Towards a method engineering approach for business process reengineering

Abstract

Business process reengineering (BPR) assists organisations in improving their internal functions to better achieve their business objectives. Various methodologies have been developed for applying BPR, through which organisational processes are identified, analysed, and improved. However, the need still remains for custom methodologies which are tailored to fit the specific characteristics of organisations and BPR projects. Process patterns are abstract representations of common and effective processes that can be reused as method parts for building custom methodologies; an approach that is commonly referred to as situational method engineering (SME). This study aims to use SME in the context of BPR by proposing a collection of cohesive process patterns for BPR; these process patterns have been extracted through studying prominent BPR methodologies and abstracting their similarities. The patterns have then been organised into a generic framework for BPR methodologies. A method for using the framework has also been presented which prescribes a process for selecting suitable process patterns and adding them to a core process to yield a bespoke BPR methodology. This flexible framework forms a knowledge base that is not only useful for improving BPR practices, but also provides a basis for future research in this context.