Process Modeling Kills Agility - Resolving Misunderstandings and Make BPM Agile

Ulm University

MA Abschlussvortrag, Misam Huynh, Ort: Online, Datum: 21.09.2021, Zeit: 11:45 Uhr

Due to globalisation, companies have to adapt to constant change and quickly adjust to their environment in order to meet customers’ requirements. In addition, competition is forcing companies to adapt their products and processes more quickly. Business Process Management (BPM) has established itself as a top discipline that helps companies improve their performance. However, in recent studies, researchers have expressed their dissatisfaction with BPM. Managing processes in a classical way seems to be quite rigid, and researchers suggest countering the inflexibility of BPM with a more agile approach that also focuses on the value of innovation. Agility is one of the key success factors in modern industries. It supports organisations cope with a changing environment, leading to rapid adaptation. Agile companies are more flexible and sustainable. For this reason, many agile BPM frameworks and methodologies have been proposed, but few of them have been tested in practice, in particular, there is no framework that combines BPM, agility and innovation in a single framework. A preliminary framework presented in this thesis has its focus on agility and BPM, based on a previously conducted literature review, and considers how innovation influences the framework. Afterwards, it is reviewed by experts in the field of BPM and agility. As a result, 13 experts challenge this framework and comment on its practicality. Based on the interviews, the preliminary framework is revised and transformed into the final agile BPM framework. In summary, BPM and agility have more in common than it seems. One important aspect is that BPM has often not been executed agile enough, as it could have been. Therefore, our framework highlights the agile characteristics of BPM, but also brings new agile practices into BPM and shows an interdependency with innovation.