Business Process Maturity Models Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Business Process Maturity can be defined as the „degree of explicit definition, management, measurement, control and effectiveness” of organisational processes (Humphrey, 1987, p. 1- 13) or their ability to systematically provide better business results (McCormack, Johnson, 2001, p. 12). The practical implementation of the above concept is reflected trough Business Process Maturity Models (BPMMs). They have been designed in order to enable companies to shift their business process management from „as-is” state, where process are undefined and underperforming to a desired „to-be” state, in which processes are being continuously improved. The available literature proofs that many review papers on BPMMs, in particular those issued before 2010 lacks an extensive set of systematic literature review or analysis criteria. For example, the authors didn’t pay attention whether the analysed models focused on a single process, a specific group of processes or all organisational processes. Often, there was also no distinction between organisational and process maturity, which appeared in the analysed models as separate concepts, or different types of maturity (e.g. process, project, supply chain, etc.). Some systematic attempts for analysing BPMMs were undertaken by e.g. A. Van Looy (2010, p. 687-697), M. Rosemann and J. vom Brocke (2010, pp 105-122), as well as M. Röglinger, J. Pöppelbuß and J. Becker (2012, p. 328-346), however still significant limitation of these research can be enumerated. As a result of the identified research gap, this papers aims at performing a systematic literature review based on transparent and sound criteria. The paper is divided into three main parts. The first part (introduction) focuses on presenting briefly the „state-of-the-art” regarding the Business Process Maturity Models research. The second part provides insights into the methodology of performing the systematic literature review. Finally, the last part of the paper discusses the results of the performed study and resulting conclusions.