Research Assignments

Business Process Management (BPM) is a topic that traverses both the business and technical parts of an organisation. These assignments are meant to discover some things about both parts. Keep in mind that some of these topics might be known by slightly different names and that different people may mean different things by the same terms.

Functional

For these investigation questions, somebody from a business unit is typically a good counterpart to talk to. A product owner or business representative in the IT organisation might also be able to help you.

  • Does your organisation practice Business Process Management (BPM)?

  • Try to find out if the organisation uses a Process Architecture and if so, what it looks like and how it’s used.

  • Are there people in the organisation tasked to be Process Owner? What do they do?

Technical

Somebody in the IT department, such as an architect or (senior) engineer should be able to help you answer these questions.

  • Does your organisation automate business processes and/or decisions in any way?

  • Which processes/decisions are automated and what is the goal for doing so?

  • Can people tell you what is most challenging when they automate processes or decisions?

  • Ask if there are process models for the automated processes and see if you understand them.

  • If models are available, make an estimate of the percentage of automated vs. manual functions supported by one (or a couple) of the models.