Michael Prilla

Key challenges for enabling agile BPM with social software

Business Process Management is called agile when it is able to react quickly and adequately to internal and external events. Agile Business Process Management requires putting the life cycle of business processes on a new paradigm. It is advocated in this paper that social software allows us to satisfy the key requirements for enabling agile BPM by applying the four features of social software: weak ties, social production, egalitarianism and mutual service provision. Organizational and semantic integration and responsiveness (of the business processes engineering, execution and management activities) have been identified as the main requirements for implementing an agile BPM life cycle. Social software may be used in the BPM life cycle in several manners and using numerous approaches. This paper presents seven among them and then analyzes the ‘support’ effects between those approaches and the underlying social software features, and the three requirements for Agile BPM. Copyright

Collaborative reflection at work: supporting informal learning at a healthcare workplace

Reflection is a common means to improve work: Every day, people think back to past work and - oftentimes in a group - try to find out whether they can improve it or whether they can derive better practices from it. However, especially collaborative reflection is neglected in research and design and consequently, there are hardly any insights on how it takes place in the practice of daily work and how tools can support it. To shed light on these questions, this paper presents a case that has been analyzed in a hospital as part of a series of studies on collaborative reflection in practice. Focusing this case and backing it with the other studies, the paper presents peculiarities and needs of collaborative reflection in healthcare workplaces as well as a more general formalization of collaborative reflection characteristics. Based on these results, an application to support physicians in their reflection was prototyped and tested. The presented results primarily apply to healthcare workplaces, but also cover general findings for the support of collaborative reflection.

Fostering Collaborative Redesign of Work Practice: Challenges for Tools Supporting Reflection at Work

Reflection is a well-known mechanism to learn from experience. Often, it has been investigated from an educational viewpoint or as a formalised procedure such as in project debriefing. Based on an analysis of three case studies, we show that collaborative reflection is much more embedded in daily work and that it supports collaborative, bottom-up redesign of work. We found that processes of work redesign alternate between individual and collaborative reflection and identified reasons for collaborative reflection as well as criteria for selecting reflection partners. We also identified perspective exchange, attribution and (re-)appraisal of past situations to be decisive for collaborative reflection and how it supports finding adequate levels of work redesign and partners needed to implement change. From this, we describe five themes for the design of support for collaborative reflection as a means for work redesign.

Computing technologies for reflective, creative care of people with dementia

Mobile apps manage data on individual residents to help carers deliver more person-centered care.

Understanding and Supporting Reflective Learning Processes in the Workplace: The CSRL Model

Reflective learning is a mechanism to turn experience into learning. As a mechanism for self-directed learning, it has been found to be critical for success at work. This is true for individual employees, teams and whole organizations. However, most work on reflection can be found in educational contexts, and there is only little work regarding the connection of reflection on individual, group and organization levels. In this paper, we propose a model that can describe cases of reflective learning at work CSRL. The model represents reflective learning processes as intertwined learning cycles. In contrast to other models of reflective learning, the CSRL model can describe both individual and collaborative learning and learning that impacts larger parts of an organization. It provides terminology to describe and discuss motivations for reflective learning, including triggers, objectives for and objects of reflective learning. The paper illustrates how the model helps to analyse and differentiate cases of reflective learning at work and to design tool support for such settings.

Awareness Support for Combining Individual and Collaborative Process Design in Co-located Meetings

The collaborative design of complex systems is a challenging task. It requires phases of linear as well as creativity oriented work. Also phases of collaborative work have to alternate with work in solitude, requiring a smooth transition between them. This in turn results in awareness becoming a crucial factor. Within the context of designing socio-technical processes through modeling we have developed tools and methods to integrate individual and collaborative creativity into modeling with special respect to awareness thus allowing for a smooth transition between phases of working in solitude and phases of collaboration. We have conducted multiple experiments on the subject following an action research approach which allowed for reflecting on the influence of awareness on collaborative process design in co-located meetings while also improving the socio-technical setting they were applied in. Derived from our findings we show requirements for further development of the socio-technical setting and show future directions such as the integration of the described setting into other areas of design.

Computer Support for Reflective Learning in the Workplace: A Model

In this paper we propose a model of Computer Supported Reflective Learning (CSRL) that links the reflection process to supportive ICT. The CSRL model has the potential to support analysis and design of CSRL solutions. It fills a gap that currently exists between theoretical work on reflection and research investigating technologies for reflection support. The model is based on theory, specifically concerning the reflection process, and on empirical work on reflective learning in work life carried out in five different test bed organizations.

Integrating Ordinary Users into Process Management: Towards Implementing Bottom-Up, People-Centric BPM

Despite its increasing success in organizations, traditional BPM embodies a top-down approach performed by a small group of experts, limiting process stakeholders to part-time information providers, hindering proactive contributions. In this paper, we argue that BPM can benefit from being complemented with a bottom-up and people-centric strategy, allowing for interventions by process stakeholders. However, this cannot be realized by turning ordinary users into BPM or modeling experts. Instead, there is a need to find appropriate means to engage these people into BPM, process development and modeling. In this paper, we present two explorative empirical studies exploring such means. As a result of analyzing these studies, we present five proposals towards the implementation of stakeholder involvement. Our work does not want to replace existing BPM procedures, but to complement them. Thus, it is a starting point for further research and as an opportunity to join forces with other researchers pursuing similar goals.

Fostering self-direction in participatory process design

In this paper, we describe an approach in integrating means of self-direction into workshop-centered methods of PD. The approach aims at diminishing idle times of participants, improving their motivation to contribute and thus at improving the quality of outcomes. Although the work presented here is ongoing research, preliminary results show its benefit and potential contribution to PD.

Models, Social Tagging and Knowledge Management - A fruitful Combination for Process Improvement

Process Models are the tools of choice for capturing business processes and communicating them among staff. In this paper, an approach focusing support in creation and usage as well as the dissemination of process models in organization is described, intending to improve business processes. To accomplish this, the approach makes use of social tagging as an approach to integrate process models into knowledge management (KM). In the paper, the empirical foundation of the approach is described and a corresponding prototype implementing a tagging mechanism for process models is discussed.