In this paper we propose a systematic approach to performance analysis of workflow applications on the Grid. We introduce an ideal model for the workflow execution time and explain the difference to the real measured times based on a hierarchy of performance overheads for Grid computing. We describe how to systematically measure and compute the overheads from individual activities to entire workflow applications. We adjusted well-known parallel processing metrics to the scope of Grid computing,

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... comprising speedup and efficiency. We have implemented and largely automatised our analysis approach in the context of the ASKALON Grid application development and computing environment. We present experimental results that show detailed overhead analysis of two real-world workflow applications executed in a national Grid environment.