Root Cause Analysis in Business Processes

Conceptual modeling is an important tool for understanding and revealing weaknesses of business processes. Yet, the current practice in reengineering projects often considers simply the as-is control flow and uses the respective model barely as a reference for brain-storming about improvement opportunities. This approach heavily relies on the intuition of the participants and misses a clear description of steps to identify root causes of problems. In contrast to that, this paper introduces a systematic methodology to detect and document the quality dimension of a business process. It builds on the definition of softgoals for each process activity, of correlations between softgoals, and metrics to measure the occurrence of quality issues. In this regard our contribution is a foundation of root-cause analysis in business process modeling, and a conceptual integration of goal-based and activity-based approaches to capturing processes

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

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

THE CORRELATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND SUCCESS OF BPM ADOPTION

Organizational culture has been described as one of the most important factors in BPM adoption, as it is reported to support or hinder BPM efforts in an organization. However, this proposition is still hardly backed up with empirical research. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the contingent role that organizational culture can play for the success of BPM adoption. To this end, we use a survey design for evaluating the correlation of organizational culture and the success of BPM adoption. Our survey was distributed among top managers and (where applicable) process owners in organizations with more than 50 employees in Slovenia. The results reveal that the highest level of BPM adoption success is achieved in organizations with Clan culture type, whereas organizations achieving the lowest level of BPM adoption success appear to have a Hierarchy culture, as measured by the culture classification of Cameron and Quinn (2006). A significantly negative correlation has been found between Hierarchy culture type and all aspects of BPM adoption success. These insights provide a foundation for further studying on how organizational culture affects BPM adoption success in detail

The State of the Art of Business Process Management Research as Published in the BPM Conference - Recommendations for Progressing the Field

The research field of Business Process Management (BPM) has gradually developed as a discipline situated within the computer, management and information systems sciences. Its evolution has been shaped by its own conference series, the BPM conference. Still, as with any other academic discipline, debates accrue and persist, which target the identity as well as the quality and maturity of the BPM field. In this paper, we contribute to the debate on the identity and progress of the BPM conference research community through an analysis of the BPM conference proceedings. We develop an understanding of signs of progress of research presented at this conference, where, how, and why papers in this conference have had an impact, and the most appropriate formats for disseminating influential research in this conference. Based on our findings from this analysis, we provide conclusions about the state of the conference series and develop a set of recommendations to further develop the conference community in terms of research maturity, methodological advance, quality, impact, and progression

Investigations by Cell-Mediated Immunologic Tests and Therapeutic Trials With Thymopentin in Vaginal Mycoses

Objective: According to unsatisfactory therapeutic results in patients with chronically recurrent vaginal candidosis, we investigated if immunologic patient factors could be found and treated

Business Process Models for Risk Analysis: Expert View

The recent financial turbulences raise questions on how risk analysis is conducted. Regulatory requirements and professional standards have been introduced in the last decade in order to obtain a more reliable internal control on financial reporting process with a new emphasis on business processes. However, there are no standards yet available on how business processes should be captured for facilitating risk analysis in audit assignments. Representations of business processes have been investigated in the field of business process modeling. There exists a broad spectrum of notations and formalisms with relative strengths and weaknesses. Many of the popular notations build on a graph-based representation where activities of a process are connected with directed arcs defining the control flow. Such notations have been widely adopted for redesigning business processes. But also text-based formats have been defined. Corresponding process specifications define the activities of a process as lists with additional free text information. This raises the question whether the tools and methods for analyzing business process risks in auditing practice is appropriate for its objective. This paper reveals the benefits of adopting business process models for auditors toward understanding a companies business processes and the issues need to be considered for further development. The analysis also shows that practitioners use process models rather for risk elicitation and less in risk assessment