INCORPORATING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS

PROCESSES

How to Merge Business Processes and Collaboration Activities in an Efficient and

Agile Way

Stoian Boev, Elina Surova, Kaloyan Nikolov and Viktor Zhivkov

SimPro – Business Processes and Simulation Competence Centre, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics

Sofia University and Interconsult Bulgaria, 7, Indzhe Voivoda Street, Sofia, Bulgaria

icb@icb.bg

Keywords: Business process, Business process model, Collaboration, Process execution, Automation, Task context,

Enterprise portal

Abstract: Nowadays, in order to remain competitive, organizations strive to be efficient and agile. They need well

defined and optimized business processes, without sacrificing the agility of collaboration. This can be

achieved by applying a new approach for combining and tuning these two into a single concept. To

implement the new approach characteristics of business processes such as task, goal, participating roles,

resources, etc. and the characteristics of collaboration like flexibility, informal communication,

collaborative tools, shared knowledge, the two should be merged together in a mixture called “task context”.

Intelligent collaboration business portal solutions that utilize the task context approach provide a unified

environment where users can collaborate while following the end-to-end process. Such solutions provide

agility while maintaining adequate levels of process control thus improving efficiency and effectiveness.

1 INTRODUCTION

The organizations’ need for agility and efficiency

improvement can be fulfilled through the use of

intelligent collaboration portal solutions, which

incorporate both the business processes of the

organization and the collaboration. These new portal

solutions introduce a novel approach for business

process automation. It allows retaining process

agility and covers the ad-hoc activities possible

within the organization. At the same time it allows

efficient performance of the daily tasks by providing

all needed information and tools at the right time.

2 WHY IS A NEW APPROACH

NEEDED

An agile and efficient work organization is a must if

companies strive to quickly adapt to an ever

changing external environment. Nowadays the

successful management and execution of the tasks

within the organization could be compared to jazz

improvisation which is a symbol of high creativity

(Scheer, 2007, p.2).

To be adaptive to change and at the same time

retain and improve its efficiency, an organization

needs an innovative approach for combining and

tuning its primary components:

 Business processes - the actions which the

organization carries out;

 Resources - people (the human component which

performs tasks), technological environment,

facilities, knowledge, etc.;

 Collaboration and communication - working

together to achieve a goal.

2.1 Current State of the Organization

If an organization is examined today, the following

conclusions can be made:

 Importance of business processes is realised:

“In the last 30 years companies have become more

business process aware” (Huberts and Petten, 2007,

p.3);

 Business processes are described but not used:

122

Boev S., Surova E., Nikolov K. and Zhivkov V.

INCORPORATING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESSESHow to Merge Business Processes and Collaboration Activities in an Efﬁcient and Agile Way.

DOI: 10.5220/0004459301220128

In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design (BMSD 2011), pages 122-128

ISBN: 978-989-8425-68-3

There are organizations in which the business

processes are in fact described but not used in the

actual carrying out of activities;

 Business processes have been automated without

achieving the required effect:

The automation of the processes inside a single IT

system cannot be a sufficient solution. (Huberts and

Petten, 2007, p.3). Moreover the introduction of new

processes in this type of system can result in the

need for substantial additional investments for

software development (Scheer, 2004, p.8).

Another option is to integrate multiple information

systems to automate business processes. This

approach handles the communication between IT

systems and synchronization of the data, but it does

not support the communication and collaboration at

human level (Huberts and Petten, 2007, p.3).

 Collaboration could be inefficient. In every

organization there are many communication and

collaboration channels. Collaboration tools are

powerful software products, but their uncoordinated

usage leads to a loss of efficiency and can lead to the

loss of valuable information.

The state of the organizations indicates that a new

approach for their setup is needed. That approach

should ensure the execution of processes in a

collaborative environment without limiting users.

2.2 Company Characteristics

In order to extract this approach, the organization’s

components, that are subject to automation have

been analyzed - namely processes and collaboration.

3 BUSINESS PROCESSES

The business processes are not only something that

organization does, they are the business of the

organization (Brabander and Davis, 2007, p.2).

“Business Processes are logically ordered sets of

activities that produce a result of value to the

customer” (Indulska, Kittel, and Muehlen, 2008,

p.3);

“The process defines what activities are

performed by who, when they are performed, and

how they are performed” (Crow, 2002);

Business processes are a set of tasks in a given

order. Each task has a trigger, executor, resources

required, input, output and an expected result.

The main business process characteristics are:

 Predefined goal – each process has a goal that

should be achieved;

 Set of activities – process contains a number of

tasks. They can be individual – performed by single

user or collaborative – a group of people working

together to achieve common goal;

 Defined participants with their roles - the

participant can have different relation to the tasks

(e.g. execute, must be informed, etc);

 Required resources for execution - to execute a

process certain resources are needed (data,

documents, knowledge, applications, time, etc)

 Formal communication paths.

Processes can be classified as very rigid (production

processes), more flexible (sales) and ad-hoc (not

predefined process that can occur during the daily

work) (Brabander and Davis, 2007, p.2).

The processes are usually used as means for

analysis, optimization and control. During the daily

execution of processes the executors see and carry

out certain tasks without necessarily focusing on the

process as a whole. (Figure 1: Process and tasks)

Figure 1: Process and tasks.

The main issue when automating processes is

that described process models have some constrains:

 Too rigid - the defined process models represent a

predefined set of activities in a given order. It is not

possible to describe all variants, because they are

even not known at that moment. The result is that

flexible and ad-hoc processes are unsupported. Thus

the direct automation and execution of the process

models leads to rigidity, omission of some possible

scenarios and cannot be used in a changing

environment.

 Missing collaboration and real communication –

the defined process models represent the formal

communication. The possible additional actions and

collaborations that could occur and are part of the

process are not taken into consideration (i.e. while

carrying out a task the executor may need help from

a more qualified employee).

The question is how an organization can be flexible

and at the same time controlled. For achieving this

INCORPORATING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESSES - How to Merge Business Processes and

Collaboration Activities in an Efficient and Agile Way

123

balance in the organization it has to be positioned on

the edge of chaos.

According to Scheer (2007):

Modern organizational theory pursues approaches

that take into account the dynamics within

companies and in markets, and that overcome

inflexible organizational principles.

Figure 2: alance Flexibility and Stability (Scheer, 2007).

Figure 2 shows an illustration of how

connectivity – which can also be interpreted as

communication and interaction – and the intensity of

control with an organization determine the

possibility for flexible, creative behavior (c.f.

Tomenendal, 2002, and Scholz, 2000). If the

organization has many rules, then all work processes

are set. If, at the same time, there is little

communication between the participants, then the

organization stagnates. It is unable to react quickly

to unexpected situations (lower-left section of Figure

2 Balance Flexibility and Stability). If, however, no

rules exist, chaos rules (top-right section of Figure 2

Balance Flexibility and Stability). The shaded area

represents a corridor of balance between minimal

constraint and maximum communication. Area II

describes a more stable organization that has not yet

stagnated, but does not demonstrate spontaneity and

flexibility as in the shaded area.

Having the business processes characteristics and

the business models constraints on one hand and the

theory of the edge of the chaos on the other the role

of business processes in their automation and

execution should be defined. Before that the

hierarchical structure of process models and their

tendency to change should be considered.

The structure of process models can be depicted

as a pyramid having high-level abstract processes on

top (see Figure 3 Current Structure of Business

Process Models). Going down processes get more

granular and volatile down to a point that requires

many details and loop-backs. The bottom zone is

where things get done.

As the base provides the added value of the

business process it is essential to ensure that it serves

the purpose flawlessly and strictly. This usually

means that business analysts try to define very rigid

control flow of the execution. Taking processes a

step further and trying to automate their execution it

becomes obvious that the base is not stable. There

are changes that occur frequently, but these changes

are minor viewed from higher levels.

Figure 3: Current Structure of Business Process Models.

The root cause of the problem is often business

processes models try to capture the collaboration

activities together with the control flow of the

process. This over-detailization induces instability.

To achieve stability and manageability it is

imperative to find a way to recognize individual

tasks and collaborative tasks and enable users to

convert individual tasks into collaborative if need

arises. Each such task will be defined as a small

perceivable brick in the foundation and will have

strongly defined boundaries both in time and

resources. The illustration will be changed from

Figure 3 Current Structure of Business Process

Models to Figure 4 Structure of Business Process

Models with defined collaboration task.

Figure 4: Structure of Business Process Models with

defined collaboration tasks.

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4 COLLABORATION

Collaboration is a process through which people

who see different aspects of a problem can

constructively explore their differences and search

for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision

of what is possible. Nowadays the collaboration is

one of the most success factors for the organizations.

4.1 Collaboration Types

Examining the collaboration within the organization

three types can be distinguished (see Figure 5

Collaboration types).

Figure 5: Collaboration types.

According to Callahan, Schenk, White (2008):

 Team collaboration – there are clear goals to

achieve within explicit time-line. In such

collaboration group all members are known and they

have roles. Leadership increases the productivity of

the team collaboration.

 Community collaboration – goals are more often

focused on learning rather than on tasks. Members

of a team contact another team in their community to

ask a question or take advice.

 Network collaboration – it covers the collaboration

beyond the team and the community. There are no

explicit roles and time-lines.

The main collaboration characteristics are:

 Flexibility – collaboration is used for almost each

problem area in the real life. The collaboration is in

the human nature and a various ways of

collaboration have been developed so far. There are

various collaboration tools for different situations.

 Understanding – it is important to ensure that all

collaborators know what the goals are and all of

them can participate actively. For fruitful

collaboration a common language should be set.

 No clear roles – how strict are the roles depend on

the collaboration type but in general in most cases

all collaboration members are treated equally. The

benefit is that the roles delusion encourages

creativity and the set back is that focus is easily lost.

That is why leadership is key for establishing good

collaboration.

 No clear list of required participants – participants

should be invited based on the collaboration goals

and the knowledge of the problem domain that each

one can contribute.

 Informal communication – the collaboration

should be organized in such way that all members

feel comfortable and can openly express their

opinion. At the same time the result of the

collaboration should be recorded and accessible for

each contributor at any given time. A variety of

technical tools could be used to support such

collaboration.

4.2 Different Way to Collaborate

There are different ways how to collaborate, but

most commonly they fall in two groups:

 Information sharing and decision making;

 Contribution to common knowledge or resources.

In addition collaboration channels can be various

(ordered by their “synchrony” – from synchronous

to asynchronous): Phone, Meeting, Instant

messaging, E-Mail, Forum, Wiki, File sharing.

People usually get accustomed to their preferred

channel of collaboration and rarely think if it is the

most appropriate one for the task at hand. This leads

to delays in collaboration and frustration. In order to

prevent such inconveniences there should be some

kind of aid that will present the right tool at the right

moment to the user. Most of the time this is done

using rigid business processes that confine the

collaboration activity to a predefined sequence of

tasks that should be done to produce the desired

output. Such decision makes matters even worse:

 Business process analysts have a hard time

defining the process and all loopbacks typical to a

collaborative activity (e.g. brainstorming cannot be

described as a linear predictable sequence of

activities);

 People who have understanding of how to

accomplish certain tasks get frustrated because they

have to follow new strange rules and they cannot

recognize easily the benefit of the “standardization”;

 It is hard to follow procedures that describe

collaboration activities. Especially if business

analysts have “captured” all the details and subtleties

in the process.

INCORPORATING COLLABORATION IN BUSINESS PROCESSES - How to Merge Business Processes and

Collaboration Activities in an Efficient and Agile Way

125

Business processes models are not appropriate to

describe collaborative activities. Rather than

describing what to do it will be better just to define

certain boundaries and tools that will help them steer

in the right direction at maximum efficiency.

5 THE NEW APPROACH

Collaboration activities tend to lose efficiency as

they start to go off-topic or loop around themselves.

Thus a better boundary or constraints around the

problem domain is needed. Business processes can

lend several ideas how to set certain boundaries on

the collaboration. Taking the best from the business

processes and collaboration, a sensible mixture can

be compiled with the following characteristics:

 Goal – a clear shared goal transmitted to all

participants;

 List of participants – a way to include the

necessary involved people and people that have

knowledge to share or decision making power;

 Allowed time period for the activity – work tends

to consume whole time dedicated to it according to

Parkinson’s Law. For activities such as collaboration

that is often the case. It is better to restrict the time

available than to have open-ended collaboration

sessions;

 Resource availability – putting some constraints on

the resources at hand can make many decisions

easier and faster and will help focus on the real

goals;

 Necessary information – only the relevant data and

information to the current task is shown;

 Required knowledge – this includes the persistent

knowledge base of the organization (like procedures

and policies) and implicit knowledge from the

employee experience. The second one requires that

the experienced employee is invited as a participant

in the task.

 Task execution tools – most of the time the task at

hand will require a tool to be used in order to

achieve the goal. Providing the right tool to people

will eliminate the time and effort lost in seeking the

tool and will minimize the risk of making a wrong

choice.

 Collaboration tool/channel – standardization of

tools and channels for each kind of collaboration

activities within the organization brings the benefit

of reduced number of tool and IT systems. This way

organizations can reduce cost and clutter;

 Activity history – keep track of what and when

happened prior to the current tasks so if there are

any notable changes with regards to the landscape

everyone is alert of them;

 Dependencies – collaboration activities rarely exist

by themselves and affect no one and nothing. All

participants should be aware of the dependencies

between tasks in the process.

Figure 6: Task context.

Based on the set of characteristics a new concept

– task context, is introduced (see Figure 6 Task

context). Collaboration activity can be wrapped into

single task and attached to the proper task context

that includes the fore-mentioned properties. The gap

between business processes and collaboration

activities can be bridged with the following rules

how to integrate both:

 Individual tasks inherently receive task context

from the business process. They are treated in the

same manner as they are. If someone needs to

collaborative support in such task the context easily

allows facilitation of such collaboration.

 Collaboration activities are modelled as a single

task inside the business process without any

collaboration implementation details. The task is

given the necessary sufficient context.

Let’s take as an example the process Project

Management. At a certain moment during the

process the task Perform risk assessment should be

done. The task should have the following context:

 Goal: assess relevant project risk;

 Participants: project manager (Nikolay Nikolov),

risk officer (Ivan Ivanov);

 Deadline: March 25

;

 Necessary information: project scope, plan, client

information;

 Required knowledge: risk assessment form and

methodology;

 Execution tool: document management;

 Collaboration tool: chat/phone;

 Activity history: previous meeting minutes;

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 Dependencies: task should be performed after

project plan and before kick-off meeting.

Note that there are no execution details, i.e. exact

steps how risk assessment should be done. Note also

that only information relevant to the project at hand

and to the specific task is present.

The only obstacle to implement this approach is

the lack of single orchestration tool that will drive

the business process to follow the model and will

provide task context to process and collaboration

activities. It will be a benefit if the tool is

collaboration enabled so it can host collaboration

channels.

6 ENTERPRISE PORTALS

Current collaboration tools focus primarily on

content management, specifically group editing and

reviewing of documents but lack integration with the

rest of the processes. On the other hand business

applications generally follow a rigid process and

collaborative tasks are done “outside” them. The

idea for the context and how it benefits from the

process and the collaborative approaches has been

introduced previously.

The context materialization is done by Enterprise

Portals or also known as Business Portals. The

concept behind portals is a Web site that serves a

single gateway to company information and

knowledge base for employees and possibly for

customers, partners, and the general public. Most of

the existing portals are missing one vital for process

and collaboration execution element – orchestration.

This can be solved by implementing Intelligent

Collaboration Business Portal (in short ICB Portal)

with the following main features:

 Access/search - allows a user to get all the

information needed in the desired context. For

example, a loan officer does not need marketing

information to approve a loan. The portal shows the

loan officer only the information needed;

 Categorization - the portal categorizes all

information so that it is delivered to the user within

the context needed;

 Collaboration - single web portal spanning to

intranet or even internet allows individuals to

collaborate regardless of geographical location;

 Business process execution – does the hard job to

orchestrate the whole process;

 Personalization - The information provided to

individuals using a portal is personalized to that

person's role, preferences, and habits;

 Expertise and profiling - Expertise and profiling is

essential for the collaboration element of a portal.

Individuals within an enterprise are profiled

according to their experience and competencies so

that project members can be chosen according to

their qualifications;

 Application integration - This allows individuals to

deliver, access, and share information regardless of

applications used, provided IT systems are SOA

based and can provide parts of their functionality as

a service;

 Security - This provides information to users based

on security clearance. The user authenticates and

accesses only information that has authorization for

based on company rules and policies.

An ICB Portal allows following structured business

processes, providing data to and from various

orchestrated applications, and enabling collaboration

whenever it is needed within the relevant task

context.

7 CONCLUSIONS

If organizations embrace this new approach and

implement the task context they will be able to

preserve the controllable process execution in a

collaborative environment enabling employees to be

productive and use company knowledge. This single

workspace will provide the executors knowledge,

information and tools needed at the right time for the

task execution. The concept of the task context can

be expanded further with the introduction of the

problem domain of project management. In this way

organizations can get maximized view on the

activities inside them and manage them better.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was partially supported by the

Bulgarian National Science Fund under Grant DO

02-75/2008.

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Collaboration Activities in an Efficient and Agile Way

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