2. Literature Review
2.3. BPM Life Cycle
In the early 21st century, researchers and practitioners started to put TQM, BPR, and IT together under the name of BPM (Hammer, 2010; Kirkor, 2010; S.
M.Lee &Asllani, 1997; Roeser &Kern, 2015). BPM, therefore, includes two sets of tools that have a common goal but vary in essence. Which tool to use depends on the patterns of the performance deficiency. “Pervasive performance shortcomings generally indicate a design flaw; occasional ones are usually the result of execution difficulties” (Hammer, 2010).
2.2.3. Status of BPM
BPM gained more and more attention both in the academic field and in practice (Skrinjar &Trkman, 2013). The number of published research studies increased every year, and most were published in the Business Process Management Journal, followed by Conference Proceedings (Roeser &Kern, 2015). The most famous and premier conference for BPM researchers is The BPM Conference. According to Dumas (2015), recent BPM research trends focus on interdisciplinary aspects of BPM and validation of the BPM Lifecycle from industry track. Moreover, previous BPM research was mostly conducted in Europe, America, and countries in Asia like China, Japan, Korea and India. Therefore, there is a call for further research in other countries to contribute to the common knowledge of BPM (Roeser &Kern, 2015).
2.3. BPM Life Cycle
BPM is dedicated to the continuous improvement of business process. For this, researchers developed many BPM life cycles to manage this closed-loop initiative. As mentioned before, BPM meant different things to different people.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
12
These various definitions led to inconsistent research on the BPM life cycle. Hence, a group of researchers conducted an analysis of the BPM life cycle in 2014, trying to find out the alignment among the many different models (Macedo de Morais, Kazan, Inês Dallavalle de Pádua, &Lucirton Costa, 2014).
The research compared seven BPM life cycles to the one proposed in 2009 by the Association of Business Process Management Professional (ABPMP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the BPM common body of knowledge. The research findings show that most of the life cycles emphasize the business process automation. Moreover, all of the studied BPM life cycles, though different from each other, are not fundamentally so, and can be projected in the ABPMP model.
The difference and similarities of the BPM life cycles in the research are summarized in Table 3. The ABPMP BPM life cycle is used as a reference model, and the other models are projected in it. The reader should interpret the table by observing the first row as steps of the ABPMP BPM life cycle. Each step in the first row has a corresponding step in another model. There is no association with the ABPMP BPM life cycle if the cell is blank. Also, a step is associated with two or more steps of another model. For example, the ABPMP BPM life cycle sees monitoring and control as one step, while Zur Muehlen and Ho (2006) separate it into two phases.
‧
Alignment of BPM life cycles with the ABPMP model
Authors Steps
ABPMP (2009) Planning and strategy Analysis Design and modeling Implementation Monitoring and control Refining Hallerbach et al.
(2008)
Modeling Frequency and
Selection
Execution and Monitoring Optimization
Netjes et al. (2006) Design Configuration Execution Control Diagnosis
Houy et al. (2010) Development of strategy Definition and modeling
Implementation Execution Monitoring and control Optimization and
improvement Zur Muehlen and
Ho (2006)
Specification of
objectives and analysis of environment
Design Implementation Monitoring Evaluation
Van der Aalst (2004a)
Design Configuration Execution Diagnosis
Verma (2009) Define objectives Identify process Classify process Choose process Define tool and implement process
Monitor process Weske (2007) Administration and
stakeholders
Design and analysis
Configuration Operation Performance evaluation
Note. From An analysis of BPM lifecycles: from a literature review to a framework proposal, by Macedo de Morais et al., 2014, Business Process Management Journal, 20(3), p.425. Copyright 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
14
The above academic findings supported the viewpoint of ABPMP (2013) that “regardless of the number of phrases in a BPM life cycle and regardless of the labels used to describe them, the vast majority can be mapped to the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) Cycle made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in 1950s”
(ABPMP, 2013, p. 53). ABPMP (2013) claimed that different labels caused confusion among practitioners and researchers, and led to inconsistent research findings. The Deming Cycle is simple, renowned and less biased. Therefore, the PDCA cycle should be used to explain and to deploy BPM program (ABPMP, 2013, p. 53). Many researchers and practitioners support using the PDCA cycle instead of developing a new life cycle (Lee & Dale 1998; Makhlouf &Allal-Cherif, 2015; Munehira, 2014; Wangen &Snekkenes, 2014).
The ABPMP’s PDCA depicts all actions an organization should perform to implement a BPM project. It includes understanding the current (AS-IS) business context, designing the future (TO-BE) business process, implementing the TO-BE business process, monitoring process performance, and responding to performance results. The PDCA cycle of ABPMP is organized in Table 4.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
15
Table 4
The PDCA Cycle of ABPMP
The Plan Stage — define business context and design business process
Disclose following information to define business context:
The customer of the process
The process output and a clear understanding of why the process output is considered valuable to the customer
How the process and process output align to the organization strategy
The process input(s), the event(s) that can trigger the process execution
The existence of controls, such as external regulation or internal policies and rules, which constrain process design and execution
Baseline performance target (if it is an existing process)
Future-state performance target
Articulate the following information to design business process:
The activities that make up the business process
The various deliverables and artifacts that are produced during process execution and the various states through which they progress
Organizations, functions, and roles that take part in process execution
Information systems used to support process execution
The different locations in which activities are performed and in which deliverables and artifacts related to the process are stored
Specific events that drive process execution
(continued)
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
16
Business rules that constrain process execution
Process performance metrics and measurement points The Do Stage — commit process designed to operations
Creation of new roles and role responsibilities or the modification of the existing one
Development or restructuring of functional organizations
Build of enhancement of information systems, including functional applications and business process and workflow automation
Development and deployment of operational support tools such as Standard Operating Procedures, Job Aids, and System User Guides
Introduction of new customer channels and touch points
Creation and implementation of process performance monitoring mechanisms, performance dashboards, and escalation mechanisms The Check Stage — measure process performance against expectation
Example of common measures:
Timeliness: e.g., cycle time
Product Quality: e.g., defects per million
Service Quality: e.g., responsiveness
Cost: e.g., cost of rework
Customer Satisfaction
The Act Stage — make determinations and react accordingly to process performance measures
Maintain the process to meet new performance target
Push new strategic, functional and operational directives into Plan stage to continue the closed-loop system
Note. From BPM CBOK (p.53-59), by ABPMP, 2013, Copyright 2013 by the Association of Business Process Management Professionals
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
17
Nonetheless, current studies of the BPM life cycle focus on providing a comprehensive view but fail to deal with the high risk during implementation (Khosravi, 2016). As mentioned before, 70% of BPR projects failed to reach predetermined goals (Champy, 1995). Khosravi (2016) believed that the high failure rate could be attributed to lack of commitment from senior management, a lack of clear objectives, and employee resistance. The root problem may lie in the design of methods. Therefore, he proposed a new model in trying to mitigate the gap. The model is called Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming Model (BPR2), as shown in Figure 4. The distinction of BPR2 is that it embraces the power of name as a technique to eliminate employee resistance in its cycle steps.
However, the model only focused on the implementation of BPR but ignored the other half of BPM—the incremental methods descended from TQM. Thus, it should be viewed as a complementary model to support current BPM life cycles, not a substitute.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
18
Moreover, a group of researchers incorporated the ABPMP model proposed in 2009 with external factors outside the organization and proposed a framework to manage the external environment when implementing BPM (Bernardo, Galina, &Pádua, 2017). The model is shown in Figure 4. The distinction of the framework is its focus on considering external resources before implementing BPM projects.
Figure 4. Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming Model.
Source: Khosravi (2016)
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
19
While there are several distinctive BPM life cycles proposed recently, their models either focused on BPR and ignored the other half of BPM (Khosravi, 2016) or were built on a previous framework (Macedo de Morais et al., 2014) that has already been projected into PDCA Cycle by ABPMP (ABPMP, 2013). Therefore, in this study, the ABPMP’s PDCA Cycle is selected as the reference model due to its comprehensiveness and simplicity.