A Qualitative Research Perspective on BPM Adoption and the Pitfalls of Business Process Modeling

Business Process Management (BPM) is used by organizations as a method to increase awareness and knowledge of business processes. Although many companies adopt BPM, there is still a notable insecurity of how to set it up in the most effective way. A considerate amount of research concerning partial aspects of BPM adoption has been done, such as the pitfalls of business process modeling. However, up until now hardly any empirical research has been conducted that aims at validating them. In this paper we address this research gap by conducting eleven in-depth interviews with BPM experts from various companies. We use the Grounded Theory approach to qualitatively analyze the data. Our contribution is twofold. First, we derive a conceptual framework showing the insights of BPM adoption by organizations. Second, we use the evidence from the interviews to discuss the pitfalls of business process modeling and show the countermeasures that are taken by companies.