Critical Success Factors of Business Process Modeling

(2007) Critical success factors of business process modelling. Introduction Process modeling is an approach for codifying, visually depicting, analyzing and improving how businesses conduct their operations by defining the entities, activities, enablers and relationships along control flows (Curtis et al. 1992; Gill 1999). It is widely used to increase awareness and knowledge of business processes, and to deconstruct Organizations are increasingly reliant on process modeling, the consequences of which are often substantial and can result in the implementation of new processes, organizational structures, and subsequently IT systems. Concomitantly, the successful execution of process modeling initiatives is of increasing importance, yet there is a dearth of research reported on the post-hoc evaluation of process modeling project outcomes (e.g. Bandara et al, 2006), and even less on the critical success factors of process modeling projects. This study aims to address this knowledge gap, by seeking answers to the research question-What are the antecedent factors of process Modeling success? This research question can be further analysed by the following sub-questions: • How can these antecedent factors be operationalised? • What is the relative importance of these antecedent factors for Process Modeling success? • Are there any contextual variables that influence the effects of these antecedent factors? • How may contextual variables influence the effects of these antecedent factors on success? The study unit-of-analysis is the 'process modeling project', encompassing both the models (the output) and the process of deriving the models. It is believed that this is the first published study to empirically and quantitatively measure and validate the antecedent factors of process modeling success. The remainder of the paper will first present a brief literature review followed by the overall research design. Subsequently, study findings are reported. The paper concludes by summarizing study contributions, limitations and recommended follow-up. Background Past studies have described and justified the use of process modeling at various stages of business and systems engineering (Kesari et al., 2003). Process modeling is used for (1) model-based identification process deficiencies, (2) adapting global practices in specific domains (e.g. SCOR, ITIL), (3) the design of a new business blueprint (as a form of documentation and communication), (4) specification of the process-view of an Information System, and (5) end-user training success factor studies, especially those reporting on large-scale multimillion dollar implementations such as Enterprise Systems projects, explicitly and implicitly suggest the importance of process modeling and its contribution to the success of …