CSS 496
Business Process Re-engineering
for BS(CS)
Chapter 1: Introduction
Khurram Shahzad
mks@ciitlahore.edu.pk
Based on P. Wohed, M. Dumas and M. Weske Lectures
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Agenda
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Introduction
Course Material
Course Evaluation
Course Contents
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Muhammad Khurram Shahzad

M Khurram Shahzad
 Assistant Professor
 M.Sc. from PUCIT, University of the Punjab, PK
 MS from KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden 2006
 PhD from Information Systems Lab, KTH-Royal Intitute of
Technology & Stockholm University, Sweden, (Jan’08 - Inshallah
Nov’12)
 http://syslab.ning.com/profile/mks
 At least 26 Publications
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Group Webpage
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Research Area I
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Research in IS focuses on
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Enterprise Modeling
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Data Warehousing
Academic Social Networks
Business Process Management
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Process Model Repositories
Process Improvement using data warehousing
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Research Projects
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Digital Repository Service for Academic
Performance Assessment and Social Networking
in Developing Countries
Centre for Academic Statistics of Science and
Technology
Productivity and Social Network Analysis of the
BPM Community
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Stockholm University,
Sweden
Technical University Eindhoven,
The Netherlands
University of Sri-Jayewardennepura,
Sri Lanka
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Course Material
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Course Book
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Mathias Weske. Business Process
Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures,
Springer, The Netherlands
Reference Books
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M Dumas, W van der Aalst, Arther Hofstede,
Process-aware Information Systems: Bridging
People and Software through Process Technology, John Wiley
& Sons Inc., NY.
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Assignments
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Implementation/Research on important
concepts.
To be submitted in groups of 2 students.
Include
1. Modeling and Benchmarking of processes
2. Implementation of processes in open
source modeling software
3. Literature Review paper on
 BPM social network
May add a couple more
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Lab Work
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Lab Exercises. To be submitted individually
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Course Introduction
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BPM is based on the observation that each
product that a company provides to the
market is the outcome of a number of
activities performed
Business processes are the key instrument to
organizing these activities and to improving
the understanding of their interrelationships
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Business Process Management (BPM)
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BPM is based on the observation that each
product that a company provides to the
market is the outcome of a number of
activities performed
Business processes are the key instrument to
organizing these activities and to improving
the understanding of their interrelationships
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Business Process Management (BPM)
A business process consists of a set of activities
that are performed in coordination in the
organizational and technical environment
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These activities jointly realize a business goal
Each business process is enacted by a single
organization, but it may interact with business
processes performed by other organizations
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Business Process Management (BPM)
Business processes describe the organisation of
work into work tasks, the distribution of work task into
different resources and the provision of necessary
information for the performance of the individual
tasks.
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Examples
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Order-to-Cash
Fault-to-Resolution (Issue-to-Resolution)
Claim-to-Settlement
Application-to-Approval
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Process and the organization
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Business Process Management (BPM)
BPM includes concepts, methods and techniques to
support the design, administration, configuration,
enactment, and analysis of business processes
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The basis of BPM is the explicit representation of
business processes with their activities and the
execution constraints between them
Once business processes can be defined, they can
be subject to analysis, improvement and enactment
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Business Process Management (BPM)
Business process management systems (BPMS)
are information systems aimed to support the
business processes in an organization
A business process management system is a
generic software system that is driven by explicit
process representation to coordinate the enactment
of business processes
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Business Process Management (BPM)
Send
Invoice
Receive
Payment
Receive
Order
Archive
Order
Ship
Products
Fig 1.1. Simple ordering process of reseller
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M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
Reseller
A business process model consists of a set of
activity models and execution constraints between
them
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Business Process Management (BPM)
A business process instance represents a concrete
case in the operational business of a company,
consisting of activity instances.
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Each business process model acts as a blueprint for
a set of business process instances,
Each activity model acts as a blue print for a set of
activity instances
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Terminology around
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The world without computers
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People performed the entire process
The process was visible – one could observe
what people did and ask questions
There was no need to model the processes
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Assembly line
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Traditional Process (as-is)
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The first computers
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The computer gets several and data moves
between them
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Optimization continues
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Consequences
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The process is hidden in the systems and no
longer visible for the people.
It is no more simple to “see” the whole by
simply observing how people work.
The IT-departments have unconsciously got
the responsibility for big part of the business
processes, which was of course never the
intention.
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My washing machine won’t work
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Processes and Outcomes
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Every process leads to one or several
outcomes, positive or negative
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Fault-to-resolution process
Fault repaired without technician intervention
Fault repaired with minor technician intervention
Fault repaired and fully covered by warranty
Fault repaired and partly covered by warranty
Fault repaired but not covered by warranty
Fault not repaired (customer withdrew request)
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The Ford Case Study (Hammer 1990)
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Ford needed to review its procurement process to:
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Do it cheaper (cut costs)
Do it faster (reduce turnaround times)
Do it better (reduce error rates)
Accounts payable in North America alone
employed
> 500 people and turnaround times for processing
POs and invoices was in the order of weeks
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The Ford Case Study
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Automation would bring some improvement
(20% improvement)
But Ford decided not to do it… Why?
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Because at the time, the technology needed to
automate the process was not yet available
Because nobody at Ford knew how to develop the
technology needed to automate the process.
Because there were not enough computers and
computer-literate employees at Ford.
None of the above
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The result…
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75% reduction in head count
Material control is simpler and financial
information is more accurate
Purchase requisition is faster
Less overdue payments
Why automate something we don’t need to
do?
Automate things that need to be done.
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Business Process Lifecycle
Evaluation:
Evaluation
Design:
Enactment:
Operation
Monitoring
Maintenance
Enactment
Administration
and
Stakeholders
Design &
Analysis
Business Process
Identification and
Modeling
Analysis:
Configuration
Validation
Simulation
Verification
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
Process Mining
Business Activity Monitoring
Configuration:
System Selection
Implementation
Test and Deployment
Fig 1.5. Business process lifecycle
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Design and Analysis
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Surveys on process and their organizational and
technical environment are conducted
Based on these surveys, processes are identified,
reviewed, validated, and represented by business
process models
Explicit process models expressed in graphical
notation facilitate communication about these
processes, so that stakeholders can
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communicate efficiently
refine and improve them
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Design and Analysis
Three good reasons
making models
 Gain Insights
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For a better understanding of
a system
Analysis
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for
Validation and verification
Specification
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A blueprint of construction
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Design and Analysis
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We will investigate languages to express business
process models
Modeling techniques as well as validation,
simulation, and verification techniques are used
during this phase
Once initial design is developed, it needs to be
validated (using workshop)
Simulation techniques can be used to support
validation because certain undesired execution
sequences might be simulated that show deficits in
the process models
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Design and Analysis
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Process modeling has an evolutionary
character in the sense that the process model
is analyzed and improved so that it actually
represents the desired business process and
that it does not contain any undesired
properties like deadlock
We will investigate the verification of process
models with respect to correctness properties
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Configuration
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Once process model is designed and verified,
the process needs to be implemented
There are different ways for it:
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As a set of policies and procedures that enterprise
has to comply with
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Realization without BPMS
System is configured according to organizational
environment
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It includes interaction of employees with system
And integration of existing software systems with BPMS
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Enactment
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Once configuration is completed, process
instances can be enacted
Enactment encompasses the actual runtime
of the business process
BPMS actively controls the execution of
instances as defined in process models
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i.e. activities are performed according to the
execution constraints specified in process model
Monitoring component visualizes the stauts of
process instances
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Enactment
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Information is valuable, for instance to
respond to a customer request that inquires
about the current status of his case
During enactment, valuable execution data is
gathered, typically in some form of log file
Log files consists of ordered sets of log
entries, indicating events that have occurred
during processes
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Evaluation
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Uses the information available to evaluate
and improve process models and their
implementations
Execution logs evaluation
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Business activity monitoring
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For instance, it can identify that a certain activity takes
too long due to shortage of resources required
Process Mining
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If applied on traditional IS, process models can be
generated
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Administration and Stakeholders
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Numerous artifacts at different levels of
abstraction that needs to be organized and
managed
A well structure repository with powerful
query mechanisms is essential
Classification of roles of Stakeholders
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Chief Process Officer
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Responsible for standardizing and harmonizing
processing
Acknowledges important of BPM to top level
managenment
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Administration and Stakeholders
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Business Engineer; domain experts, non technical
Process Designer; modeling processes by
communicating with domain experts
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Process Participant;
Knowledge Worker
Process Responsible
System Architect
Developers
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Business Process Lifecycle
Evaluation:
Evaluation
Design:
Enactment:
Operation
Monitoring
Maintenance
Enactment
Administration
and
Stakeholders
Design &
Analysis
Business Process
Identification and
Modeling
Analysis:
Configuration
Validation
Simulation
Verification
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
Process Mining
Business Activity Monitoring
Configuration:
System Selection
Implementation
Test and Deployment
Fig 1.5. Business process lifecycle
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Classification of Business Processes
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Organizational vs Operational
Intra-organizational Processes vs Process
Choreographies
Degree of Automation
Degree of Repetition
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Classification of Business Processes
Business Strategy
Organizational vs Operational
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determines
Ranges from high-level strategy
to implemented processes
Business Strategy describes longterm concepts to develop a
sustainable competitive
advantage e.g. cost leadership for
products
Strategy is broken down into
operational goals

e.g. Reducing the cost of material
realize
Goals
determine
realize
Organizational
Business Processes
determine
realize
Operational
Business Processes
determine
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
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realize
Implemented
Business Processes
Fig 1.6. Levels of business processes: from business strategy to
implemented business processes
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Classification of Business Processes
Business Strategy
Organizational Processes
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High level
Specified in textual form by
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determines
realize
Goals
determine
Inputs
Outputs
Expected results
Dependencies on other processes
realize
Organizational
Business Processes
determine
realize
Operational
Business Processes
e.g. process to manage incoming
raw materials provided by a set of
suppliers
determine
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

realize
Implemented
Business Processes
Fig 1.6. Levels of business processes: from business strategy to
implemented business processes
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Classification of Business Processes
Business Strategy
Operational Processes
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
determines
There are multiple organizational
processes that contribute to
organizational process
In operational processes activities
and their relationships are
specified
Operational process are specified
by process models
realize
Goals
determine
realize
Organizational
Business Processes
determine
realize
Operational
Business Processes
determine
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

realize
Implemented
Business Processes
Fig 1.6. Levels of business processes: from business strategy to
implemented business processes
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Classification of Business Processes
Business Strategy

Operational Processes are
basis for developing
implemented processes
Implemented processes
contain information on the


determines
realize
Goals
determine
realize
Organizational
Business Processes
determine
execution of process activities
technical and organizational
environment in which they will be
executed
realize
Operational
Business Processes
determine
M. Weske: Business Process Management,
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

realize
Implemented
Business Processes
Fig 1.6. Levels of business processes: from business strategy to
implemented business processes
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Classification of Business Processes

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Organizational vs Operational
Intra-organizational Processes vs Process
Choreographies
Degree of Automation
Degree of Repetition
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Classification of Business Processes
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Intra-organizational processes, no interaction
with processes performed by other parties
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Primary focus is to streamline internal processes
(eliminate activities that do not bring value)
Allocate activities to persons who are skilled and
competent
Most business processes interact with
processes in other organizations forming
process choreographies
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Interaction protected by legally binding contracts
More technical aspects are involved here because
different organizations use different software
platforms
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Classification of Business Processes
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
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Organizational vs Operational
Intra-organizational Processes vs Process
Choreographies
Degree of Automation
Degree of Repetition
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Classification of Business Processes
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Degree of automation
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Fully automated, no human is involved e.g. airline
ticket using web interfaces
Many processes require manual activities, but
also include automated activities e.g. insurance
claim
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Classification of Business Processes
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Degree of Repetition
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Highly repetitive, include business processes
without human involvement e.g. online ticketing
Process that occur few times e.g. large
engineering efforts like designing a vessel
If repetitive  process modeling, automation
If not repetitive  process modeling and
automation is questionable due to high cost
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Classification of Business Processes
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Degree of structuring
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Either highly structured (rigid) or flexible for
knowledge workers.
Data dependencies are used instead of control
flow constraints
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