Jan recker bpm talk

The Theoretical Core and Protective Belt of BPM:Reflections on BPM Research and some Ideas for the Next Wave

Jan Recker

Information Systems School, Queensland University of Technology

Background to this Talk

▪ Over recent years, I spent some time researching and reflecting on what the “BPM discipline” is, what research it conducts and what outcomes it produces.

▪ Two main essays:– Recker, J. "Suggestions for the Next Wave of BPM Research:

Strengthening the Theoretical Core and Exploring the Protective Belt," Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (15:2) 2014, pp 5‐20.

– Recker, J., Mendling J. “The State‐of‐the‐Art of Business Process Management Research as Published in the BPM conference: Recommendations for Progressing the Field,” journal article currently under review

▪ “Empirical Evidence” for this talk:– Analysis of all BPM conference papers published– Large‐scale literature reviews on BPM research in general– Insights into submissions and reviews from BPM2015 in

particular

My Three Main Theses Today

1. The BPM research fields needs to review and challenge its core assumptions, strengthen them and move to explore a more diverse protective belt.

2. Research on BPM needs to become more mature, and the fields needs to be proactive not reactive.

3. The community that labels itself “the BPM discipline” needs to become more open and inclusive to avoid starvation.

What is BPM research?

▪ […] methods, techniques, and software to design, enact, control, and analyse operational processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.

▪ Research on processes in businesses, and their management.

Any process

Any business

Any form of management

van der Aalst, ter Hofstede and Weske (2003): “Business Process Management: A Survey,” in: BPM2003, p.4

BPM research has attained paradigm status

Bharadwaj, Anandhi S.: INTEGRATING POSITIVIST AND INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES TO INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH: A LAKATOSIAN MODEL , Foundations of Information Systems: Toward a Philosophy of Information, Volume 12, No. 9 (2000)

What is our hard core and protective belt?

Type of assumption Description of assumption Example of BPM research addressing the

assumption

Hard core assumptions

All work is process work. How can we describe organizations using process models (e.g., Mendling, Reijers, & Cardoso, 2007)?

Any process is better than no process.

How can processes be (re-) designed (e.g., Hammer, 1990; Davenport, 1993)?

Even a good process must be performed effectively.

How can systems be designed to execute processes automatically (e.g., Dadam & Reichert, 2009)?

Protective-belt assumptions

A good process is better than a bad process.

Which heuristics for redesign make a process better (e.g., Reijers & Mansar, 2005)?

One process version is better than many.

How can we support and execute process standardization (e.g., Schäfermeyer, Rosenkranz, & Holten, 2012)?

Even a good process can be made better.

How can we mine process data to learn about and from running process instances (e.g., Conforti et al., 2013)?

Every good process eventually becomes a bad process.

How do BPM capabilities evolve over time (e.g., Niehaves et al., 2014)?

Recker (2014): “Suggestions for the Next Wave of BPM Research,” JITTA (15:2), p. 10.

BPM as an established field (aka a paradigm)

▪ That’s good.– Core ideas, core methodologies and core questions are well‐known and accepted.

BPM as an established field (aka a paradigm)

▪ That’s bad.– Paradigms are stable: phenomena, concepts and procedures remain largely unchanged.

– Paradigms are predetermined: puzzle‐solving, pre‐conceived outcomes in favour of the paradigm.

– Paradigms are divided: usually two camps: strong proponents that don’t consider fringe issues, and strong opponents that mainly debate or criticize.

▪ I believe these problems manifest in the BPM discipline (defined by those that are in it).

Paradigm signs: Stable research questions

van der Aalst (2012): “A Decade of BPM Conferences”, BPM 2012, p. 9

Paradigm signs: Stable research procedures

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2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Formal Proof

Field Experiment

Lab Experiment

Survey

Case Study

Interviews

Action Research

Design Science/Engineering

Simulation

Illustration

Other

Recker and Mendling (under review): “The State of the Art in BPM Research,” unpublished article in development.

Zone of No Identity

Paradigm signs: Stable research output

Recker and Mendling (under review): “The State of the Art in BPM Research,” unpublished article in development.

Paradigms signs: Division of camps?

▪ The “BPM discipline” has many proponents but only few critics.

▪ Much of the research is self‐reassuring: We pick problems suited to a particular class of solutions that we like and then demonstrate that indeed the solution works.

▪ There is virtually no research on where BPM fails.

How do we move forward?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkUO8NpI84

Known Knowns & Unknown Unknowns

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Donald Rumsfeld, U. S. Secretary of Defense, Statement to the Press on February 12, 2002.

Known Knowns & Unknown Unknowns

Moving from reactive to proactive research

Moving from reactive to proactive research

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Selected Known & Unknowns


• How can we create process models that are understandable?

• How can we generate software code from (some) process models?




• How do we improve processes?

• What is process innovation?

• What is the return on investment for modeling?







• When does BPM lead to business value?

• When does BPM fail?• Which processes should

not be modeled or managed?




Research of the PastTIME OF RESEARCH

Research of the Future




• When does BPM lead to business value?

• When does BPM fail?• Which processes should

not be modeled or managed?

• What is Big Process Data?

• Will BPM disappear for a new management wave?

To Conclude…

▪ … maybe we need to revisit and relax some of our assumptions, such as– Processes have to be in/about business.– Process models have to be diagrams.– Processes should be formalized.– Processes need improvement.

▪ We need to do more research on how and why, not on what and that.

▪ We should become more proactive and explore new ideas, instead of adopting and applying ideas from other fields.

▪ We need to make sure that our research is always to the best standard (formal: okay; empirical: not so much)

▪ In a broader sense, we need to acknowledge the wealth of research on processes and their management that has already been done, even if under other labels.

Prof. Jan Recker, PhD

Information Systems SchoolScience and Engineering FacultyQueensland University of Technology

email [email protected] www.janrecker.comtwitter janrecker