Maria Istela Cagnin and Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
This paper presents M-PoP, a method to model large, complex, and dynamic business processes. These processes have sometimes resulted from alliances of organizations (i.e. joint…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents M-PoP, a method to model large, complex, and dynamic business processes. These processes have sometimes resulted from alliances of organizations (i.e. joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions) and are referred to as Processes-of-Business Processes (PoP). Due to the difficulty of modeling these dynamic processes, alliances of organizations have often lost opportunities, competitiveness, and profitability, so requiring suitable modeling methods.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors proposed M-PoP that can model PoP through three views in different abstraction levels and using well-known techniques in industry and academia, mainly those from Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). For this, M-PoP presents three main steps: identification of PoP elements, modeling of PoP, and verification of PoP models. To evaluate M-PoP, we applied it in a real-world business process in the health domain.
Findings
The evaluation results point out the capability and viability of M-PoP to deal with dynamic business processes.
Research limitations/implications
M-PoP still needs to be applied in various real-world scenarios to gather evidence of its productivity, efficiency, and scalability.
Practical implications
This novel method could change the way organizations model their business processes and, as a consequence, it could leverage strategic business opportunities.
Originality/value
M-PoP is the first method that makes it possible to model large and complex business processes and, most importantly, dynamic processes.
Details
Keywords
Maria Istela Cagnin and Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
The main purpose of this work is to overcome the difficulty to manage large, dynamic business processes formed from the complicated interplay of business processes of distinct…
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this work is to overcome the difficulty to manage large, dynamic business processes formed from the complicated interplay of business processes of distinct organizations, which take part of strategic alliances of organizations (joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions) and have their software systems as part of complex, large software-intensive systems called Systems of Systems (SoS). Hence, the authors introduce the novel concept of Processes-of-Business Processes (PoP), deepening on their characteristics and related key terms.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the systematically retrieved and analyzed literature and on the authors’ experience from research/industrial projects, the authors defined PoP and have applied them in the Brazilian public health SoS, which involve several organizations and their business processes and their independent software systems as well.
Findings
Provided by PoP, a new understanding of the large, dynamic business processes of alliances of organizations is fundamental to advance both the state of the art and the state of the practice on business process management.
Research limitations/implications
The adoption of PoP in other real-world scenarios is still required to get quantitative evidence.
Practical implications
The adoption of PoP can certainly contribute to the success of new businesses and even promoting sustainability and longevity of SoS, which are in fact deeply impacted by business processes.
Originality/value
The concept of PoP can change the mindset of the research community and practitioners about how large, dynamic business processes should be seen and further managed.