Business Commons^™

Using A Work System Perspective To Expand Bpm Use Cases For Research, Steven Alter, Jan Recker

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Business Process Management (BPM) has developed as a research field centered within the computer and information systems sciences – but also touching other fields as well. Recently, van der Aalst (2013) analyzed the results of some of these research efforts and identified a set of research topics in the form of a series of BPM use cases that primarily emphasize technological and computational challenges and solutions in BPM academia. Ideally, however, BPM should also address managerial and organizational challenges that are not fully reflected in the existing use cases identified by van der Aalst (2013). We propose drawing on work …

A Workaround Design System For Anticipating, Designing, And/Or Preventing Workarounds, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Idealized system design produces requirements reflecting management intentions and “best practices.” This paper proposes a workaround design system (WDS) for anticipating, designing, and/or preventing workarounds that bypass systems as designed. A WDS includes a process and an interactive “workaround design tool” (WDT) for identifying and evaluating foreseeable workarounds based on work system theory and a theory of workarounds. This paper summarizes the conceptual background and explains the form, use, and implications of the proposed WDS and WDT.

The idea of WDS addresses significant gaps in practice and research. Designers should have methods for identifying likely obstacles and anticipating and evaluating …

Using Work System Theory To Link Managerial And Technical Perspectives On Bpm, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

Work system theory (WST) provides a bridge between managerial and technical perspectives on BPM that often seem distant from each other. In combination, the work system framework, underlying work system metamodel, and the work system life cycle model provide a number of bridges between those perspectives. In relation to managerial BPM, the work system framework treats "business process" as one of nine elements in a basic understanding of a work system. The others are participants, information, technology, products/services, customers, environment, infrastructure, and strategies. The underlying metamodel outlines a precise structure for analysis and design of work systems and for links …