SERVICE-ORIENTED BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Václav Repa
University of Economics, Prague, W.Churchill sqr. 4, Prague, Czech Republic
Keywords: Business Process Management, Service Level Agreement, Process Modelling.
Abstract: This paper deals with the role of the concept of services in the area of Business Process Management and
Reengineering. It describes the process of the Business Processes System Design which is a part of the
Methodology for Business Processes Analysis and Design. The paper argues in support of thinking in terms
of services as being much more useful and the general principle to be limited to the area of technology and
software systems development only.
1 INTRODUCTION - BUILDING
PROCESS MANAGED
ORGANIZATION
This paper describes the process of the Business
Processes System Design which is a part of the
Methodology for Business Processes Analysis and
Design – MMAPB. The design technique covers the
whole process from the identification of the basic
activities to the design of key and supporting
processes as late as the building of the resulting
infrastructures. The tools used by the methodology
are based on common standards BPMN (BPMN,
2006), UML (UML, 2004), and Eriksson/Penker
Notation (Eriksson and Penker, 2000). The root of
the methodology is defined in the formal meta-
model (
Repa, 2000) as a part of the development
project OpenSoul (
OpenSoul, 2000). The key ideas of
the modelling method are described in (
Repa, 2008),
and (
Repa, 2004).
A very important tool in the structuring of the
processes is the principle of services. It allows us to
discover the basic supporting processes in the bodies
of key processes, their clarification with the exact
definition of the interfaces between processes, and,
finally, the exact definition of the needs and
possibilities of the supporting infrastructures.
The paper argues in support of thinking in terms
of services as being much more useful and the
general principle to be limited to the area of
technology and software systems development only.
The first complete explanation of the idea of process
management as a style of managing an organization
has already been published (Hammer and Champy,
1993). The authors excellently explain the historical
roots, as well as the necessity, of focusing on
business processes in the management of the
organization. The major reason for the process-
orientation in management is the vital need for the
dynamics in the organization’s behaviour. It has to
be able to reflect all substantial changes in the
market as soon as possible. The only way to link the
behaviour of the organization to the changes in the
market is to manage the organization as a set of
processes principally focused on customer needs. As
customer needs are constantly changing, the
processes in the organization should change as well.
That means that any process in the organization
should be linked to the customer needs as directly as
possible. Thus, the general classification of
processes in the organization distinguishes mainly
between:
Key processes
, i.e. those processes in the
organization which are linked directly to the
customer, covering the whole business cycle
from expression of the customer need to its
satisfaction with the product / service.
Supporting processes
, which are linked to the
customer indirectly - by means of key
processes which they are supporting with
particular products / services.
Whilst the term ‘’key process’’ typically covers
whole business cycle with the customer - it is
focused on the particular business case; the
supporting process is typically specialized just to the
particular service / product, which means that its
product is more universal - usable in a number of
284
Repa V. (2009).
SERVICE-ORIENTED BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing, pages 284-287
DOI: 10.5220/0002299302840287
Copyright
c
SciTePress
business cases. This approach allows the
organization to focus on the customers and their
needs (by means of the key processes), and to use all
the traditional advantages of the specialization of
activities (by means of the supporting processes) at
the same time. Key processes play the crucial role -
by means of these processes the whole system of
mutually interconnected processes is tied together
with the customers’ needs. Supporting processes are
organized around the key ones, so that the internal
behaviour, specialization, and even the effectiveness
of the organizations’ activities are subordinated to
the customers and their needs.
Such a view of the behaviour of the organization
is quite different from the traditional one. Mainly,
the key processes represent an unusual view of
communications and collaboration within the
organization. In traditionally managed organizations
the organization structure reflects just the
specialization of work; it is static and hierarchical.
The concept of key processes brings the necessary
dynamics to the system – key processes often
change according to the customer needs, while
supporting ones are relatively stable (the nature of
the work is relatively independent of the customers’
needs). At the same time, the key processes
represent the most specific part of the organizations’
behaviour, while the supporting ones are more
general and standard. Thus, the supporting processes
are the best candidates for possible outsourcing
while the key ones should be regarded, rather, as an
essence of the market value of the organization. So,
we have a system of processes with very different
“speeds”. To ensure the necessary communication
among them, we need to have the interface working
like a differential gear. Firstly, we need to define the
parameters of each connection point of two
processes with respect to both sides of this relation –
as the service offered by the supporting process to
the supported one. This way the idea of a process
managed organization perfectly fits the idea of the
service-oriented structure of a system.
2 THE PROCEDURE
Figure 1 expresses the procedure of the business
processes system design as a set of succeeding /
parallel steps.
In following paragraphs, some details of the
particular steps are described.
1. Analysis of the existence of
necessary activities
and their ordering
in the context of the key processes;
2.
Uncovering key processes
(thick version)
3. Thinning key processes - getting off all actions which can
be regarded as a standalone supporting process
Identifying supporting processes
4.
Tuning the system of processes.
Key vs. Supporting processes, refining the Global process Model
5. Detailed description of the
interface
among processes
(
SLA
)
6.
Tuning the processes
detailed description.
Revision of the key processes,
their events, and reactions..
7.
Building resulting infrastructures
System of roles, responsibilities, rights, productivity evaluation, quality evaluation
and control, organization elements, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. …………….
Figure 1: Procedure of the business processes system
design.
2.1 Step 1: Analysis of the Existence of
Necessary Activities
In this step, the basic natural sequences of activities
are revealed. The main subject of interest in this step
is the natural succession of activities in the regular
form as people know them, work flows, legal
procedures etc. These sequences of activities serve
in later steps as the basis for revealing the proper
structure of the process system. Necessary activities
(and their basic causal consequences) form the basis
of the supporting processes. At the same time, they
are the roots of the key processes as well. Thus the
given set of natural activity sequences will be
restructured in order to identify the key and
supporting processes.
2.2 Step 2: Uncovering the Key
Processes
The aim of this step is to show the key processes.
Each key process represents, in fact, the way of
achieving the key type of product. The structure of
the key process can, thus, be derived from the life
cycle of the key product, as a final result of the
process. The key process is a process by which the
organization realizes some external value – value for
its customers.
For example, it is obvious that the key product of
the university is education. That means that the key
process of the university is the education process.
On the other hand, the key product of the university
is obviously not the Study program accreditation as
it does not realize any external value in itself – it
rather helps the key process; ‘education’; to realize
the value of education.
In the first version of the model, the key
processes naturally contain a number of supporting
activities and sub-processes (contextually). It is the
SERVICE-ORIENTED BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
285
important task for following steps to free key
processes of all supporting activities (see below).
2.3 Step 3: Thinning Key Processes
Every key process is naturally “long” because it
covers the whole business case from the
identification of the customer need till the
satisfaction of this need by the product (service). As
a result, the previous step has shown that the key
processes are also “thick” – they contain a number
of supporting activity chains. This step strives to
remove, as much as possible, the supporting
activities from the key processes. We are speaking
about the “thinning” of the key processes.
All action chains which can be regarded as
supporting chains, arise from the key processes on
the principle of „outsourcing“ them into standalone
supporting ones (even, possibly, outside the
organization): Any relatively standalone,
continuous, homogenous, and generalizable part of
the process will be removed from the key process,
generalized, and established as a supporting process.
As a result of this removal some control activity
(managing the supporting service delivery) remains
in the key process in the original place of the
removed supporting activity chain.
In the step 5, the interface to the original
(mother) key process will be described including the
basic parameters of the product / service (see the
principle of SLA below).
2.4 Step 4: Tuning the System of
Processes
After thinning the key processes it is necessary to
rework and elaborate models in detail, and complete
the structure of the Global process model. In the
previous step, new supporting processes were
discovered, and the structure of each key process
was simplified, consequently. The content, as well
as the structure of the Global process model, has
been changed and new interfaces among the
processes have been created.
2.5 Step 5: Detailed Description of the
Interface among Processes
Interfaces among processes, which have arisen in the
previous two steps, must be elaborated in detail.
Great attention should be paid to the interface
among key and supporting processes.
In this step, every interface is described in the form
of „SLA“ (Service Level Agreement – see following
paragraph for details).
2.6 SLA (Service Level Agreement)
Under the term SLA, we mean an analogy to the
Service Level Agreement widely used in
outsourcing relationships. This form of agreement
represents the universal view of any co-operation
interface. This view is naturally compatible with the
need for financial evaluation of services, building
the system of productivity and quality metrics, etc.
Every SLA should contain:
Product description (service characteristics, its
meaning, value, sense);
Basic product parameters in measurable units;
Product quality metrics (how to measure quality
as a general product attribute);
Product “price” which reflects the necessary
costs of the supporting process or offered
service.
In fact, such a description of the interface
between two processes represents the real business
agreement of these processes. It means that there is
no difference between the “internal” (see step 3
above), and the real, outsourcing. Thus, this way of
thinking perfectly prepares the situation for the
possible outsourcing of all supporting processes
where it is suitable.
2.7 Step 6: Tuning the Processes’
Detailed Description
Parallel to step 5, the revision of the key processes
run, their events, reactions, and tuning of this
description with the Global model, should be
performed. Models are completed with actors,
inputs, outputs; and overall revision of the Global
model of processes is made in this step.
2.8 Step 7: Building the Resulting
Infrastructures
The final step of the procedure represents the
interface to the subsequent activities of the
organization building process. This step consists of
the elaboration of the process interface in order to
analyze the possibilities for realizing the service
which the supporting process represents (the
supplier part of the SLA).
Activities of this step lead to the creation of both
main infrastructures:
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the basic requirements for the organizational
infrastructure are analyzed with the definition
of roles, their responsibilities, communication
procedures, and other organizational aspects
which follow on from the mutual
competencies of both attendees of the business
relation represented by the SLA;
Similarly, the technical infrastructure needs can
be specified this way (necessary production
and workflow technology support, as well as
the necessary Information System services).
3 CONSEQUENCES AND
CONCLUSIONS
This paper discusses the concept of services in the
light of Business Process Management and the
Reengineering phenomenon. The paper just outlines
some basic contingencies which follow on from the
inspiration by the theory of services in the area of
process management. It points out the significant
similarities among different areas of possible
application of the “service-oriented thinking”, such
as software development, process management,
outsourcing, etc. It also points out the obvious
convergence of all these phenomena – outsourcing
as an original area of the SLAs is the principal way
of recognizing the substantial differences between
the key and supporting processes which, at the same
time, directly corresponds to the need to tie the
system of business processes in with the enterprise
strategy on one hand, and with the supporting
technology on the other hand.
The basic conclusion from the previous
paragraph is: the concept of services should be
regarded as a general principle for recognizing the
interface between two substantially different areas
connected with some common sense. This paper
shows how this concept works as a guide for
specifying the interface between the various types of
processes (key versus supporting ones) which differ
mainly in the reasons and “speed”, and are mutually
asynchronous. It also shows how this principle can
be used for specifying the interface between the
system of processes and supporting infrastructures
(technology as well as organization). A similar area
of application of this principle is the interface
between the strategic activities and process
management of the organization which is not
presented in this paper. This interface is the main
subject of the work of R.Kaplan and D.Norton
(Kaplan and Norton, 2004). Their theory could be
also significantly extended this way.
SLA, as a principle, rather than a universal way
of defining details of this interface – measurable
parameters of the service.
The paper also describes basic procedure for
analyzing and designing the system of business
processes in the organization with respect to the
consequential activities (Building the resulting
infrastructures). In this way, it outlines what should
be an area of future development of the
methodology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work presented in this paper is supported by
Czech project GAČR 402/08/0529 Business Process
Modelling.
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