Increasing the Value of Process Modelling and Models

This paper presents an effort to increase the value gained from process modelling activities in an organisation, both on a project and an organisational level. The main result of this effort is a framework to facilitate awareness of, communication about, and coordination of modelling initiatives between stakeholders and within and across projects, over time. The current version of the framework as a normative process model, is presented and discussed in the context of case projects and activities, and we conclude that although work remains both on sophistication of the approach and on validation of its general applicability and value, our results so far show that it addresses recognised challenges in a useful way. Introduction Enterprises have a long history as functional organisations. The introduction of machinery in the 18 century lead to the principle of work specialisation and the division of labour, and on to the need of capturing, structuring, storing and distributing information and knowledge on both the product and the work or business process. Business process models have always provided a means to structure the enormous amount of information needed in many business processes (Hammer, 1990). The availability of computers provided more flexibility in information handling, and lead to the adoption of modelling languages originally developed for systems modelling like IDEF0.(IDEF-0, 1993). The modelling of work processes, organisational structures and infrastructure as an approach to organisational and software development and documentation is becoming an established practice in many companies. Process modelling is not done for one specific objective only, which partly explains the great diversity of approaches found in literature and practice. Five main categories for process