Value-oriented process modeling - towards a financial perspective on business process redesign

To date, typical process modeling approaches put a strong emphasis on describing behavioral aspects of business operations. However, they often neglect value-related information. Yet, such information is of key importance to strategic decisionmaking, for instance in the context of process improvement or business engineering. In this paper we propose a valueoriented approach to business process modeling based on key concepts and metrics from operations and financial management. A simple case study suggests that our approach facilitates managerial decision-making in the context of process re-design

Stimulating Discourse on Topical Themes in Information Systems Research

Editorial for JITTA volume 18, issue 1

ChangeHER – Ein Prozessmodellbasiertes Change Management-System für Hochschulverwaltungen

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Kontextkonstruktion in Wissensmanagementsystemen: Ordnungsrahmen und Ergebnisse einer Marktstudie

Mit Wissensmanagementsystemen sollen Mitarbeiter zum zielgerechten Handeln in dynamischen Märkten befähigt werden. Im praktischen Arbeitsalltag werden diese Systeme jedoch oft als Overhead empfunden. Trotz des hohen Aufwands der Entwicklung der Systeme gelingt es kaum, das geschaffene Potenzial an Wissensobjekten in Geschäftsprozessen erfolgreich zu nutzen. Dieser Beitrag analysiert Anforderungen an Wissensmanagementsysteme aus kognitionswissenschaftlicher Sicht. Er stellt heraus, dass ein wesentlicher Erfolgsfaktor für die Nutzung der Systeme in der adäquaten Einbettung von Wissensobjekten in ihren situativen Kontext zu sehen ist. Anhand eines Ordnungsrahmens können verschiedene Techniken zur Kontextkonstruktion eingeordnet werden. Die Ergebnisse einer Marktstudie zeigen, welche dieser Techniken gegenwärtig in Wissensmanagementsystemen implementiert sind. --

Towards Creativity-Aware Project Management – An Initial Study on Creativity in Research Projects

Creativity is a key resource in research projects where uncertainty is high and working methods and outcomes are only loosely defined. Project management has to ensure that it encourages, channels and manages creativity, while, at the same time, optimises the typical constraints of resources, time and scope. This can only be successfully done if emphasis is put on understanding the core of any creative project: the occurrence and nature of creativity. This paper documents an exploratory case study which analyses how creative work is distributed along various project phases and how it can be characterised and attributed. Two types of creativity within research projects have been identified: Creativity of the technical project lead to create and manage the project vision and creativity of the subject matter experts to generate research results. An understanding of their differences and implications helps project managers in the definition of a suitable management approach for research projects

Adapting Project Management Standards – Deriving Guidance from Reference Modelling

Project management standards provide an inventory of commonly accepted processes and tools which claim to be applicable in most cases. Project success largely depends on the suitability of the project management method and thus requires an adaptation of these standards for specific project types and contextual factors. This can be supported through the development of detailed, re-usable guidelines on how to “customize” standards. The goal of this paper is to analyse the potential offered by the field of reference modelling for this purpose. Here, design principles support the transfer and extension of knowledge from a reference model into an application model and can in principle all be transferred into project management. However, this paper shows that limitations occur due to the current design of project management standards. This topic is of utmost importance for IT projects, as they are differ from more conventional project types and thus call for larger alterations

Measuring the Value of User Participation in Change Projects - Results from Case Studies in the Mobile IT-Service Sector

Mobile devices offer great potentials for business process change and reengineering. However, realizing these potentials in practice still faces serious problems. While technologies are now widely mature, the problems still lie in the adoption and usage of mobile technology. In this paper, we analyze the contribution of user participation to the successful improvement of business metrics. This paper presents results from five case studies conducted in the IT-Service sector. The paper gives an example of a process calculation before and after mobile tool integration. Major findings include (a) user participation leads to improvements in business metrics and, (b) faster adoption and payback periods