Agile Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology

Abstract

Business process management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis, and improvement of business processes. Traditional BPM limitations in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. In a previous work, the authors proposed the business process and practice alignment methodology (BPPAM) to uncover, supervise, and improve business processes based on actual work practices. BPPAM aims at enabling business process modeling, supervision, and improvement through the distinction of two dimensions: (1) business processes and (2) work practices. This chapter describes an agile version of the methodology (ABPPAM). Agility is infused in ABPPAM through the redefinition of phases, roles, and iteration cycles. The chapter illustrates the effects of agility for the business discovery phase of ABPPAM through a case study analysis of a real organizational setting.