An agile business process and practice meta-model

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

An agile business process improvement methodology

Adoption of business process improvement strategies are now a concern of most organisations. Organisations are still facing challenges and finding transient solutions to immediate problems. The misalignment between IT solutions and organisational aspects evolves across space and time showing discrepancies. Unfortunately, existing business process approaches are not according with continuous business process improvement involving business stakeholders. Considering this limitation in well-known Business Process (BP) methodologies, this paper presents a comparative study of some approaches and introduces agility in the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM). Our intention is to present observed problems in existing approaches and introduce agility in our proposal to address features, like the alignment between daily work practices and business process descriptions, in a simple and agile way. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

BPM, Agile, and Virtualization Combine to Create Effective Solutions

The rate of change in business and government is accelerating. A number of techniques for addressing that change have emerged independently to provide for automated solutions in this environment. This paper will examine three of the most popular of these technologies-business process management, the agile software development movement, and infrastructure virtualization-to expose the commonalities in these approaches and how, when used together, their combined effect results in rapidly deployed, more successful solutions

Strategic use of Scrum framework on BPMS projects

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementIt is rare to find nowadays a business methodology that does not involve any kind of technology, whether in the research or development phases. One methodology that rises above the others when it comes to business processes is BPM. This type of methodology when added a specific software with BPMS integrated becomes highly beneficial to implement. Nevertheless, there are always flaws and gaps that could be filled. On the other hand, software development companies have grown exponentially since the digital transformation was accepted. One reason for that is the working methodology these types of companies follow, as they are known as Agile companies. What this document aims to present is enough artefacts and pros for Scrum, an Agile framework, to rule BPMS projects and minimize the current failures. This dissertation follows a design science research approach to apply multiple analytical methods and perspectives to create an artefact. The type of evidence within this methodology is a systematic literature review, to attain insights into the current state-of-the-art research of BPMS projects and Scrum. Thereby, the systematic literature review shall be used to pinpoint, analyse, and comprehend the obtainable empirical studies and research questions. This approach supports the main goal of this dissertation, to develop and propose evidencebased practise guidelines for the implementation of the Scrum framework on BPMS projects strategy

Corporate Development with Agile Business Process Modeling as a Key Success Factor

AbstractBusiness processes represent an important core component of the company's activities and should be therefore more considerate. It takes a long time until the processes modeled down to the smallest detail, analyzed and designed. When these steps have been completed, often the process will not be adapted. Here would be an agile approach interesting to be flexible on trends and enterprise decisions which will have any dependencies to the processes. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to develop a holistic approach, in which the advantages of the previous models can be optimally used and the current challenges such as the desired agility can be included. The research methodology used in the investigation consists of a combination of methods and tools of Business Process Management (BPM) and agile management. The aim of the research is to evaluate whether these methods can contribute positively to the process modeling improvement in the framework of the Enterprise Information System. The finding of this research consists of a holistic model for acting agile within BPM. This allows companies to act flexible to adapt or implement enterprise processes. The resulting added value can be seen in the model for flexible implementation with regular controlling which are set apart from the previous rigid waterfall models

Applying the business process and practice alignment meta-model: Daily practices and process modelling

Background: Business Process Modelling (BPM) is one of the most important phases of information system design. Business Process (BP) meta-models allow capturing informational and behavioural aspects of business processes. Unfortunately, standard BP meta-modelling approaches focus just on process description, providing different BP models. It is not possible to compare and identify related daily practices in order to improve BP models. This lack of information implies that further research in BP meta-models is needed to reflect the evolution/change in BP. Considering this limitation, this paper introduces a new BP meta-model designed by Business Process and Practice Alignment Meta-model (BPPAMeta-model). Our intention is to present a meta-model that addresses features related to the alignment between daily work practices and BP descriptions. Objectives: This paper intends to present a meta-model which is going to integrate daily work information into coherent and sound process definitions. Methods/Approach: The methodology employed in the research follows a design-science approach. Results: The results of the case study are related to the application of the proposed meta-model to align the specification of a BP model with work practices models. Conclusions: This meta-model can be used within the BPPAM methodology to specify or improve business processes models based on work practice descriptions

Aligning business processes and work practices

Current business process modeling methodologies offer little guidance regarding how to keep business process models aligned with their actual execution. This paper describes how to achieve this goal by uncovering and supervising business process models in connection with work practices using BAM. BAM is a methodology for business process modeling, supervision and improvement that works at two dimensions; the dimension of processes and the dimension of work practices. The business modeling component of BAM is illustrated with a case study in an organizational setting