Navigating Through the Maze of Business Process Change Methods

Business Process Management (BPM) is an approach adopted by many organizations for improving their business processes in order to serve their customers more efficiently and effectively. Literature on BPM offers a plethora of methods used as a guide when improving business processes. Some are promoted as methods for process reengineering, while others as methods for improvement, redesign, or innovation. The number of BPM methods is overwhelming, such that organizations are faced with the challenge to select one that best fits their needs. In this paper, we follow a systematic literature review approach to investigate the characteristics of existing BPM methods. We find that the ambition, nature and perspective of the methods are important to determine whether they can be used for radical or incremental process change. Our findings point to the lack of research done on methods for radical process change

A Language for Designing Process Maps

Business Process Management (BPM) is often adopted by organizations as a method to increase awareness and knowledge of their business processes. Business process modeling is used as a method to represent business processes in form of business process models. The number of organizations adopting BPM is quickly increasing. By this means, so is the number of business process models as result of a BPM initiative. Within a single organization the number of business process models often ranges from hundreds to even thousands. In order to handle such large amount of business process models, organizations structure them by the help of a process architecture. It includes a process map, which is considered as the top-most view of the process architecture where the organization's business processes and the relations between them are visually and abstractly depicted. The details of each business process shown on the process map are stored in the lower levels of the corresponding process architecture. The purpose of a process map is to provide an overview of how an organization operates as a whole without necessarily going into the process details. Therefore, the design of a process map is vital not only for the understanding of the company's processes, but also for the subsequent detailed process modeling. This is primarily because, a process map is often the result of the process identification phase of the BPM lifecycle, and is used as a foundation for the subsequent phases, where the detailed process modeling and process improvement takes place. Despite their importance, the design of process maps is still more art than science, essentially because there is no standardized modeling language available for process map design. As a result, we are faced with a high heterogeneity of process map designs from practice, although they all serve a similar purpose. This has accordingly been our main motivation for pursuing the research presented in this thesis. The research question for this thesis is the following: How to effectively model processes on an abstract level? In this thesis, we document the development of a language for designing process maps. In particular, we provide the following contributions. First, we present a holistic reference BPM framework. It is a consolidation of procedural frameworks introduced by prominent BPM researchers. The framework includes eleven BPM elements, each holding activities organizations need to consider when adopting BPM. Second, we provide a method for assessing cognitive effectiveness of process maps used in practice. For this, we follow the nine principles for cognitively effective visual notations introduced by Moody cite{moody2012physics}. In addition, we employ the cognitive fit theory to check whether the design of process maps has an effect on the BPM success in the respective organization. Second, we conduct a systematic literature review on the quality of modeling languages and models. We use the quality requirements we found as basis for developing the language for designing process maps. Third, we define the abstract syntax, semantics, and concrete syntax of the language for process maps. We follow an explorative method, hence we rely on empirical data for the language development. Accordingly, we reuse symbols in our language which have already been used in practice as part of process maps. We follow this approach in order to ensure the language will consist of elements already familiar to organizations. We evaluate the language by means of an experiment, in which we assess the effectiveness and efficiency of process maps designed using elements from our language against process maps that have not been designed using our language. Last, this thesis provides a method for testing the suitability of existing languages for specific purposes. (author's abstract

A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING BPM SUCCESS

Business Process Management is intensively used by organizations with varying objectives. Most adopt this approach in order to achieve continuous process improvement, such as better performance and conformance of their processes. Many studies have been done on BPM methodologies that companies follow in practice when adopting BPM, which resulted in the identification of various success factors. However, these prior works hardly consider the variety of configurations in terms of diverging objectives and actions how companies approach BPM. In this paper, we emphasize this point by addressing the challenge of developing a theoretical framework in which individual cases of success and failure can be studied. We propose a BPM implementation framework which comprises ten elements that are interlinked with each other. We conducted in-depth interviews with two companies and used the BPM implementation framework to assess the success of both BPM initiatives. We were able to reach conclusions such as that for particular goals a company has there is a minimum set of BPM-related actions this company has to conduct in order to come to the desired outcome

Navigating Through the Maze of Business Process Change Methods

Business Process Management (BPM) is an approach adopted by many organizations for improving their business processes in order to serve their customers more efficiently and effectively. Literature on BPM offers a plethora of methods used as a guide when improving business processes. Some are promoted as methods for process reengineering, while others as methods for improvement, redesign, or innovation. The number of BPM methods is overwhelming, such that organizations are faced with the challenge to select one that best fits their needs. In this paper, we follow a systematic literature review approach to investigate the characteristics of existing BPM methods. We find that the ambition, nature and perspective of the methods are important to determine whether they can be used for radical or incremental process change. Our findings point to the lack of research done on methods for radical process change

‘Generation Facebook’ – A Cognitive Calculus Model of Teenage User Behavior on Social Network Sites

With the growing popularity of Facebook, the number of teenage users has significantly increased. Parents and teachersobserve this development critically as they fear that teenagers are prone to over-engage in pleasant activities and neglectthe risks connected with information revelation. This paper adopts an explorative approach in order to investigate whatmotivates and hinders teenagers to use SNS and how using this medium affects their identities. By applying GroundedTheory to analyze data obtained in interviews, we formulate a conceptual model of teenage behavior on Facebook. Wefind that teenagers behave rationally on SNS, consciously weighing the benefits against the costs and acting inaccordance with their preferences. Shared information and the diversified network structure allow teenagers to obtainsupport in school-related matters, broaden their horizon and intensify relationships with their peers. At the same time,peer and parental pressure play a significant role in this process

Cognitive Diagram Understanding and Task Performance in Systems Analysis and Design

Models play an important role in systems analysis and design (SAD). A diagrammatic model is defined as a mapping from a domain to a visual representation in such a way that relevant information is preserved to meet a specific goal. So far, cognitive research on diagram criteria in relation to task performance has been fragmented. The aim of this paper is to (1) consolidate research on the cognitive processing steps involved during understanding and task performance with diagrams, (2) consolidate corresponding criteria for such diagrams to best support cognitive processing, and (3) demonstrate the support effective diagrams provide for performing SAD tasks. Addressing the first aim, we develop a theoretical cognitive framework of task performance with diagrams called CogniDia. It integrates different cognitive theories from research on diagrams in software engineering and information systems. Regarding the second aim, we review the literature to organize criteria for effective cognitive processing of diagrams. We identify research gaps on verbal and task processing. Regarding the third aim, we use the theoretical cognitive framework to investigate how diagrams support the SAD process effectively

Why is BPMN not appropriate for Process Maps?

Process map is an abstract depiction of all company’s processes and their relations. It provides an overview of how an organization operates without going into process details. It is often used as foundation for the detailed process modeling where BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is used for modeling the details of business processes. Regardless of BPMN’s existence, most process maps from practice have been designed with software programs not initially developed for process modeling. Thus, the question we aim to answer is: Why is BPMN not appropriate for designing process maps? To address this, we semantically map process map concepts with BPMN concepts and use the principles of the representation theory introduced by Wand and Weber (1995) to find out whether BPMN is complete and clear in terms of the process map meta-model. By this means, we were able to provide valuable implications for both research and practice

Researching Information Systems Methods using Method Mining - A Case Study on Process Improvement Methods

Methods are of fundamental importance for IS research. A method refers to a well-defined sequences of activities that, if carried out proficiently, yield predictable results. Research methods provide guidance for conducting IS research projects, while practical methods address real-world problems. Often the same method is applied differently in different settings and new methods are constantly being proposed, although methods with the same purpose already exist. Therefore, it is increasingly challenging to understand the spectrum of available methods and how they are used. The questions we aim to answer are: How can we describe similarities and differences of methods that share the same purpose? and Why are there differences in the way how methods are used? To address these, we propose a method mining procedure which uses the technique of process mining, and use the procedure to investigate process improvement methods. Our findings provide valuable implications for both research and practice

An Empirical Investigation on the Design of Process Architectures

Abstract. Large-scale enterprises struggle with an effective alignment of business processes and IT services with business strategy. While process models play an important role for bridging between strategy and IT, there is a need to systematically organize the huge number of models. Process architecture defines an overarching structure for the organization of processes. However, there is a notable research gap on how process architectures are designed in practice. In this paper we address this problem by integrating insights and approaches from practice. We use Grounded Theory to analyze eleven in-depth interviews we conducted. Further, we present findings from studying documents provided by the interviewees. Our contribution is a conceptual framework about process architecture design, along with a classification of process architecture archetypes found in practice. Our results have strong implications since they demonstrate that process architecture design is more complex and context-dependent than assumed