very much.With the restriction of this scale growth method, there are only few differences between the businesses provided by various telecom operators.The competitive means and fields are centralized, which have led to feature of "the powerful one is always with power while the weak one with weakness" on performance by telecom operators.Since having broken monopoly and brought value chain (network) from various partners (Eshuis and Grefen, 2008).The key factors to decide the destiny of cooperative enterprises are the sensitivity and fastresponsibility of cross-organization flow.Agile telecom (Lu et al., 2005) is a kind of improved operating mode of telecom enterprises.Its features include: Enterprise strategy oriented at customer needs; focusing on flowtype organization construction on life cycle of products; integrating enterprise internal resource with soft business mode and dynamic workflow technology, providing telecom service products of high efficiency and personalization for users.
The cooperated commercial flow management is applied in many commercial fields, including electronic business, supply chain management, customer relationship management, knowledge management and science cooperation, which are all based on information technology such as workflow technology and network service (Chen and Yang, 2009;Fensel and Bussler, 2002;Georgakopoulos et al., 1999;Kalakota and Whinston, 1996;Papazoglou et al., 2008;Stohr and Zhao, 2001).Although network service can be used directly in independent way, it is also common to integrate them into workflow to become a part of it (Cardoso and Sheth, 2003;Fensel and Bussler, 2002).Workflow is the entire or partial automaticalization of commercial flow, during this process, information or commission will instruct practical execution by passing a series of programmed planning from one participator to another (WFMC, 1999).Cross-organization workflow is the flow to cross organizational boundary (Huimin et al., 2010).The management of cross-organization flow has become a theme of telecom value chain (Ping et al., 2010).As the coordinative technology is improving the operating efficiency of enterprises, workflow management system of cross-organization needs to adapt itself to the interconnection of different workflows between enterprises.
Although, there are correct flow structure and working steps in integrated commercial flow, if accurate data flow is lacking, these flows cannot help executing commissions.It is worthy to note that the default on data flow can not only happen in working flow inside organization (Sun et al., 2006b), but also may occur in cross-organizations, for the feature that data is transmitted by crossing organizational boundary causes default to happen more easily.Based on this, the article has made some research on relevant issues of workflow of Agile telecom organization.Zisman (1977) was the first one to put forward the concept of workflow.At present, Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC, 1996) has formally defined that workflow is the entire or partial automaticalization of business flow based on computer.The support from workflow technology to cross-organization flow is on the interoperability of workflow system, which means there is workflow engine for every cooperative partner which does a series of interaction through request response (Scheer AW, 2008).At present, this kind of interoperability still remains at loosely coupled of flow between organizations.That is, it is not established on a shared cross-organization flow basis, and it is related with organizational modes between enterprises.Workflow stands for the commercial flow in organizational environment (Bajaj and Ram, 2002;Kumar and Zhao, 1999).The modeling of workflow involves in some basic factors, for example, activity/commission, working case, resource, character, data element/document, status information and restriction, etc. (Basu and Blanning, 2000;Curtis et al., 1992;Jablonski and Bussler, 1996;Kwan and Balasubramanian, 1997;Stohr and Zhao, 2001) .The angle of function emphasizes on commission types and executing reason.The angle of behavior involves in the time to execute task (shown in order), which describes the condition/principle of task order in controlling workflow: control flow.The angle of organization pays attention to "which resources will be involved in executing task".The angle of information focuses on the data task that needs to be read and produce during the executing process of workflow, which angle is related with data flow.

Cross-organization workflow
The biggest difference between inter-organizational and inner-organizational workflow is its cross-organization boundary.Jiang et al. (2008) have concluded several features of workflow in inter-organizational content as follows: Autonomy and cooperation coexist.Each independent economic entity needs mutual cooperation to realize the common intention.
Dispersity and correlativity coexist.Many districtdispersed enterprise flows have been integrated to be overall workflow of interacted connection.
Stativity and dynamicity coexist.The workflow inside organization is relatively stable while the overall crossorganization workflow must keep flexibility and dynamicity to adopt itself to the fast changes in market needs (Wanchun et al., 2010).Due to the difference of interactive mode, Schulz and Orlowska (2004) divided inter-organizational workflow into distributed and contracted workflow.The former means in every workflow of cooperative party, all tasks are within the overall workflow scope; and the latter means a certain or many activities are executed beyond the workflow scope.Van (2000) has concluded six interactive operation patterns between workflow, including capacity sharing, chained execution, subcontracting, case transfer, extended case transfer and loosely coupled.Among them, capacity sharing is the simplest pattern and the only one applying centralized control while other interactive operating patterns use dispersed control.In contrast, loosely coupled is the most complex and with strongest dynamicity and it is the most suitable one for flow implantation under cross-organization content.

Capacity sharing architecture (CSA)
In this mode, suppose a centrally-control environment, the workflow manager will decompose the entire workflow into subtask and then distribute them according to the capacity and knowledge of commercial partners.

Chained execution architecture (CEA)
In this mode (Figure 1), the workflow is decomposed into sub-flows of mutual connection, which will be accomplished by different commercial partners according to a certain order.This kind of mutual operation requires executors to transfer results for one case or advocate another workflow after finishing all works of a sub-flow.
The control on workflow is executed by different commercial partners themselves, which is different from capacity distributing mode.This mode supports to transfer a single task in two different workflow environments and then the receiver will separately execute by himself.It is no need for both sides to be synchronizing.

Subcontracting architecture (SCA)
In this mode (Figure 2), a certain business partner will subcontract one part of his own workflow to other partners as sub-flow, and sign the agreement with them to realize the communication between sub-flows.The transmission of data can be done through application program net function or by invoking application programming interface (API) between two workflow services.

Case transfer architecture (CTA)
In this mode (Figure 3), the workflow will be divided vertically.Every commercial partner has an entire  workflow copy (workflow of every synergistic commercial workflow), but that does not mean every member can handle all tasks.During flow cooperation, each party will share information in cooperating process by transferring cases among cooperative partners.Individual working result will be reflected in the transferred cases.The cases will be transferred to different positions according to practical task executing condition in order to keep work capacity in balance and improve working efficiency.

Extended case transfer architecture (ECTA)
This mode is the development to case transfer architecture, in which all business partners have the same definition on flow.However, different business partners can define partial variance according to individual condition while executing tasks.For instance, in specific position, flow can extend other tasks, but the extension contents will be accomplished before transferring cases.

Loosely coupled architecture (LCA)
In this mode (Figure 4), workflow will be divided into parallel parts, each sub-flow is defined partially.For the entire cooperative environment, it is not necessary to understand detailed sub-flow but manage communication protocols between sub-flows, which are defined and discussed by all cooperative partners.This mode allows several process cases operate in respective executing environments independently.However, synchronous points are requested in various processes.While they operate to synchronous points, some events will be aroused.This system can be used to dispatch parallel executing outlines, check recovery data or transfer relative data of workflow in different process cases.
Among these six modes, except capacity sharing architecture (CSA), other five types need further division towards workflow, and then distribute to partners to execute.Division is based on two dimensions-case and process (Figure 5).The longitudinal division will use case dimension.For example, cases will be distributed to several partners, but they are not divided during business process.Lateral division is based on process dimension.For instance, process will be divided into several parts.Cases will be distributed to specific partners (in fact, there may be some partners handling the same case at the same time).Among them, subcontracting architecture (SCA) and loosely coupled architecture (LCA) mode belongs to lateral division while case transfer architecture (CTA) and extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) are of longitudinal one and chained execution architecture (CEA) mode applies the mode mixed by both of them (Scheer, 1999).There are two advantages for longitudinal division.(1) At any time, there is a completed work case for each work position so that many issues caused by parallel can be avoided.(2) It is simpler to formulate interoperability on service between organizations, which is supported by present workflow management.What is needed only is an interface message processor for reading and writing.There are also disadvantages to longitudinal division, such as repeat of same process description and variance description among commercial partners.Moreover, parallel degree will be reduced, for one case cannot be handled by two organizations at the same time.Lateral division allows the same case to be processed among many organizations at the same time, but each organization only deals with the part related to them.However, lateral division will require for higher coordinating cost.

Comparison between workflow mode of crossorganization
Analyzing from the angle of electronic business, capacity sharing architecture (CSA) supposes there is a centralized manager on workflow, which means control right on flow is not distributed.So this way is not applicable for electronic business.As workflow is composed of sub-flows in fixed order (each part is done by different partner), chained execution architecture (CEA) is the only suitable architecture.However, in practical electronic business environment, cooperator flows need interoperability and information exchange according to protocol.The situation is extremely complex, so CEA mode is not suitable for electronic business environment.Subcontracting architecture (SCA) is comparatively suitable for traditional electronic business environment, for it is generally realized based on electronic data interchange (EDI).But in the new stage of electronic business development (cooperative business), this way of "hub-and-spoke" seems not that flexible.Extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) and loosely coupled architecture (LCA) mode become the major workflow modes for more coordinative business application for their better flexibility.Still, there is SCA architecture in some sub-flow and sub-tasks.Therefore, as for the function design of electronic business promoted by New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) system, ECTA and LCA should be the two modes to consider.
According to the requirement on cross-organization management and performance feature on workflow management system, this article will compare the six cross-organizational working modes from 11 standards (Table 1).From the comparing result, we can know that ECTA and LCA are more applicable for the requirement on smooth feature strategy of Agile telecom.
Under ECTA mode, although cooperators share one same flow edition, it does not mean that every operator can handle all tasks.Case is information set to transfer information among organizations.It can be the case about one flow, or about the whole workflow.Partners will decide the time to transfer case to which cooperative partner according to "transfer protocol".During cooperating process, information is shared as well as working result can be reflected in transferred cases.
Loosely coupled architecture (LCA), which operation nature lies in guaranteeing the independence for cooperative partners in executing tasks.But in specific time, isochromism can ensure the correctness in whole business process.Loosely coupled architecture (LCA) will horizontally divide workflow, decompose working process into many relatively independent parts and then distribute to each member, this is called private workflow process.Each cooperator can enjoy total control right on the distributed private workflow, but they must guarantee to exchange information and share knowledge with other  cooperators, for the independence of private workflow is relative.And some parts in workflow must connect with that of other members, so exchange with other members is the key to fulfilling task correctly.The communication between members must comply with a certain communication protocol, the cost and operating efficiency of which is greatly related to the maturation among cooperation and trust degree among members.After many times of cooperation, information and operating cost will be greatly reduced.
The essential difference between ECTA and LCA is they have different division towards tasks: the former is longitudinal, depending on case to transfer information while the latter is lateral, relying on protocol to transfer information.If we compare the adaptive degree of these two modes from the coordinative angle among enterprises, we can see their advantages and disadvantages more clearly.The following table is the result on comparing the performance of these two modes based on Table 2.
We can see from Table 2, LCA has great advantage on cooperativity and flexibility of cooperation.But if compared with ECTA, the combination among organizational members is loose and not tight.Hence, we can conclude that under cooperative business environment where mature cooperation and work mode are relatively firm, it is suitable to adopt ECTA mode, for the information transparency is low at this time and task smooth feature is weak so that they can be avianized by tacit relationship which formed long-term and low requirement on cooperative flexibility.But under the cooperative environment where product cooperation is strong, work mode life cycle is short and cooperative partners are not fixed, it is more suitable to adopt LCA mode and improve it through positive feedback system.

Positive feedback system improves LCA mode
The evolution process of positive feedback is related to the intensity of status.For happenstance can lead to different roads and results, this positive feedback which is more and more adapted, prior and smooth seems process related to experience, which can be described in Polya process (Zheng, 1998).As for the task complexity of loosely coupled architecture (LCA) mode, transparency of information and deficiency on working controllability, we can improve all of them through enhancing the coordination and management function of core enterprise.For example, enhance the information exchange and knowledge sharing under supervision of core enterprise, which will coordinate and supervise the working controllability.Through the enhancement on the above aspects, coordinative business must form into an organic operating system and the task complexity of LCA mode will be greatly reduced.Under the entire coordinative business environment, core enterprise' role on coordination and supervision will reduce operating cost among enterprises.The operating cost must have relationship with maturation and experience of cooperation among enterprises.Therefore, positive feedback system can reduce cooperative cost and improve LCA working mode.
The task complexity, information transparency and work controllability are reflected as a kind of operating strategy, including that of cooperative partners and core enterprise.Seeking for best strategy can bring operating cost in member enterprise to a reasonable status.
Suppose there is strategy collection of enterprise operation under LCA workflow mode of cooperative business, which is the centralized performance of information exchange, business cooperative method and control way, these strategies are related with former operating experience and effect.
Suppose there is a cooperative strategy group under LCA mode, we can put in N -type enterprise operating strategy of cooperative business.Add one new node at one time.The strategy attribution of newly-added node will be fixed according to probability ratio, which is the function of specific-gravity vector ] ,..., , [ on attribution nodes of added strategy.The probability ratio is related with intensity of strategy status, which means to be related with operating successful ratio and adopted ratio before strategy.
Say the probability ratio for i strategy node to become newly added cooperative strategy group for n times is Rearrange formula 2 and we can get: is zero.So we can get the expectation value of stochastic process as: It equals certainty recurrence process, that is: is generally nonlinear, which is related with the proportion of various strategy node, or we can say it is related with the proportion strategy it adopted.Formula 3 stands for a kind of nonlinear Polya process.Recurrence evolutionary process is controlled by the second item . For i ＝ 1，2，…, N kinds of strategy nodes, there are N equations sets.If we use vector to illustrate, we have: Sci. Res.Essays will change with the times n. if the speed n q constricts to a certain function q in fixed pattern is faster than that of n b + 0 1 constricts to zero, which means the speed n 1 constricts to zero while n is larger.Then the fixed point vector (the most reasonable intersecting point to meet operating cost of virtual enterprise and the whole cooperative business) in Equation 3 will be defined by the following formula: ; If this intersecting point is stable, non linear Polya process will be constricted to this.This kind of strategy space and the restriction to reducing operation cost produce positive feedback effect as well as the best reflection on strategy collection of regular permutation and monotone.This is the basis for positive feedback system (Lu et al., 2005).We can see from the above analysis, virtual enterprise is able to adjust itself on strategy choices according to the evolutionary principle of Polya process and try its best to constrict itself to fixed point n n X X q = ) ( by borrowing previous experience.Thus, strategy implementation can hit the lowest intention on operating cost within largest efficiency scope.For LCA mode, that means to enhance information transparency and task controllability in shortest time as well as reduce task complexity.These factors will be non linear influencing relationship to strategy choice, but it will reach the best status at the position approaching fixed point.Hence, we can come into a conclusion: With the improvement of information exchange way, enhancement on inter-business knowledge sharing, cooperative business chief's control and coordination towards business operation and trust relationship established with multiple cooperations among enterprises, the disadvantages of LCA mode in workflow operation will be effectively improved in the positive feedback effect of the above factors.Therefore, the flexibility and fast-response of LCA mode will be better used to make itself out of the best workflow design method of cross-organization to support cooperative business platform.The feedback recirculating loop of positive feedback system can be shown in Figure 6.In applying positive feedback system to coordinate with LCA mode, enterprises can apply strategy in Table 3.

Petri network system improves ECTA mode
Under extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) mode, having reached an agreement on public workflow, each business partner will execute a sub-workflow.The only precondition is to divide task obeying public workflow.Public workflow can be regarded as the protocol to recognize the major steps in the whole process.Partial Qi et al. 3893 Table 3. Coordinative strategy adopted by LCA mode.

Strategy Optimizing method Information transparency
Fully apply information technology to complete information exchange ways among enterprises; Strengthen the awareness of inter-enterprise knowledge sharing, improve constructing and managing level on enterprise knowledge; Ensure there should be enough data needed for enterprise cooperation in member information exchange protocol.

Business controllability
Emphasize core enterprise's control and coordination towards overall business; Seek for fast and agile market-responding and business-responding system, apply the cored competitive power of the enterprise and seek for suitable business mode (Lazcano et al., 2001).

Task complexity
The continuous enhancement of the above methods will definitely lead to the reducing on task complexity; The formulating and executing flow of task will be optimized with the enhancement on inter-enterprise cooperative ability and mutual trust degree.

Result
Inter-enterprise cooperative cost will be reduced, cooperative effect will be improved, and cooperative opportunity will be increased.Those disobey the principle will be eliminated by union gradually.
workflow will modify the sub-workflow according to practical condition, for partial autonomy needs to find the optimization on local workflow.Partial optimization may include: Randomly add relevancy between two tasks, or adjust the executing order of a certain workflow, etc. seen from partial opinion, these changes will not influence workflow but they will bring global defection to workflow.
Petri network is a kind of method that has been widely applied (van der Aalst, 1998).Due to their formal grammar, graph presentation and expression ability; it is used to build modeling as a kind of design language.Besides, they can provide a formal foundation to support analyzing and check workflow process (Murata, 1989;Salimifard and Wright, 2001;Van der Aalst, 1996, 1998;van der Aalst and ter Hofstede, 2000).People have developed many methods and tools based on Petri network to assure the accuracy of workflow (van der Aalst, 1998) and analyze on it (Adam et al., 1998;Atluri and Huang, 2000;Du et al., 2007).Figures 7 to 9 are the illustrations on this issue by adopting Petri network (Shi and Zhang, 2007;Duckwoong et al., 2010).
Extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) workflow can be implemented in three steps: Design public workflow.Every business partner will come into an agreement on global workflow modeling.Key task and interface protocol have been pre-set in workflow model.Figure 7 has shown a Petri network workflow model of ECTA mode.In this global workflow model, place A to H have marked the key tasks; p1 to p12 stand for input and output place, among which p6, 9, 10 and 11 are the interface place of autonomous districts on left and right side.The left and right side of imaginary line respectively stands for one sub-workflow district.
The business partners will divide the public workflow; be sure about the task specified for each sub-workflow.The global workflow will be mapped to several work districts.In Figure 7, the left and right parts of imaginary line are the tasks for two autonomous districts.
Each partner will establish special workflow according to task.In the process to establish special workflow, the most frequent method is to add place and change transition.For example, in Figure 8, place p12 is added to ensure that task C is executed before task B. This guarantee is very important to the workflow on left side.
Steps (1) to ( 3) is the general steps for ECTA modeling.The problem is that in step (3), the modification on partial workflow may lead to fatal error to global workflow.The global workflow shown in Figure 7 is the principle every partner needs to obey, among which task A, B, C and D are mapped to left autonomous districts while task E, F, G and H are mapped to right side.Each autonomous district will be executed by one business partner.For the autonomous district on left side, if adding one place of causal relation between C and B, it can optimize partial flow.But seen globally, place will cause a deadlock.Because C is supposed to handle after executing B (logical order is p9, p6 and then p10).This contains recycle in C, B, F and G to make deadlock for global workflow in p1, p2 and p5.Under the same situation, although other partners modify and extend sub-workflow for optimizing workflow, they may commonly arise the situations such as deadlock to global workflow (under the status where flow executes to one stage and cannot execute any task), active lock (a certain task is trapped into restless cycle and cannot go on next task) and dead task (a task cannot be executed under any condition) (Erik et al., 2010).
In the former research on Petri network, many results can be applied to solve these difficulties of ECTA mode realistically (Schulz and Orlowska, 2004;Liu et al., 2005, 3894 Sci.Res.Essays architectures, including iteration, sequential composition and parallel composition.In the conventional sign of Petri network, PP stands for iteration, PJ stands for sequential composition and PJ3 stands for parallel composition.Definition 2: Workflow network ( , , ) N P T F = is reasonable, if the following four conditions are true: For any case, process will finally end, that means there is at least one marked status in output place.
At the time process is ended (there is at least one mark in sink place), all other place are empty, no task is suspended.
There is no dead task.In workflow network, a mark in original place; I can execute a random task if obeying suitable route.Conditions are reliable.They cannot be used for many times.That is, the maximum value of marked number in place is unique.Definition 5 ( ) For every d ∈ D, N privd are all reasonable.
In the above conditions, 1) extended public workflow can only add place; 2) these place should be of implicity; 3) no mark is allowed to remain in implied place while workflow execution is finished; 4) all transition and place exchange channels are single-directional.Situation should be that: there is one input transition in autonomous district, so there should also be an output transition in another autonomous district.That is to say, on the same operating hierarchy, the transferred routine of workflow is unique, and every autonomous district should come to a strategic result in the end.But this requirement will not restrict application, for the exchange channel of multiple-logic can be reflected to be a practical method.The last condition seems like condition 2) and 3).
As for division on public workflow, if there is one input place and output place in local and the execution of each task can be represented by two place statuses, we can think that this local workflow network is reasonable.
In the following, there is a detailed example, in which theory 1 extends and improves workflow.Figure 10 shows the user formulating flow of mobile M-commerce (Van, 2000).It is telecom operators and active server pages (ASP) cooperate, users request for formulating service through mobile M-commerce platform.There are protections from service level agreement (SLA) and quality of service (QoS) between operators and ASP in the requested business.Operators and ASP will establish global workflow, including the relation and interface of business and regulation.In Figure 10, ECTA mode is used to build public workflow.The autonomous district on the left side is task collection of operator, while the one on right side is that of ASP.According to ECTA modeling method, first, divide tasks to operators and ASP respectively according to the global workflow in Figure 10, and the divided task chart is not a completed workflow model.For example, the task of operators is distributed, it is not connected.But there are several output places in ASP district.Second step is to complete the two sub-workflows.For ASP district, place p2 is regarded as input place of sub-workflow while p8 as output place.For operators, add one implied place p11 while adding the wire between p11 and relative transition.The process dividing and completing workflow is shown in Figure 11, and the third step is to further optimize subworkflow.The transition with shadow in Figure 12 is the newly-added task.The newly-added tasks by operator are N (download for user manual) and P(judgment/choice).Task N will issue business manual to users instructing user choice and using related business.Task P guarantees user to be correctly transferred to ASP.Pp (cycle) architecture has been used in the addition for task N while PJ (order) architecture is used in task P. Similarly, in ASP district, task L (classification) and M (judgment) have been added.Task L is the classified management to business and user management information, having sued PL3 (parallel) architecture.M is the judgment on short message service (SMS)/multimedia messaging service (MMS) informational principle, having applied PP (order) architecture.Figure 12 has displayed the modified result on ultimately partial workflow.In the following, we will test and verify the reasonability of workflow with Theory 1.
Proof: In Figure 10, workflow is defined as N epub = (T epub , P epub , F epub ).D is the collection of operating quotient field and ASP field.
Step 1: From Figure 10 we can know: T pub = {A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K}, P pub = {P1,P2,P3,P4,P5,P6,P7,8,P9} ; T epub = {A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,P}; P epub = {P1,P2,P3,P4,P5,P6,P7,8,P9,P10,P11}, Therefore T pub ⊂ T epub ; P pub ⊂ P epub so Npub ⊂ N epub Step 2: For all p ∈ P epub \P pub , we can know from the Figure, if p does not exist, all places are executable, if p exists, all places can also be executed.Hence, p implied Step 3: N ) is a reasonable workflow model.We can know from Figure 10, every task can be ended, and no task is suspended while ending workflow.For each district, there are only one input and output place.As for a case, the maximum value of marked number in place is unique.Hence, N epub complies with conditions in definition 2, so it is a reasonable workflow model.
Step 4: For operating business and ASP district, the input and output place in each district are unique.And all ps satisfy: p ∈ P exch , | • p| = |p • | = 1.
Step 5: Each d ∈ D, which means operating business and ASP district meet the above requirements, so N operator and N ASP reasonable workflow.Further, the workflow in the whole D district is also a reasonable workflow.

CONCLUSION
The article analyzes and compares the 6 workflow modes of cross-organization in detail, including capacity sharing, chained execution, subcontracting, case transfer, extended case transfer and loosely coupled architectures.Due to better flexibility, extended case transfer architecture (ECTA) and loosely coupled architecture (LCA) will become major workflow mode by more cooperative business application.But, there is also subcontracting architecture (SCA) in some sub-flow and sub-task.Hence, in M-commerce, functional design put forward by NGOSS system, ECTA and LCA should be the two modes to consider.
By comparing LCA and ECTA mode, LCA has great advantage on cooperativity and flexibility of cooperation.But if compared with ECTA, the combination among organizational members is loose and not tight.Hence, we can conclude that under cooperative business environment where mature cooperation and work mode are relatively firm, it is suitable to adopt ECTA mode, for the information transparency is low at this time and task smooth feature is weak so that they can be avianized by tacit relationship formed long-term and low requirement on cooperative flexibility.But under the cooperative environment, where product cooperation is strong, work mode life cycle is short and cooperative partners are not fixed, it is more suitable to adopt LCA mode and improve it through positive feedback system.
As for the task complexity of LCA mode, transparency of information and deficiency on working controllability, with the improvement of information exchange way, enhancement on inter-business knowledge sharing, cooperative business chief's control and coordination towards business operation and trust relationship established with many cooperation among enterprises, the disadvantages of LCA mode in workflow operation will be effectively improved in the positive feedback effect of the above factors.Therefore, the flexibility and fastresponse of LCA mode will be better used to make itself out of the best workflow design method of crossorganization to support cooperative business platform.As the modification on partial workflow in ECTA mode, it will be likely to cause fatal error to global workflow.Research on inheritance relation in Petri network evolution can ensure that the semantics of public flow modeling not lose and try its best to optimize the sub-workflow while ECTA mode modifying it.
Certainly, we can adjust and optimize the disadvantages in LCA mode through effective system.Positive feedback is just one of them.Others are nerve network (Jiang et al., 2008), cooperation and genetic calculation.Similarly in ECTA mode, practical workflow management of cross-organization may involve in many external factors such as partnership gaming, resource distribution and information integration.In the workflow modeling of cross-organization, these factors should be considered as restrictions.Moreover, some conclusions against Petri network research can also provide optimizing methods to workflow modeling for crossorganization.For instance, research on Cross Flow (Lazcano et al., 2001), WISE (Grefen et al., 2000), OSM (Leng and Parlar, 2009) and COSMOS (Guo, 2010) are of great help to optimize workflow.
The real issue to support cross-organizational workflow is not the simple systematic interconnection but to design new conceptual and structural system to promote centralization of enterprise.The ideal workflow managing system of cross-organization should be established on uniform workflow model and the tightly-loosely-coupled cooperative environment of people-centric, which would become the hot spot for the next generation to research workflow.This kind of cooperative environment supports cross-organizational management, including building relation model among partners and organizations, various organizational workflow definition based on this uniform model and distributed workflow execution and supervisory coordination.As a kind of informationcentralized technology, whether the workflow system of cross-organization can match with the centralization become the major measurement to evaluate its ability.Only integrating all characters, which mean organizational internal user, external client, customer and supplier into the operation of cross-organizational flow through some certain portals, making use of various intercommunicating information of fulfilled application, can the workflow managing system of cross-organization completely realize integral integrated utility.

:
Say the beginning node in cooperative strategy group is:

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Illustration of positive coordinative system of LCA mode.
net, standing for public (or shared) workflow process definition.Definition 4 (district, chart): D is the collection of district, which is the business partner in public workflow.Function pub map T D ∈ → marks the task of public workflow on one of the districts.

Table 1 .
Comparison on performance of workflow mode.

Table 2 .
Comparison on advantages and disadvantages between ECTA and LCA.