Constantin Houy

Empirical research in business process management – analysis of an emerging field of research

Purpose – The paper aims at providing a survey of the development of empirical research in business process management (BPM). It seeks to study trends in empirical BPM research and applied methodologies by means of a developed framework in order to identify the status quo and to assess the probable future development of the research field.Design/methodology/approach – In order to analyse the development of the research field a systematic literature review of empirical journal articles in the BPM context is conducted. The retrieved literature is analyzed by means of scientometric methods and a developed reference framework.Findings – The steadily growing number of published articles in empirical BPM research shows an increase in interest in the research field. Research interests, applied methodologies, the underlying research paradigm and the level of maturity of empirical BPM research differ depending on regional aspects. BPM gains importance in the industry as well as in the public administration context...

Understanding understandability of conceptual models --- what are we actually talking about?

Investigating and improving the quality of conceptual models has gained tremendous importance in the past years. In general, model understandability is regarded one of the most important model quality goals and criteria. A considerable amount of empirical studies, especially experiments, have been conducted in order to investigate factors influencing the understandability of conceptual models. However, a thorough review and reconstruction of 42 experiments on conceptual model understandability conducted in this research shows that there is a variety of different understandings and conceptualizations of the term model understandability. As a consequence, this term remains ambiguous, research results on model understandability are hardly comparable and partly imprecise, which shows the necessity of clarification what the conceptual modeling community is actually talking about when the term model understandability is used. In order to overcome this shortcoming, our research classifies the different observed dimensions of model understandability in a reference framework. Moreover, implications of the findings are presented and discussed and some guidelines for future model understandability research are given.

Business Process Management in the Large

In recent years Business Process Management (BPM) has attracted considerable attention, both in academia and practice. A growing research community is designing and investigating BPM approaches and techniques which are meanwhile widely used in private and public organizations. The quantity and quality of literature concerning BPM, the existence of specialized conferences (e.g., the International BPM Conference) as well as dedicated journals (e.g., the Business Process Management Journal) illustrate that BPM has become an established discipline. Despite the growing maturity of the BPM discipline, many approaches have problems dealing with the challenges posed by real-life BPM applications. Corporate reality is often more challenging than assumed by contemporary BPM approaches. This situation is similar to the situation of modeling enterprise data (Scheer and Hars 1992). Common enterprise-wide data models tend to be complex, difficult to maintain, and mostly lack in supporting flexible and decentralized organizational structures. In order to be able to maintain the different subareas of an enterprise-wide data model and to reduce the maintenance complexity, adequate abstraction concepts are needed. The same applies to BPM which also requires adequate abstraction concepts to handle real-life complexity. Large organizations have hundreds of different processes in place. Well-established reference process models, such as Scheer’s Reference Model for Industrial Enterprises (Scheer 1994) as well as the SAP reference model, are often disconnected from reality; real-life companies’ actual business processes are often poorly documented and relationships between different process types are not clearly denoted (Mendling et al. 2008). While conventional BPM research often seems to concentrate on single processes or scenarios comprising a few isolated processes, the upcoming challenge for BPM is to cope with large sets of interdependent interorganizational processes in our globalized and interconnected world. This situation mainly originates from the possibilities created by technical innovations enabling ubiquitous computing, such as smart mobile devices, sensor technologies, or RFID. However, these possibilities also result in increasing complexity and dynamicity of business processes. Since existing BPM techniques and tools cannot handle this well, current research activities focus on new approaches for Business Process Management in the Large (BPM-in-the-Large).

BPM-in-the-Large – Towards a Higher Level of Abstraction in Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained tremendous importance in recent years and BPM technologies and techniques are widely applied in practice. Furthermore there is a growing and very active research community looking at process modeling and analysis, reference models, workflow flexibility, process mining and process-centric Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). However, it is clear that existing approaches have problems dealing with the enormous challenges real-life BPM projects are facing. Large organizations have hundreds of processes in place. These processes are often poorly documented and the relationships between them are not made explicit. Conventional BPM research seems to focus on situations with just a few isolated processes while in reality the real challenge is to cope with large collections of interconnected processes. Moreover, new technologies such as ubiquitous computing (sensor technologies, mobile devices, RFID tagging etc.) and pervasive networks (cf. “internet of things”) generate enor mous volumes of event data. Organizations have problems handling and using such data. Event data is scattered over various subsystems and not used well. This paper coins the term “BPM-in-the-Large” to describe the above situation and describes challenges and opportunities for BPM research.

Towards Green BPM – Sustainability and Resource Efficiency through Business Process Management

The sustainability of organizations’ business activities is gaining increasing importance. Taking the debate on global warming seriously into account, organizations put more effort in improving their sustainability. One central aspect in the debate on global warming is the energy efficiency of information technology (IT) infrastructures. As the energy consumption based on IT has dramatically increased with the development of the Internet in recent years, IT is considered as a part of the problem. IT can however be part of the solution. In order to improve the efficiency and sustainability of information processing, the concept of Green IT offers a set of possible approaches. In our contribution we argue that applying approaches from the field of Business Process Management (BPM) can support Green IT initiatives and thus the sustainability and resource efficiency of IT-supported business activities in general. The application of BPM approaches in the Green IT context requires new methods and techniques which are named Green BPM in this paper. However, the discussion on sustainability through Green BPM is still in its early stages and only rudimentary techniques exist so far. Our contribution aims at illuminating and discussing opportunities and challenges of Green BPM based on conceptual considerations.

Towards the Reconstruction and Evaluation of Conceptual Model Quality Discourses – Methodical Framework and Application in the Context of Model Understandability

Within the information systems (IS) discipline conceptual models have gained tremendous importance in the past years. Different approaches for systematic model quality evaluation have emerged. However, these approaches are based on different understandings, definitions as well as operationalizations of the term “model quality”. In this article we refrain from conceptualizing and operationalizing model quality a priori. In contrast, assuming that the determination of model quality and appropriate criteria are negotiated in a discourse between modelers and model users based on their different perspectives, we develop a methodical framework for the critical reconstruction and evaluation of conceptual model quality discourses in order to identify relevant model quality criteria and understandings. Our method is exemplarily applied for the reconstruction of the discourse on the quality criterion model understandability based on relevant laboratory experiments. This application shows that many research results on model understandability are hardly comparable due to their different basic assumptions and should preferably be interpreted based on a methodical reconstruction of underlying understandings.

Collaborative Business Process Modeling with CoMoMod - A Toolkit for Model Integration in Distributed Cooperation Environments

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained remarkable importance in research and practice in the last years. Innovative information and communication technology (ICT) is a driver for the effectiveness and efficiency of enterprise collaboration and the management of inter-organizational business processes. In this context, cooperating enterprises need a shared understanding of their own processes, those of their partners as well as of emerging inter-organizational process structures. In order to create such a shared understanding, the concept of collaborative modeling can serve as a useful approach. This article introduces a concept for collaborative business process modeling and its implementation in the CoMoMod tool. The tool supports several aspects of collaborative process modeling, such as simultaneous work of spatially distributed modelers on one process model diagram. Furthermore the tool permits synchronously creating a collaborative model with different modeling languages by automatically mapping and converting the different model representations. The proof of concept utilizes Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) and Petri Nets. The usage of an integrated chat messaging service supports communication during the process of collaboratively modeling business process.

Advancing Business Process Technology for Humanity: Opportunities and Challenges of Green BPM for Sustainable Business Activities

The sustainability of organizations’ business activities is currently an intensely discussed issue which is gaining increasing importance. The research field of Green Information Systems (Green IS) is concerned with designing and investigating innovative methods and techniques supporting a better sustainability of business activities based on information systems (IS). According to the IEEE tagline Advancing Technology for Humanity, IS can contribute to a more sustainable business world and thus to a betterment of humanity. In our contribution, we argue that techniques and methods from the field of Business Process Management (BPM) can considerably support the preservation of the environment while performing business activities and thus contribute to a betterment of human living conditions. Organizational as well as technological opportunities and challenges of Green BPM are investigated and demonstrated by means of exemplary application scenarios from different organizational contexts. In order to delineate the technological potential of Green BPM, a semi-automated approach for process sustainability improvement is presented by means of a further application scenario.

Business Process Frameworks

In Business Process Management (BPM) research as well as in practice, a whole host of different Business Process Frameworks supporting various tasks connected with BPM in organizations have been introduced and further developed. However, the term Business Process Framework is ambiguous and has been used for different BPM-related systemization approaches concerning BPM methods and techniques. Against the background that so far no attempt to systemize the different meanings and understandings of the term Business Process Framework is known, this article aims at clarifying this term by analyzing and systemizing its different facets giving an overview of available understandings and usages of the term. The identified facets are investigated and several different classes of Business Process Frameworks are described and explained in more detail. In this context, one predominant class of Business Process Frameworks summarizing business process reference models is presented in more detail.

Towards an Integrative Big Data Analysis Framework for Data-Driven Risk Management in Industry 4.0

With the advent of Industry 4.0, industrial manufacturing systems constantly evolve into smart, interconnected production systems. Pervasive integration of information and communication technology into productional components results in massive amounts of various data. To meet the challenges that arise from an increasingly competitive market and more demanding customer requirements, technological drivers have to be leveraged in order to process data effectively. One important aspect in that regard is the efficient management of business processes and process risks. As an integrative concept in these areas is missing, we present a holistic framework for data-driven risk assessment based on real-time data. Besides a conceptual model, we provide a technical concept that combines methods for risk assessment with performance metrics and demonstrate a software implementation in the context of an exemplary use case scenario. Finally, we present the results of expert interviews and a discussion indicating future research directions.