Understanding Business Process Quality

Abstract Organizations have taken benefit from quality management prac-tices in manufacturing and logistics with respect to competitiveness as well as profitability. At the same time, an ever-growing share of the organizational value chain centers around transactional administrative processes addressed by business process management concepts, e.g. in finance and accounting. Integrating these fields is thus very promising from a management perspec-tive. Obtaining a clear understanding of business process quality constitutes the most important prerequisite in this respect. However, related approaches have not yet provided an effective solution to this issue. In this chapter, we consider effectiveness requirements towards business process quality concepts from a management perspective, compare existing approaches from various fields, deduct a definition framework from organizational targets, and take initial steps towards practical adoption. These steps provide fundamental in-sights into business process quality, and contribute to obtain a clear grasp of what constitutes a good business process.

A Quality-Oriented Business Process Meta-Model

International audienceBusiness process modeling is an important part of information systems design. Business process modeling techniques provide a standard way of presentation and communication of business processes. One important problem in this context is to assess the quality of business processes as well as their ontological constructs, which raises several issues, such as the identification of business process constructs as well as the quality dimensions and factors relevant to these constructs. In this paper, our goal is twofold. First, we present a business process meta-model containing all possible constructs of a business process. Second, after discussing a set of quality factors suitable for business processes constructs, we present a quality oriented meta-model resulting from the enrichment of the business process meta-model with quality related information