Observing the use of BPM tools: A step towards flexibility

The development of the tools of Business Process Management (BPM) arises from the spread of the notion of process in the management universe. The application of BPM to strategic processes is blocked by the tools’ rigidity. They have difficulty in handling the processes of which the structure is not clearly defined and/or those for which all information is not available at the beginning. That is why increased flexibility is sought. Having stated needs and works, we propose a new architecture exploiting the distances between prescribed processes and executed processes. On the basis of observation data, a set of techniques enables us to extract some elements which are significant for the designer. Here we present our architecture of exploitation of the observation data and give the results of an experiment aiming at checking the feasibility and the relevance of it. They reveal a real potential for development as well as a series of restrictive elements. Following the seminal publications of Hammer [HA90] and Hammer and Champy [HC93], the spread of the process concept in the field of technology management has accelerated. Their work led to the development of “process-oriented” tools which are currently grouped under the acronym BPM. In a first approach, we recall the definition of Melchert and Winter [MW04]: “BPM is used as an umbrella term for methodologies, metrics, processes and systems that monitor and manage the performance of an enterprise”. The acronym BPM covers three object classes. These objects are firstly methodologies of analysis and modelling of processes; secondly they are development tools for software and finally the resulting software. In its broadest definition, BPM covers an extremely wide field: It includes various description/modelling/simulation/development languages, as well as software tools dedicated to their piloting. The software types ERP, CRM, SCM and workflow are included in the definition of BPM. In a more restricted definition, BPM is more specifically focused on the modelling of the processes and their instantiation in workflow-type tools [MU04]: