A Repeatable Collaboration Process for Exploring Business Process Improvement Alternatives

Abstract

The dynamic nature of organisations has increased demand for business process agility leading to the adoption of continuous Business Process Improvement (BPI). Success of BPI projects calls for continuous process analysis and exploration of several improvement alternatives. These activities are knowledge intensive requiring multi-disciplinary skills. Coupled with the cross-cutting nature of business processes attainment of one's business goal necessitates collaboration among stakeholders in many business process improvement efforts. However the existing tools provide limited to no support for this kind of collaboration, especially in the decision processes involved. In light of this, we designed a repeatable collaboration process (CP) for BPI alternative exploration. The CP consists of two modules aimed at the generation of BPI alternatives and the selection of a BPI alternative respectively. Evaluation results from testing sessions at two organisations show that the CP provides support for the BPI generation and selection process, and is useful for BPI alternative exploration.