Domain Of Business Process Management Research Articles

ADVANCING THE QUALITY OF BUSINESS PROCESS MATURITY MODELS

ABSTRACT Over the years, academia has developed and published various business process maturity models (BPMMs) that supposedly assist companies in systematically identifying, evaluating, and improving their capabilities. However, as several authors have previously indicated, the quantity of the published models may not always meet the required quality. To examine whether these views are justified, this paper performs a publication outlet and citation analysis for articles from 1990 to 2019. The results show that BPMMs are predominantly published in less-recognized journals and are less frequently cited than other works in the domain of business process management. This finding highlights the need for improvement and motivates the derivation of criteria that help to enhance the quality of BPMMs. The presented criteria are particularly valuable for (1) researchers seeking to publish more transparent and replicable BPMMs and (2) reviewers deciding whether the models should be published. Eventually, they will likewise facilitate model application and dissemination in business practice. Keywords business process; maturity model; publication outlets; citation analysis; quality; criteria

BPM perspectives to support ICSs: Exploiting the integration of formal verifications into investment service provision processes

PurposeThis paper investigates the criteria for a selective integration, in the multidisciplinary business process management (BPM) areas, between information technologies tools and the company's internal control systems (ICSs) aimed at directing organizational behaviours. Adopting a process-based perspective, the authors propose a formal methodology to increase ICSs aims, related to the segregation of duties (SoDs) models, efficiently and effectively.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the applicability of formal verifications to validate a banking process of providing investment services, which is mapped through the workflow management system. To mitigate the state explosion problem of formal methods, the authors propose an efficient methodology that has been proved on the SoDs models in the bank ICSs, as a case study.FindingsThe authors’ investigations suggest that in the BPM domain, the banking ICSs aims can benefit from the aforesaid methodologies, originating from the formal methods area, to increase the reliability and correctness in the design, modelling and implementation of the SoDs models.Originality/valueThe proposed methodology is quite general and can be efficiently applied to large-scale systems in different business contexts or areas of the BPM. Its application to the bank's SoD prevents or detects significant weaknesses, operational risks, excessive risk appetite and other undesirable behaviours in the investment services provision processes. This guarantees that the investment ordered/offered is “suitable and appropriate” with the client's risk profile, especially non-professional, required by the MiFID II Directive.

Business process management in the port sector: a literature review

Purpose This paper aims to review the application of business process management (BPM) in the port sector. Its objective is to understand whether BPM principles are applied in the port sector, the role of the procedural factor in port performance evaluation and whether electronic data interchange systems have been used for process management purposes. Design/methodology/approach The objective of this research is to conduct a critical review of existing academic literature in the domain of BPM and its application in the ports sector. This paper assessed more than a hundred recent publications, from key journals in the domains of port economics, BPM and information technology. The two principle platforms used are the online databases of the World Bank Group and the University of Antwerp. Findings Academic literature reviewed reveals a partial application of BPM in the port and maritime sector. BPM related research is conducted via the utilization of modeling algorithms or optimization and simulation tools. There exists evidence that electronic data interchange (EDI) data extracted from EDI platforms can be used to model inter-organizational business processes in several industries. Yet, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no research investigates Port Community System (PCS) or single window (SW) data utilization for BPM purposes, although PCS and SW benefits are well documented. Port performance is largely assessed based on the production theory, and limited number of studies use elements of procedural efficiency as variables for their analysis. Originality/value The holistic application of BPM has been researched in numerous industries but in the port sector. This paper constitutes the first section of an original research study to define key components, assumptions and constraints for developing a comprehensive BPM framework in the port sector.

Goal-oriented dependency analysis for service identification

Highly mature service-oriented architecture systems have great flexibility and reusability, and can align business processes and information technologies with high quality. Service identification plays a key role in this respect. Further, of the different methods employed, the most popular and preferred is process-oriented service identification. However, the absence of dependency analysis in the business process management domain remains a challenge for the quality of future systems. In this paper, we propose a goal-oriented dependency analysis for service identification via business process modeling. In our analysis solution, we apply a dependency tree featuring the relationships among requirements. The dependency relations are analyzed to create business processes via scenarios comprising requirements and process fragments.

Discovering more precise process models from event logs by filtering out chaotic activities

Process Discovery is concerned with the automatic generation of a process model that describes a business process from execution data of that business process. Real life event logs can contain chaotic activities. These activities are independent of the state of the process and can, therefore, happen at rather arbitrary points in time. We show that the presence of such chaotic activities in an event log heavily impacts the quality of the process models that can be discovered with process discovery techniques. The current modus operandi for filtering activities from event logs is to simply filter out infrequent activities. We show that frequency-based filtering of activities does not solve the problems that are caused by chaotic activities. Moreover, we propose a novel technique to filter out chaotic activities from event logs. We evaluate this technique on a collection of seventeen real-life event logs that originate from both the business process management domain and the smart home environment domain. As demonstrated, the developed activity filtering methods enable the discovery of process models that are more behaviorally specific compared to process models that are discovered using standard frequency-based filtering.

What do we know about business process management training? Current status of related research and a way forward

PurposeThere is wide acknowledgment that training people from all levels of an organization in process management activities and “process thinking” is a major contributor to the success or failure, and sustainability of business process management (BPM). BPM training is provided in almost all BPM initiatives and involves the investment of valuable financial, human, information and other resources. However, little research has focused on this area. As a result, there is a lack of guidance for organizations in conducting value adding BPM training. The purpose of this paper is to consolidate the current published knowledge on BPM training in the form of a descriptive literature review to paint a picture of the existing work, identify gaps and propose a program of work for the future.Design/methodology/approachA structured descriptive literature review was conducted to understand the current status of literature on training in the domain of BPM. Of an initial search of 90 publications, 64 publications, published between 1994 and 2015, were filtered and reviewed based on their relevance to answer the research question: What has BPM literature mentioned of training people for BPM? This study proposes a research agenda based on this. A grounded theory coding approach was employed, where NVivo 10 was used as a tool to support the analysis.FindingsA total of 234 codes (representing emerging themes) were inductively identified from the data. These codes were further analyzed, resulting in eight core themes pertaining to training in the BPM context.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper presents a vivid descriptive overview of the current status of research in BPM training identifying gaps in the literature and presents a research agenda which supports a call for action.Originality/valueThe paper is the first known of its kind to compile the status of literature focused on BPM training and recommend a research agenda based on such.

Variability Management in Business-IT Alignment: MDA based Approach

The expansion of PAIS (Process Aware Information Systems) has created the need for reuse in business processes. In fact, companies are left with directories containing several variants of the same business processes, which differ according to their application context. Consequently, the development of PAIS has become increasingly expensive. Therefore, research in business process management domain introduced the concept of configurable process, with the aim of managing the variability of business process. However, with the emergence of the services-based development paradigm, the alignment of services with business processes is highly required in PAIS. Thus, in this paper an MDA based method which allows for generating configurable services from configurable process is proposed.

Consolidating findings from business process change case studies using system dynamics: The example of employee morale

In this paper, we explore system dynamics as a useful approach to consolidate findings from case studies on business process change (BPC) projects. We compile data from 65 BPC case studies to develop a system dynamics simulation model that helps us to investigate ‘employee morale’ as an important construct in BPC projects. We show that such simulation models consolidate the complex and often non-linear findings from BPC case studies in a way that makes it available to discourse among researchers, lecturers and students as well as BPC professionals. Thus, this paper contributes to knowledge management and learning by suggesting system dynamics as a valuable approach to illustrate and convey the complex relationships between important constructs in BPC. This paper also contributes to the domain of business process management by demonstrating the benefits of system dynamics as a way to review and consolidate the abundance of BPC case studies.

A survey on reuse in the business process management domain

Business process management (BPM) is an important technological support to improve organisation competitiveness. BPM can benefit from reuse approaches and techniques at several stages of the business process life cycle in order to increase dynamism, flexibility and competitiveness. Existing reuse techniques from areas such as software engineering can be extended to this emerging domain. This paper presents the results of a literature review of reuse in the BPM domain. It aims to provide an overview and an overall discussion of most relevant research projects that have been developed applying reuse in BPM.

Handbook of Business Process Management – Introduction, Methods and Information Systems

Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most widely used approaches for the design of modern organizational and information systems. The conscious treatment of business processes as significant corporate assets has facilitated substantial improvements in organizational performance but is also used to ensure the conformance of corporate activities. This Handbook presents in two volumes the contemporary body of knowledge as articulated by the world' s leading BPM thought leaders. This first volume focuses on arriving at a sound definition of BPM approaches and examines BPM methods and process-aware information systems. As such, it provides guidance for the integration of BPM into corporate methodologies and information systems. Each chapter has been contributed by leading international experts. Selected case studies complement their views and lead to a summary of BPM expertise that is unique in its coverage of the most critical success factors of BPM. The second edition of this handbook has been significantly revised and extended. Each chapter has been updated to reflect the most current developments. This includes in particular new technologies such as in-memory data and process management, social media and networks. A further focus of this revised and extended edition is on the actual deployment of the proposed theoretical concepts. This volume includes a number of entire new chapters from some of the world's leading experts in the domain of BPM.

Patterns-based evaluation of open source BPM systems: The cases of jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark

In keeping with the proliferation of free software development initiatives and the increased interest in the business process management domain, many open source workflow and business process management systems have appeared during the last few years and are now under active development. This upsurge gives rise to two important questions: What are the capabilities of these systems? and How do they compare to each other and to their closed source counterparts? In other words: What is the state-of-the-art in the area?. To gain an insight into these questions, we have conducted an in-depth analysis of three of the major open source workflow management systems – jBPM, OpenWFE, and Enhydra Shark, the results of which are reported here. This analysis is based on the workflow patterns framework and provides a continuation of the series of evaluations performed using the same framework on closed source systems, business process modelling languages, and web-service composition standards. The results from evaluations of the three open source systems are compared with each other and also with the results from evaluations of three representative closed source systems: Staffware, WebSphere MQ, and Oracle BPEL PM. The overall conclusion is that open source systems are targeted more toward developers rather than business analysts. They generally provide less support for the patterns than closed source systems, particularly with respect to the resource perspective, i.e. the various ways in which work is distributed amongst business users and managed through to completion.

Negotiation decision functions for autonomous agents

We present a formal model of negotiation between autonomous agents. The purpose of the negotiation is to reach an agreement about the provision of a service by one agent for another. The model defines a range of strategies and tactics that agents can employ to generate initial offers, evaluate proposals and offer counter proposals. The model is based on computationally tractable assumptions, demonstrated in the domain of business process management and empirically evaluated.