On Engineering Support for Business Process Modelling and Redesign

Currently, there is an enormous (research) interest in business process redesign (BPR). Several management-oriented approaches have been proposed showing how to make BPR work. However, detailed descriptions of empirical experience are few. Consistent engineering methodologies to aid and guide a BPR-practitioner are currently emerging. Often, these methodologies are claimed to be developed for business process modelling, but stem directly from information system design cultures. We consider an engineering methodology for BPR to consist of modelling concepts, their representation, computerized tools and methods, and pragmatic skills and guidelines for off-line modelling, communicating, analyzing, (re)designing\ud business processes. The modelling concepts form the architectural basis of such an engineering methodology. Therefore, the choice, understanding and precise definition of these concepts determine the productivity and effectiveness of modelling tasks within a BPR project. The\ud current paper contributes to engineering support for BPR. We work out general issues that play a role in the development of engineering support for BPR. Furthermore, we introduce an architectural framework for business process modelling and redesign. This framework consists of a coherent set of modelling concepts and techniques on how to use them. The framework enables the modelling of both the structural and dynamic characteristics of business processes. We illustrate its applicability by modelling a case from service industry. Moreover, the architectural framework supports abstraction and refinement techniques. The use of these techniques for a BPR trajectory are discussed

Business Modeling with the Support of Multiple Notations in Requirements Engineering

Requirements specification should not be concerned only with the software specification, but should also be able to integrate with the organizational models describing the environment in which the system will function. Agent–oriented conceptual modeling notations such as i* represents an interesting approach for modeling early phase requirements which includes organizational contexts, stakeholder intentions and rationale. Business Process Modeling notations such as BPMN are used to effectively conceptualize and communicate important process characteristics to relevant stakeholders. On the other hand, Unified Modeling Language (UML) is suitable for later phases of requirement capture which usually focus on completeness, consistency, and automated verification of functional requirements for the new system. In this paper, we illustrate the use of a methodology that facilitate and support the combined use of notation for modeling requirement engineering process in a synergistic fashion in a complex project for a large government Department. The notations we used were i*, BPMN and UML Use Case

Business Process Re-engineering and Information Security Planning: Opportunities for integration

Business process re-engineering (BPR) has come to recognize a need for the adoption of socio-technical methodologies and capabilities for knowledge representation of qualitative concerns. Security planning and decision-making has a similar need, and furthermore socio-technical methods common to BPR can be usefully applied in this capacity. The introduction of security models like Defense-in- Depth and similar efforts to recognize the organizational impact of security planning in operational security management serve as an initial step in educating security personnel and provide a more comprehensive view, but unfortunately, security decision-making has traditionally relied almost solely upon quantitative risk assessment, cost/benefit mechanisms, and related, functionalistic methodologies. This greatly limits the representational capacity of the decision process, and with it the possible dimensions of analysis in which to consider security issues. Within this paper, we briefly examine security planning and the relevant techniques of BPR and Socio-technical design, and present a framework for their integration within the context of information security. It is our contention that such methodologies can be utilized in the security decision process to facilitate representation of subjective concerns and broadly-defined issues germane to security policy, within an organizational context

IT-enabled Process Innovation: A Literature Review

The importance of Information Technology (IT) is growing, and in a hypercompetitive market IT must be used as a strategic asset for companies to succeed. In order to gain strategic benefits from IT, companies need to be innovative when deploying IT. This can be achieved by reengineering business processes to take advantage of the possibilities IT provides. In 1993 Thomas H. Davenport presented a framework describing the role of IT in process innovation . Based on this framework, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review to answer the following research question: What kind of opportunities does IT provide for process innovation? . Davenport\u27s framework is used as an analytical lens to review articles from the top 20 IS and management journals. The paper provides an overview and an in-depth analysis of the literature on IT-enabled process innovation and suggests avenues for future research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our analyses reveal five distinct themes related to opportunities for IT-enabled process innovation, all of which offer guidance to practitioners and highlight gaps in our current knowledge about how to leverage IT for innovation purposes

Combining i* and BPMN for business process model lifecycle management

The premise behind ‘third wave’ Business Process Management (BPM1) is effective support for change at levels. Business Process Modeling (BPM2) notations such as BPMN are used to effectively conceptualize and communicate process configurations to relevant stakeholders. In this paper we argue that the management of change throughout the business process model lifecycle requires greater conceptual support achieved via a combination of complementary notations. As such the focus in this paper is on the co-evolution of operational (BPMN) and organizational (i*) models. Our intent is to provide a way of expressing changes, which arise in one model, effectively in the other model. We present constrained development methodologies capable of guiding an analyst when reflecting changes from an i* model to a BPMN model and vice-versa. 1 Introductio

Striving for Continuous Process Improvement - A Construction Case Study

Organisations must constantly monitor, measure, evaluate and improve their processes in order to remain competitive. Construction organisations are no different in this aspect and are increasingly realising the need for process improvement due to external and internal pressures. The construction industry is working towards improving its efficiency by implementing process improvement techniques such as Lean Construction along with information and communication systems. Business processes and information technology are closely associated and better results can be achieved by addressing them in an integrated manner. This paper provides details of a case study where an extensive business process improvement exercise was carried out over a period of five years alongside a major Enterprise Information System implementation. All major organisational units were assessed and its processes were modelled and evaluated with a view to improvement within the lean framework. Finally a continuous process improvement framework was put in place to avoid the risk of stagnation. The lean continuous improvement framework resulted in each organisational unit taking responsibility for their own processes ultimately leading to higher profitability and smoother supply chain processes. The case study also demonstrated that even smaller business units and its processes affected the overall value chain in a major way and the importance to analyse the process interdependencies between organisational units.Peer reviewe

Aligning Security Awareness With Information Systems Security Management

This paper explores the way information security awareness connects to the overall information security management framework it serves. To date, the formulation of security awareness initiatives has tended to ignore the important relationship with the overall security management context, and vice versa. In this paper we show that the two processes can be aligned so as to ensure that awareness activities serve the security management strategy and that security management exploits the benefits of an effective awareness effort. To do so, we analyze the processes of security awareness and security management using a process analysis framework and we explore their interactions. The identification of these interactions results in making us able to place awareness in a security management framework instead of viewing it as an isolated security mechanism

SP2MN: a Software Process Meta-Modeling Language

In the last two decades, software process modeling has been an area of interest within both academia and industry. Software process modeling aims at defining and representing software processes in the form of models. A software process model represents the medium that allows better understanding, management and control of the software process. Software process metamodeling rather, provides standard metamodels which enable the defining of customized software process models for a specific project in hand by instantiation. Several software process modeling/meta-modeling languages have been introduced to formalize software process models. Nonetheless, none of them has managed to introduce a compatible yet precise language to include all necessary concepts and information for software process modeling. This paper presents Software Process Meta-Modeling and Notation (SP2MN); a meta-modeling language that provides simple and expressive graphical notations for the aim of software process modeling. SP2MN has been evaluated based upon the well-known ISPW-6 process example, a standard benchmark problem for software process modeling. SP2MN has proved that it presents a valid and expressive software process modeling language