A strategy driven business process modelling approach

Abstract

PurposeMost of the process models concentrate on who does what, when, i.e. on the description of the operational performance of tasks. The goal driven approaches try to establish a close relationship between the “whys” and the “whats”. The former captures the strategic goals of the organisation whereas the latter tells us how they are achieved through tasks carried out by actors. In addition, managers do not naturally make the distinction between what to achieve (the goal) and the manner to achieve it (the strategy). This confusion often leads to the expression of manners as goals. In order to make clear the fundamental distinction between these two concerns and to master the complexity of process modelling, this paper seeks to propose a goal‐perspective, the map‐driven process modelling approach.Design/methodology/approachThe map representation system conforms to goal models in the fact that it recognises the concept of a goal but departs from those by introducing the concept of strategy to attain a goal.FindingsA business and its supporting system change in a concurrent way. In order to help the propagation of the intentional changes onto operational ones, we adopted the two levels hierarchical spiral process model. The intentional spiral deals with the production of the business process models using the map formalism and the operational one deals with the specifications of the supporting systems.Originality/valueA business process is defined in terms of goals and strategies of reaching these goals. The approach allows choosing an appropriate level of details when analysing and redesigning business processes.