A BPM-Systems Architecture That Supports Dynamic and Collaborative Processes

Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) are increasingly implemented in and across organizations. However, the current combination of functionality, concepts and characteristics in BPMSs is very much based on an industrial-based view of the economy while western economies are rapidly moving towards an information and service economy in which the ratio of knowledge workers is rising dramatically. Compared to the ‘old’ type of worker the knowledge worker is typically highly educated, used to collaborating with other knowledge workers and less likely to be sensitive to a controlling style of management in the execution of his or her work. While many organizations are initiating business process improvement projects to improve their processes, this is done with BPM-systems that are based on an old paradigm and therefore unable to support dynamic and collaborative processes. In this paper we propose a new architecture for BPM-systems that include functionality to support knowledge workers in their dynamic and collaborative activities and processes

Business Rules Management Solutions Problem Space: Situational Factors

Business rules management solutions are widely applied, standalone or in combination with business process management solutions. Yet scientific research on business rules management solutions is limited. The purpose of this paper is to define the business rules management solution problem space. Using contingency theory and relational theory as our lens, we conducted a qualitative study on 39 business rules management solutions. The range of data sources included interviews and document analysis. From the qualitative study six situational factors have been defined to classify the business rules management solution space: 1) value proposition, 2) approach, 3) standardization, 4) change frequency, 5) n-order compliance, and 6) integrative power of the software environment. The six factors can be clustered in three structures 1) deep structure, 2) physical structure and, 3) organizational structure. The classification of the problem space provides a framework for the analysis of business rules management solutions

Applying the Decision Model and Notation in Practice: A Method to Design and Specify Business Decisions and Business Logic

Proper decision-making is one of the most important capabilities of an organization. Therefore, it is important to make explicit all decisions that are relevant to manage for an organization. In 2015 the Object Management Group published the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard that focuses on modelling business decisions and underlying business logic. DMN is being adopted at an increas-ing rate, however, theory does not adequately cover activities or methods to guide practitioners mod-elling with DMN. To tackle this problem this paper presents a method to guide the modelling process of business decisions with DMN. The method has been validated and improved with an experiment using thirty participants. Based on this method, future research could focus on further validation and improvement by using more participants from different industries

A Business Rules Management Reference Process for the Dutch Government

Business Rules Management (BRM) is increasingly being applied in the governmental context. However, currently, many of those governmental institutions apply different BRM processes, but are expected to work together in their task of delivering products and services to citizens and companies in the Netherlands. An initiative from the Dutch government was started with the goal to investigate currently applied processes and develop a BRM reference process to promote cooperation. This paper elaborates upon the process of comparison of currently applied BRM processes and development of the BRM reference process for the Dutch government. The resulting BRM reference process consists of seven main processes with twenty sub-processes and a common vocabulary which can guide (Dutch) governmental organizations to design and implement their BRM solution as well as to achieve better cooperation due to increased commonality. In terms of future research, the emphasis should lie on more thorough validation, using quantitative research methods, but we argue that other industries should be explored as well

The Decision Transparency Framework: A framework and key transparency indicators to measure the business decisions and business logic transparency

Business decisions and business logic are an important part of an organization’s daily activities. In the not so near past they were modelled as integrative part of business processes, however, during the last years, they are managed as a separate entity. Still, decisions and underlying business logic often remain a black box. Therefore, the call for transparency increases. Current theory does not provide a measurable and quantitative way to measure transparency for business decisions. This paper extends the understanding of different views on transparency with regards to business decisions and underlying business logic and presents a framework including Key Transparency Indicators (KTI) to measure the transparency of business decisions and business logic. The framework is validated by means of an experiment using case study data. Results show that the framework and KTI’s are useful to measure transparency. Further research will focus on further refinement of the measurements as well as further validation of the current measurement

Identifying Challenges in Business Rules Management Implementations Regarding the Governance Capability at Governmental Institutions

As the number of BRMS-implementations increases, more and more organizations search for guidance to design such solutions. Given these premises, more implementation challenges experienced from practice become evident. In this study, we identify the main challenges regarding the governance capability as part of BRM, in the Dutch governmental context. To be able to do so, we utilized a four-round focus group and a three-round Delphi study set-up to collect our data. The analysis resulted in eight implementation challenges experienced by the participants. The presented results provide a grounded basis from which empirical and practical research on best practices can be further explored

Continuous Auditing: A Practical Maturity Model

Continuous Auditing (CA) is a methodology for issuing audit reports simultaneously with, or a short period of time after, the data is entered into the information system. The possibilities and challenges of CA have been researched previously. However, limited studies focus on the practical application of CA maturity models. In this study, we bridge this gap by developing a maturity model, including measurements to evaluate the current state of an organizations’ CA. To accomplish this goal, we adopted a focus group approach to create the maturity model in multiple iterations. During these iterations, the model was developed in concurrence with three pension funds, one accountancy firm, one mortgagor and two consultancy firms for the pension market. This resulted in a maturity model, which consists out of five maturity levels and four capabilities. The maturity levels are: 1) initial approach, 2) ad hoc approach, 3) defined approach, 4) managed approach, and 5) optimized approach. The four capabilities are: A) systems, B) data, C) organization, and D) people

A Framework for Traceability of Legal Requirements in the Dutch Governmental Context

In the past decades, research and practice focused a lot of attention towards traceability in the context of software requirements, food supply chains, manufacturing, and aviation industry. As legislation and regulations in software systems become increasingly relevant, traceability of legal requirements is of great importance. In this study, we aimed to create a framework in which the basis for traceability of legal requirements is addressed. To be able to do so we conducted five case studies at five Dutch governmental institutions, which was followed by a three-round focus group. The resulting framework comprises 22 (layered) traceability elements in relation to three domains that offers a reference model to determine how traceability can be applied in software system design, in the context of the Dutch government

Identifying Challenges in Business Rules Management Implementations regarding the Elicitation, Design, and Specification Capabilities at Dutch Governmental Institutions

Proper decision making represent one of an organization’s most important capabilities. To manage decisions and underlying business rules, an increasing number of organizations have begun to use business rules management (BRM). However, given BRM research’s and practice’s nascence, we need to more deeply understand the challenges in implementing BRM capabilities. As such, from collecting and analyzing two three-round focus groups and two three-round Delphi studies, we identified 28 main challenges that five Dutch governmental institutions experienced in eliciting, designing, and specifying business rules. We also discuss directions for future research

A Classification of Modification Categories for Business Rules

Business rules play a critical role in an organization’s daily activities. With the increased use of business rules (solutions) the interest in modelling guidelines that address the manageability of business rules has increased as well. However, current research on modelling guidelines is mainly based on a theoretical view of modifications that can occur to a business rule set. Research on actual modifications that occur in practice is limited. The goal of this study is to identify modifications that can occur to a business rule set and underlying business rules. To accomplish this goal we conducted a grounded theory study on 229 rules set, as applied from March 2006 till June 2014, by the National Health Service. In total 3495 modifications have been analysed from which we defined eleven modification categories that can occur to a business rule set. The classification provides a framework for the analysis and design of business rules management architectures