Developing and tailoring business process management methods using the situational method engineering approach
-
DOIhttp://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.21(3).2023.45
-
Article InfoVolume 21 2023, Issue #3, pp. 573-588
- 302 Views
-
101 Downloads
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Effective business process management is one of the key tasks of every organization if it wants to compete successfully on the market and satisfy the needs of its customers. Although there are many established best practices, techniques, and more or less complex methods in business process management, no approach can fulfill a typical organization’s needs and wants. The key to success lies in developing new or adapting existing approaches for business process management to suit the unique characteristics of individual organizations and projects. This demands a solid methodological framework and a clearly defined work process. The aim of the paper is to apply situational method engineering concepts within the realm of business process management, thereby tackling the challenge mentioned above. As a result, a situational method engineering framework is defined to construct and customize business process management methods. The study proposes the conceptual foundations of the framework and a set of processes for constructing holistic and tailored methods that cover various aspects of business process management (analysis, modeling, management, etc.). The basis of the framework is represented by general method components at a higher level of abstraction, which are assembled into holistic methods via interfaces and are transformed into versions adapted to specific situations using tailoring rules. The practical applicability of the proposed framework is validated through its implementation in a project at a large manufacturing company, where it is used to develop both a general and customized business process management method.
- Keywords
-
JEL Classification (Paper profile tab)M10, M15
-
References47
-
Tables0
-
Figures11
-
- Figure 1. External view meta-model
- Figure 2. A set of method component elements
- Figure 3. Internal view meta-model of method components
- Figure 4. Meta-model of method component interface
- Figure 5. Meta-model of tailoring method components
- Figure 6. Construction of a general method component
- Figure 7. Construction of a general BPM method
- Figure 8. Construction of tailored BPM method
- Figure 9. A general BPM method as a set of interdependent general method components
- Figure 10. A tailored BPM method as a set of interdependent tailored method components
- Figure 11. A process of the innovation tailored method component
-
- Aerfalk, P. J., & Fitzgerald, B. (2006). Exploring the concept of method rationale: A conceptual tool to understand method tailoring. In K. Siau (Ed.), Advanced Topics in Database Research, 5 (pp. 63-78). IGI Global.
- Badakhshan, P., Conboy, K., Grisold, T., & vom Brocke, J. (2020). Agile business process management: A systematic literature review and an integrated framework. Business Process Management Journal, 26(6), 1505-1523.
- Bekkers, W., van de Weerd, I., Brinkkemper, S., & Mahieu, A. (2008). The influence of situational factors in software product management: An empirical study. Second International Workshop on Software Product Management (pp. 41-48). Barcelona, Spain.
- Benedict, T., Kirchmer, M., Scharsig, M., Franz, P., Saxena, R., Morris, D., & Hilty, J. (2019). BPM CBOK Version 4.0: Guide to the business process management common body of knowledge. ABPMP International.
- Brinkkemper, S. (1996). Method engineering: Engineering of information systems development methods and tools. Information and Software Technology, 38(4), 275-280.
- Brinkkemper, S., Saeki, M., & Harmsen, F. (1999). Meta-modelling based assembly techniques for situational method engineering. Information Systems, 24(3), 209-228.
- Bucher, T., & Winter, R. (2009). Project types of business process management: Towards a scenario structure to enable situational method engineering for business process management. Business Process Management Journal, 15(4), 548-568.
- Cockburn, A. (2002). Agile software development. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
- de Morais, R. M., Kazan, S. D., de Pádua, S. I., & Costa, A.L. (2014). An analysis of BPM lifecycles: From a literature review to a framework proposal. Business Process Management Journal, 20(3), 412-432.
- Dehghani, R., & Ramsin, R. (2023). A knowledge management-driven and DevOps-based method for situational method engineering. Information Technology and Management, 24, 267-291.
- Franch, X., Ralyté, J., Perini, A., Abelló, A., Ameller, D., Gorroñogoitia, J., Nadal, S., Oriol, M., Seyff, N., Siena, A., & Susi, A. (2018). A situational approach for the definition and tailoring of a data-driven software evolution method. In J. Krogstie & H. Reijers (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 603-618). Springer.
- Gonzalez-Lopez, F., Bustos, G., Munoz-Gama, J., & Sepúlveda, M. (2022). Domain model based design of business process architectures. Applied Sciences, 12(5), 2563.
- Harmon, P. (2019). Business process change: A business process management guide for managers and process professionals (4th ed.). Burlington: Morgan Kaufmann.
- Harmon, P. (2016). The state of business process management 2016. BPTrends.
- Henderson-Sellers, B., & Ralyté, J. (2010). Situational method engineering: State-of-the-art review. JUCS – Journal of Universal Computer Science 16(3), 424-478.
- Henderson-Sellers, B., & Gonzalez-Perez, C. (2010). Granularity in conceptual modelling: Application to meta-models. In J. Parsons, M. Saeki, P. Shoval, C. Woo, & Y. Wand (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling – ER 2010. ER 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6412 (pp. 219-232). Springer.
- Henderson-Sellers, B., Ralyté, J., Ågerfalk, P., & Rossi, M. (2014). Situational method engineering. Berlin: Springer.
- Jeston, J., & Nelis, J. (2022). Business process management: Practical guidelines to successful implementations (5th ed.). Burlington: Routledge.
- Karlsson, F., & Ågerfalk, P. J. (2004). Method configuration: Adapting to situational characteristics while creating reusable assets. Information and Software Technology, 46(9), 619-633.
- Karlsson, F., & Ågerfalk, P. J. (2011). Towards structured flexibility in information systems development: Devising a method for method configuration. In K. Siau (Ed.), Theoretical and Practical Advances in Information Systems Development: Emerging Trends and Approaches (pp. 214-238). IGI Global.
- Karlsson, F., & Wistrand, K. (2006). Combining method engineering with activity theory: Theoretical grounding of the method component concept. European Journal of Information Systems, 15(1), 82-90.
- Klun, M., & Trkman, P. (2018). Business process management – At the crossroads. Business Process Management Journal, 24(3), 786-813.
- Krutchen, P. (2001). The rational unified process: An introduction. Boston: Addison-Wesley.
- Lahajnar, S., & Rožanec, A. (2016). The evaluation framework for business process management methodologies. Management, 21(1), 47-69.
- Martins, P. V., & Zacarias, M. (2017). An agile business process improvement methodology. Procedia Computer Science, 121, 129-136.
- McBride, T., & Henderson-Sellers, B. (2011). A method assessment framework. In J. Ralyté, I. Mirbel, & R. Deneckère (Eds.), Engineering Methods in the Service-Oriented Context (pp. 64-76). Springer.
- Meziani, R., & Magalhães, R. (2009). Proposals for an agile business process management methodology. First International Workshop on Organizational Design and Engineering. Lisbon, Portugal.
- Ogbuachi, M. C., Podder, I., Bub, U., & Huseynli, M. (2021). A framework for quantifiable process improvement through method fragments in situational method engineering. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Advanced Information Science and System (AISS ‘21). New York, NY, USA.
- Pyzdek, T., & Keller, P. (2018). The six sigma handbook (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
- Ralyté, J., & Rolland, C. (2001a). An approach for method re-engineering. In H. S. Kunii, S. Jajodia, & A. Sølvberg (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling – ER 2001. ER 2001 (pp. 471-484). Springer.
- Ralyté, J., & Rolland, C. (2001b). An assembly process model for method engineering. In K. R. Dittrich, A. Geppert, & M. C. Norrie (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2001 (pp. 267-283). Springer.
- Ralyté, J., Deneckère, R., & Rolland, C. (2003). Towards a generic model for situational method engineering. In J. Eder & M. Missikoff (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2003 (pp. 95-110). Springer.
- Reijers, H. A. (2021). Business process management: The evolution of a discipline. Computers in Industry, 103404.
- Rummler, G. A., & Brache, A. P. (2012). Improving performance. How to manage the white space on the organization chart (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
- Saeki, M. (1998). A meta-model for method integration. Information and Software Technology, 39(14-15), 925-932.
- Sandkuhl, K., & Seigerroth, U. (2019). Method engineering in information systems analysis and design: A balanced scorecard approach for method improvement. Software & Systems Modelling, 18, 1833-1857.
- Sweet, S. (2014). Which BPM methodology is best for us? BPM Institute.
- Thiemich, C., & Puhlmann, F. (2013). An agile BPM project methodology. In F. Daniel, J. Wang, & B. Weber (Eds.), Business Process Management. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 8094 (pp. 291-306). Springer.
- van Steenbergen, M., van Grondelle, J., & Rieser, L. (2019). A situational approach to data-driven service innovation. In I. Reinhartz-Berger, J. Zdravkovic, J. Gulden, & R. Schmidt (Eds.), Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling (pp. 156-168). Springer.
- Vanwersch, R. J. B., Shahzad, K., Vanderfeesten, I., Vanhaecht, K., Grefen, P., Pintelon, L., Mendling, J., van Merode, G. G., & Reijers, H. A. (2016). A critical evaluation and framework of business process improvement methods. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 58, 43-53.
- vom Brocke, J., Baier, M-S., Schmiedel, T., Stelzl, K., Röglinger, M., & Wehking, C. (2021). Context-aware business process management. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 63, 533-550.
- vom Brocke, J., Zelt, S., & Schmiedel, T. (2016). On the role of context in business process management. International Journal of Information Management, 36(3), 486-495.
- von Rosing, M., von Scheel, J., & Gill, A. Q. (2015). Applying agile principles to BPM. In M. von Rosing, A-W. Scheer, & H. von Scheel (Eds.), The Complete Business Process Handbook: Body of Knowledge from Process Modeling to BPM (pp. 553-577). Morgan Kaufmann.
- Weske, M. (2019). Business process management. Concepts, languages, architectures (3rd ed.). Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
- Wistrand, K., & Karlsson, F. (2004). Method components – Rationale revealed. In A. Persson & J. Stirna (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2004 (pp. 189-201). Springer.
- Zacarias, M., Martins, P. V., & Gonçalves, A. (2017). An agile business process and practice meta-model. Procedia Computer Science, 121, 170-177.
- Zelt, S., Recker, J., Schmiedel, T., & vom Brocke, J. (2019). A theory of contingent business process management. Business Process Management Journal, 25(6), 1291-1316.