Considering Context in Business Process Management: The BPM Context Framework

In this note, we want to make the point that BPM needs to consider the context of a BPM initiative much more than is currently being done. The management of processes in organizations has moved from managing production processes to managing administrative processes, and today there is a need (and a chance) to move beyond incremental improvement of processes towards their complete innovation, particularly through digital technology. The methods used for process management, however, have not followed these developments, and they are essentially the same ones that were developed twenty years ago to streamline operational processes. We find that this causes two important problems: (1) the failure of BPM projects, as methods are used that do not fit the relevant context, and (2) the organizational renunciation of BPM in order to avoid such failure. However, we also find that BPM could successfully meet a variety of contemporary challenges. But in order to leverage this potential, BPM needs to be more sensitive towards the relevant context of its application. For this purpose, we recently developed a contextual framework to help identify and discuss relevant contextual factors and to develop skills and methods that are context-sensitive. It is referred to as the BPM Context Framework. We will introduce the BPM Context Framework in this note and show how it can be applied in BPM practice. The context factors of the BPM Context Framework can be enhanced through additional factors, and we invite everybody to engage in this discussion to help BPM become more context-sensitive and to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of BPM practices. Introduction While many methods of BPM have been developed, their application as general BPM methods creates difficulties because BPM methods are typically designed for a specific purpose only. Usually, BPM strives towards ensuring compliance, process standardization, and automation. The processes that are improved are mainly structured or semi-structured processes that are supported through information systems. However, today, the application fields of BPM have been broadened to also include unstructured, knowledge-intensive processes (Davenport, 2015; Isik, Mertens, van den Bergh, 2013; Eppler, Seifried, & Röpnack, 2008) with the aim to not only standardize and automate processes but also to innovate them (vom Brocke & Schmiedel, 2015). December 01, 2015 BPTrends – Nov. 2013 Enterprise Content in BPM Copyright © 2013 Jan vom Brocke. All Rights Reserved. www.bptrends.com | 2 The extension of BPM to further business contexts leads to a variety of new requirements regarding BPM methods and practices, which the current BPM body of knowledge does not sufficiently cover. Today, there is still a high failure rate of BPM projects, which stimulates research on the success factors of BPM (Trkman, 2010; Ravesteyn & Batenburg, 2010). One of the principles that we recently identified as critical for successful BPM is the principle of context awareness (vom Brocke et al., 2014). It emphasizes that successful BPM requires considering the given organizational setting of a BPM project. To do so, practitioners must be able to identify relevant contextual factors in order to understand the context in which a BPM initiative takes place. Unfortunately, there is no common understanding of the contextual factors of BPM, which makes it difficult for practitioners to identify and consider relevant contextual factors in their BPM initiatives. Therefore, we recently started working on developing such a framework that can help practitioners to understand the context of their BPM case and to deploy a relevant BPM solution for the given situation (vom Brocke, Zelt, & Schmiedel, 2015). In this note, we would like to share our view of BPM context, which consists of factors that differ both between organizations (such as size, industry, and market) and within organizations (such as process type). Because context awareness enables BPM initiatives to be adapted to the situation and to truly create value, the effectiveness and efficiency of BPM initiatives in organizations can be increased by developing a contextual perspective in BPM. Towards a Framework of Context Factors in BPM: Introducting the BPM Context Framework The context factors of BPM, which we introduce next, have been derived based on a literature review and based on our experience in the field of BPM (see original paper by vom Brocke, et al., 2015). The framework that includes these factors is displayed in table 1. BPTrends – Nov. 2013 Enterprise Content in BPM Copyright © 2013 Jan vom Brocke. All Rights Reserved. www.bptrends.com | 3 Table 1: The BPM Context Framework: A Morphological Box to Identify the Context of a BPM Project Contextual factors Example characteristics