SWAMP is a platform that drives workflows. Workflows are, especially in a professional or business environment, processes that involve many people. Typically processes require input of distinct people in a more or less fixed sequence. Some people urgently need to be informed about progress in the process, others may want to be informed.
Unfortunately, processes are not fix in the real world and they are very hard to be defined. Process definitions change as fast as the opinions of the people taking part.
SWAMP wants to help to provide as much help as software can provide to improve processes. Software can not talk to people and try to motivate them, but software can help people to organise their daily work and give them a more free head for interesting jobs by taking over the organisation of boring parts.
Tasks and work sequences that are always of a recurring, similar type and that consist of unchanging subtasks may be defined as a workflow: A chronological sequence of similar tasks, that may or may not depend on each other. These subtasks are handled by one or more persons. The Information about ongoing and already done tasks needs to be spread.
SWAMP wants to accept the challenge to be a platform to drive workflows. As mentioned above, processes that are described by workflows change rapidly. That makes it expensive and inefficient to 'hardcode' workflows. Workflows need to be easy defineable for people that are not programmers. SWAMP offers a XML based language (basically a dtd ;-) to define workflows. Once a workflow is defined by one person, it can be used in SWAMP. The target is that no programmer need to touch the SWAMP core for new workflows that come from a new XML file.
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