A maturity model towards BPM/SOA Alignment: Establishing a Flexible and Agile Business-driven Service-oriented Enterprise

Transcription

1 A maturity model towards BPM/SOA Alignment: Establishing a Flexible and Agile Business-driven Service-oriented Master thesis Business Informatics, Anne Hiemstra Scriptie nummer: INF-SCR-08-32

2 A matu urity mo odel tow wards BP PM/SOA A Alignm ment: Estaablishin ng a Flexxible and d Agile B Business driven n Servicce o oriented d Enterp prise Master tthesis Businesss Informatics, by Anne Hiemsstra

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4 3 A maturity model towards BPM/SOA Alignment: Establishing a Flexible and Agile Business driven Service oriented Anne Hiemstra University of Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands December 9, 2008 Supervisors P. Ravesteyn, MSc, University of Utrecht prof. dr. S. Brinkkemper, University of Utrecht Drs. Y. Hoekstra, Senior Consultant / Business Architect, Capgemini Netherlands Ing. G. Tomsits, Managing Consultant, Capgemini Netherlands

5 4 Preface This Master thesis is the final product of eight months of research. It has been carried out in cooperation by the University of Utrecht and Capgemini. This research can be of value to people from the business or IT branch that have an interest in BPM and SOA, their relationship and how they can be of value to each other. In addition, BPM experts or architects can use the assessment tool to measure the maturity of organizations, which can for example, support improvement plans or enable discussion. Acknowledgements Carrying out this research project required a lot of support from many people. First, I would like to thank my supervisors, Yvette Hoekstra (Capgemini) and Pascal Ravesteijn (University of Utrecht) for the guidance and support they provided throughout this project. The success of this research also depended on the support and cooperation of many other people. First, Fred Steenbergen (Capgemini) and Pieter Hörchner (Capgemini) were of great value for the internal validation phase. Second, I would like to thank Dave van Gelder (Capgemini) for using his network in providing respondents from external organizations. Very special thanks to Jennifer van Vuuren for the many brainstorm sessions we had and her support and feedback through some difficult periods throughout the research project. Final, I would like to thank Pascal Ravesteijn and Johan Versendaal for their contribution to the paper which has been submitted to the ECIS 2009.

6 5 Abstract Nowadays, many organizations perform interaction and collaboration with stakeholders, partners and customers on a global scale. Global interchange enables enterprises and organizations to quickly respond to environmental changes and utilize new methods to introduce (new) products and services into various (global) markets. Furthermore, organizations are then able to directly target specific customer groups and moreover address their needs more quickly than ever before. At the same time, customers are accustomed to rapid product deliveries and are increasingly demanding such things as product configuration to personalize their needs. To cope with such important business changes, organizations make large investments in IS and IT. New technological possibilities give way to new methods, frameworks and technological infrastructures, which enterprises integrate and implement to become more agile and flexible in their IS/IT landscape. This has resulted in information spread across various (mostly) non integrated information systems, distributed in all sorts of ways: across technologies, languages, and places and in different types of groups and objects, causing information and process inconsistencies everywhere across the enterprise (Evgeniou 2002). Business Process Management (BPM) provides methods to enable continuous analysis, optimization and management of the business processes, resulting in higher business process visibility (Elzinga & Horak & Chung Yee & Bruner 1995). According to Smith and Fingar (2003), enterprises are increasingly dependent on BPM to keep their business processes in control due to these booming business globalization and commoditization. BPM utilizes advanced tools in order to automate processes in conjunction with functionality to analyze, measure and improve their performance. Although these systems and applications provide some flexibility in the management of process flows, the underlying IT infrastructure is often rigid and full of high couplings (Gopala & Behara 2006). Combining BPM with SOA, creates opportunities to, not only be able to visualize the enterprises processes, but to also develop a flexible internal IT infrastructure. However, despite the obvious synergy between BPM and SOA, leveraging the two concepts is not that straightforward. Obtaining optimal alignment requires major organizational transformations (Gopala et al. 2006, Woodley & Gagnon 2005, Kamoun 2007). In a survey conducted by the Aberdeen Group (Donham 2007), CIO s were asked about their drivers to adopt SOA, 62% answered the need to support new, agile processes as a top pressure driver, 44% of the respondents thought their current ERP system or best of breed supply chain solution insufficient to provide the desired functionality. In effect, vendors of various Business Process Management systems make use of SOA technologies, such as web services, to address these new organizational requirements. This narrow focus of BPM suites and technologies on process automation has blurred the traditional BPM approach. The holistic approach for the processing of processes has changed towards a focus on business process integration and has evolved towards an orchestration niche (Fingar 2008). Instead of bridging the gap between business and IT with a focus on strategy, it has become an IT process management approach with a tactical focus and limited scope (Fingar 2008). These new technologies and suites also have effect on the perception of organizations with respect to SOA. As vendors propagate a lot of opportunities and benefits by leveraging SOA technologies, organizations expect a one size fits all solutions. The full complexity of implementing and adopting an enterprise wide SOA is overlooked and not fully understood, resulting in common misconceptions about SOA as an architecture paradigm (Lewis & Morris & Simantra & Wrage 2007). Establishing such an environment requires much more than merely implementing BPM technology together with a SOA technology like web service support. Our proposition is that alignment is required between a holistic BPM approach and a true SOA vision in order to establish a business driven service oriented enterprise to be truly agile and flexible. The way we approached, is by creating a model that addresses maturity and alignment of BPM and SOA. The last two decades, maturity is used as a measure to evaluate the capabilities of an organization with regard to certain disciplines. Since the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) proposed by the Carnegie Mellon University (Paulk & Weber & Curtis & Chrissis 1995) maturity models have extended the CMM model to suit the scope and discipline of for example IT infrastructure Management, Enterprise Architecture, BPM and SOA. Yet, to our knowledge there are no models focusing on measuring the alignment and maturity between BPM and SOA to establish a business process driven service oriented enterprise by means of a quick scan. In this paper we answer the following research question: How can we establish an agile and flexible business driven service oriented enterprise, using BPM/SOA maturity and alignment principles?

7 6 The contribution of this paper is 1) The BPM/SOA Alignment Maturity Model, which 2) considers a holistic perspective of organizational aspects that concerns the BPM and SOA approaches and the alignment between the two, as well as Enterprise Architecture, business/it alignment and IS/IT governance. 3) It provides a questionnaire as assessment tool for the model and a roadmap consisting of key activities that can support the organization in their evolution from the towards maturity state. 4) This research bridges several disciplines to construct a model focusing on the alignment of BPM/SOA and business/it in order to establish a truly agile and flexible business driven enterprise, namely Enterprise Architecture, business/it alignment and IS/IT governance. Currently, there is little research about achieving a BPM/SOA synergy or alignment and no maturity mo del is available for this purpose. This research is based on a literature review to identify and analyze BPM and SOA approaches and best practices and maturity models, in order to identify the key factors, frameworks and models. In addition, semi structured interviews are performed with experts in the field of BPM and SOA adoption and implementation. These interviews provided possible success and failure factors of BPM and SOA initiatives as well as a practical vision of such an optimal environment. In addition, the model has been assessed at a large financial organization in the Netherlands to validate its applicability in practice. The assessment tool has been thoroughly changed during these assessments to extend the value proposition of the model and to ensure that the questions of the questionnaire are as consistent as possible. The questionnaire is extended in such a way that the as is as well as to be situation can be answered. In effect, the desired state of the business as well as IT respondents can be measured and reflected to each other as well as to the desired state of executive managers.

8 7 Contents 1 INTRODUCTION PROBLEM AREA RESEARCH QUESTIONS IS RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AS A STARTING POINT SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL CONTRIBUTION OUTLINE OF THIS STUDY LITERATURE STUDY BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE BPM AND SOA MATURITY MODELS FOR BPM AND SOA REFERENCE MODELS METHODS ENVIRONMENT IS RESEARCH: EVALUATE INTERVIEWS WITH EXPERTS AT CAPGEMINI THE BPM/SOA ENVIRONMENT MOVING TOWARDS THE BPM/SOA ENVIRONMENT LEVERAGING THE SERVICE CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE TO BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING THE INFORMATION MODEL CHANGING THE TRADITIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY MODEL RESULTS DEVELOP/BUILD AND EVALUATE PHASE A META MODEL TO SUPPORT THE RESEARCH ACTIVITIES ESTABLISHING MATURITY LEVELS ESTABLISHING THE DIMENSIONS DEFINING THE KEY FACTORS WITHIN THE CELLS CONSTRUCTION OF THE ROADMAP EXTERNAL EVALUATION PHASE EXTERNAL VALIDATION WITHIN CAPGEMINI VALIDATION WITH EXPERTS OF EXTERNAL ORGANIZATIONS THE BPM/SOA ALIGNMENT MATURITY MODEL PURPOSE AND PROPOSITIONS OF THE MODEL THE MATURITY LEVELS THE DIMENSIONS... 86

9 8 7.4 APPLICATION OF THE MODEL APPLICATION OF THE MODEL IN PRACTICE INTRODUCTION THE ASSESSMENT RESULTS CONCLUSIONS DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX DIMENSIONS WITH THE RESULTS OF INTERVIEWS AND SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ADJUSTMENTS TO KEY FACTORS OF THE MODEL IN THE VALIDATION PHASE BPM/SOA AMM OVERVIEW BPM/SOA DIMENSIONS ROADMAP DESCRIPTIONS OF SOME KEY FACTORS IN THE BPM/SOA AMM QUESTIONNAIRES ABBREVIATIONS AND EXPLANATORY DESCRIPTIONS

10 9 1 Introduction 1.1 Problem Area The technological developments of the last two decades have increased pressure on organizations and enterprises to continuously strive to stay ahead of competition. The emerge of Internet and related technologies significantly increased globalization, which is the concept of mobility of goods, services, labor, technology and capital throughout the world (Thurlow, Lengel, Tomic, 2004). This brought rigorous changes in traditional way of doing business. Especially the interaction with stakeholders, partners and customers, is faster, easier and most important they can be reached on a global scale. This gives enterprises and organizations opportunities to quickly respond to environmental changes and utilize new methods to introduce (new) products and services into various (global) markets. Furthermore, organizations are now able to directly target specific customer groups, on an international level, and moreover address their needs more quickly than ever before. As a result, customers got accustomed to fast product deliveries, higher focus of organizations on customer satisfaction and the ability to compare and choose between products of various suppliers. This has an immense impact on the traditional way of doing business, as companies have to focus on the rapidly changing customer requirements and at the same time recon with decisions and activities of competitors and (newly bound) collaborative associations. To cope with these important business changes, organizations made large investments in IS and IT. New technological possibilities gave way to new methods, frameworks and technological infrastructures, which enterprises integrated and implemented to be more agile and flexible in their IS/IT landscape. This evolved in information spread across various (mostly) non integrated information systems, distributed in all sorts of ways: across technologies, languages, and places and in different types of groups and objects, causing information and process inconsistencies across the enterprise (Evgeniou, 2002). Evgeniuo (2002) states that enterprises want to be flexible in terms of IT policy across the organization and at the same time have a sense of visibility in their information. He describes the optimal situation where an enterprise has a high visibility and high or dynamic flexibility as an adaptive enterprise. Where business management is able to discover, access, analyze, manage and control the information asset of the enterprise, while the IS/IT domain must enable these activities in a visible and flexible manner. Business Process Management provides methods to enable continuously analysis, optimization and management of business processes, which can result in a higher visibility. Although some BPM systems and applications provide some flexibility in the management of process flows, the underlying IT infrastructure is often rigid and full of high couplings. Combining BPM with SOA, creates opportunities to, not only be able to visualize the enterprise, but to also be efficiently in the management of the internal IT infrastructure. In effect, the enterprise should be able to gain a high visibility and flexibility (Evgeniou, 2002). However, despite the obvious synergy between BPM and SOA, leveraging the two concepts is not that easy, because optimal alignment requires major organizational transformations (Gopala & Behara, 2006; Woodley & Gagnon, 2005; Kamoun, 2007). In the survey of the Aberdeen Group (Donham, 2007), CIO s were asked about their drivers to adopt SOA; 62% answered the need to support new, agile processes as a top pressure driver, 44% of the respondents ought their current ERP system or bestof breed supply chain solution insufficient to provide the desired functionality. In effect, vendors of various Business Process Management products implement SOA technologies, like web services, to address these new organizational needs. Therefore, companies are now also supporting the idea that deep synergies exist between the BPM and SOA approaches (Bea Systems Inc, 2008). Nowadays, the vision of BPM has blurred due to these new BPM suites and new technologies. The holistic approach for the processing of processes has changed towards a focus on business process integration and has evolved towards an orchestration niche (Fingar, 2008). Instead of bridging the gap between business and IT with a focus on strategy, it has become an IT process management approach with a tactical focus and limited scope (Fingar, 2008). These new technologies and suites also have its effect on the perception of organizations on behalf of SOA. This resulted in common misconceptions and limited understanding of the full complexity of adoption an enterprise wide SOA (Weske, 2005). In effect, potential and current adopters tend to overlook the expected effort that is required for enterprise wide SOA adoption (Lewis A., Morris E., Simantra S., Wrage L., 2007). This results in various problems when trying to create a flexible and agile organization by means of BPM and SOA.

11 10 Establishing such an environment requires much more that merely implementing a BPM technology with web service support. An alignment is required between the holistic BPM approach and the true SOA vision in order to establish a business driven service oriented enterprise to be truly agile and flexible. The last two decades, maturity is used as a measure to evaluate the capabilities of an organization in regards to a certain discipline (Rosemann & de Bruin, 2004). Since the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) proposed by the Carnegie Mellon University (Paulk, Weber, Curtis, and Chrissis, 1995) maturity models have extended CMM to suit the scope and discipline of for example IT infrastructure Management, Enterprise Architecture, BPM and SOA. The results of a pre literature study showed that there are no quick scans or roadmaps focusing on a BPM/SOA alignment at the moment. There are however, several holistic maturity models available which could be used as a quick scan for BPM, (Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMM and CMMI) (Paulk et al., 1995), PEMM (Hammer, 2007), Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) (Fisher, 2004; Rosemann & de Bruin, 2005), and SOA, (Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) (The Open Group, 2006), CBDI SOA Maturity Model (Sprott, 2005) and the Level 5 Oracle SOA Maturity Model (Oracle, 2007). The contribution of this research project is 1) The BPM/SOA Alignment Maturity Model, which 2) considers a holistic perspective of organizational aspects that concerns the BPM and SOA approaches and the alignment between the two, as well as Enterprise Architecture, business/it alignment and IS/IT governance. 3) It provides a questionnaire as assessment tool for the model and a roadmap consisting of key activities that can support the organization in their evolution from the towards maturity state. 4) This research bridges several disciplines to construct a model focusing on the alignment of BPM/SOA and business/it in order to establish a truly agile and flexible business driven enterprise, namely Enterprise Architecture, business/it alignment and IS/IT governance. Currently, there is little research about achieving a BPM/SOA synergy or alignment and no maturity model is available for this purpose. This res earch is based on a literature review to identify and analyze BPM and SOA approaches and best practices and maturity m odels, in order to identify the key factors, frameworks and models. In addition, semi structured interviews are performed with experts of Capgemini, operating in the field of BPM and SOA. These interviews focus on possible success and failure factors of BPM and SOA initiatives, their perspective of such an environment and the usage of maturity levels or aspects of these models that could be suitable for the purpose of this research. Subsequently, the results of semi structured interviews and scientific literature study will be used to construct the BPM/SOA Alignment Maturity Model. To construct the model, the IS Research Framework of Hevner et al. (2004) is used to ensure a qualitative design research approach. This framework requires that the research adds value to the environment, to address the needs of the business, and to the scientific knowledge base. The value propositions of the model describe in what way the maturity model will address the busines s needs. Subsequently, the research will extend the knowledge base with new insights of the key factors that influence the align ment between BPM and SOA. In addition, as there is little scientific literature written about the synergy between BPM a nd SOA and there is yet no maturity model focusing on the alignment between BPM and SOA, this study will extend the knowledge base with a holistic perspective in the relation to other scientific fields like enterprise architecture, business/it a lignment and IS/IT governance.

12 Research questions This aim of this research project is to develop a method to evaluate and measure the organizational readiness regarding the implementation of BPM and SOA initiatives in a short period of time. The following research question has to be answered: How can the BPM/SOA maturity of organizations be measured by means of a quick scan in order to establish a business driven service oriented enterprise which is truly agile and flexible? To address the main research question, the sub questions are divided into three parts, each relating to a phase of the research project. The scientific literature consists of questions relating to the scientific literature study, Capgemini to the expert interviews and Capgemini & Science include on the one hand the relation of the results of the open structured interviews to important findings of the scientific literature study, and on the other the composition of the quick scan method. The following sub research questions are formulated in relation to the aim of this research: Scientific literature Question 1 (Q1) How can Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) support each other? Question 2 (Q2) How can BPM and SOA be aligned to achieve an agile and flexible organizational environment? Question 3 (Q3) What maturity models are available to measure the maturity of BPM, SOA and BPM/SOA initiatives in a short period of time? Capgemini Question 5 (Q5) What do experts at Capgemini find to be good maturity models to analyze organizations where BPM and SOA are to be implemented? Question 6 (Q6) How do these experts describe an optimal BPM/SOA environment? Question 7 (Q7) How can an optimal BPM and SOA situation be achieved according to these experts? Scientific literature & Capgemini Question 8 (Q8) Is one model directly applicable to measure the BPM/SOA maturity for the purpose of agile analysis? Sub question 8b (Q8b) If not, how can the aspects of the various BPM and SOA models be combined to construct such a model? Question 9 (Q9) How can the model be used as a quick scan?

13 12 The expectation of this study was that there are no quick scan maturity models to measure the alignment between BPM and SOA. The first two sub research questions are of an exploratory nature to investigate how a BPM/SOA environment looks like, how the both approach can be connected and adapted to reach a certain synergy where BPM and SOA deliver more benefits than either one can provide alone. The purpose of the third sub question is of explanatory nature, to explain which models are currently applicable to measure a BPM, SOA or BPM/SOA environment. The sub research question that concerns the experience and opinions of the expert of Capgemini are of an exploratory purpose. The BPM/SOA phenomenon is investigated to identify and discover important categories of meaning, like what elements are important to reach an optimal BPM/SOA environment. The last element where the results of the expert interviews and the literature study come together is used to describe how the model should look like and how the results of the previous sub research questions can be used to construct such a model.

14 IS research Framework as a starting point The pre literature study proved that there is no model applicable for the purpose of this research. In addition, results of scientific literature study, focusing on the BPM/SOA alignment or business driven service oriented enterprise, proved that this research covers comprehensive aspects. Therefore, a structured approach was necessary to merge and combine several models, scientific literature and results of semi structured interviews. The Information System Research Framework of Hevner, March, Park and Ram (2004) is chosen as a starting point to construct the model for the following reasons. First, because of its clear guidelines, structure and relationship between IS research, environment and knowledge base. Second, it ensures a qualitative design research approach. Subsequently, to improve reliability of the study, which concerns whether operations of the research can be repeated with the same results (Yin, 2003), the method engineering discipline is used to model and describe the activities with the corresponding deliverables. The objective of the study of Hevner et al. (2004) is to describe, the performance of design science research in Information Systems via a concise conceptual framework and clear guidelines for understanding, executing, and evaluating the research. IT has received a lot of attention in the scientific field, mainly because of the impact on the effectiveness of organizations. According to March and Smith (1995), this interest can be divided in descriptive and prescriptive studies. Where descriptive studies aim to understand, explain and predict why certain phenomena in IT are occurring, prescriptive approach aims at improving performance to meet business needs (March & Smith, 1995; Hevner et al., 2004). The descriptive studies are defined as a knowledge producing activity, which is related to behavioral or natural science, where the prescriptive is a knowledgeusing activity corresponding to design science (March & Smith, 1995; Hevner et al., 2004). These two different interest groups have created a dichotomy among IT researchers and disagreement over what constitutes legitimate scientific research in the field (March & Smith, 1995). However, Hevner et al. (2004) propagates that in IT as well as IS research domain, technology and behavior or justified theory and artifacts that are effective are two sides of the same coin and thus inseparable. The framework of Hevner et al. (2004), depicted in Figure 20, is generally based on the study of March and Smith (1995) who created a research framework to combine the activities of the two research sciences to ensure that IT research is both relevant and effective. This framework is depicted in Table 1. Research activities Research outputs Build Evaluate Theorize Justify Constructs Model Method Instantiation Table 1. Design science research framework (March & Smith, 1995) The framework of Hevner (2004), however, takes a more comprehensive approach by explicitly defining the boundaries of design science in the IS discipline in order to understand information system research and describes a set of guidelines for the conduction and evaluation of quality design science research. Although the framework primarily focuses on technology based design, they explicitly mention their interest in exploration of organizations, policies, and work practices as designed artifacts. Thus, the model can also be used for other practices than technology design approaches. This holistic approach with its clear boundaries and comprehensive boundaries and guidelines makes the framework extremely valuable to serve as a basis for this research.

15 14 Figure 1. Information System Research Framework (Hevner et al., 2004) The IS Research uses the output of the Environment and Knowledge base as inputs for the development of a particular solution, which is in the study of Hevner et al. (2004) primarily focused on technology based solutions. The IS Research consists of the following elements: Develop/Build: March and Smith (1995) define the Build phase as follows; Building is the process of constructing an artifact for a specific purpose. Justify / Evaluate: In effect, they describe the Evaluate phase as; Evaluation is the process of determining how well the artifact performs (March & Smith, 1995). These elements and their outputs are highly related to the framework of March and Smith (1995) as Table 1 displays. The outputs can be described as follows (March & Smith, 2004): Constructs: The conceptual vocabulary of a domain. Models: The set of propositions or statements expressing relationships between constructs. Methods: A set of steps used to perform a task how to knowledge to satisfy the business needs of the Environment. Instantiations: Bringing the constructs, models and methods into practice. Better Theories: The addition to the Knowledge Base. The environment provides the business need which should be satisfied by the results of the IS Research element. Otherwise it is not perceived as useful as it does not solve a particular problem (Hevner et al., 2004). The knowledge base of the IS framework consists out of the following two elements: Foundations: This element consists of the results of related scientific disciplines and previous IS research, and methodologies, like data collection and empirical analysis (Hevner et al., 2004). According to this model, the foundation provides the frameworks, instruments, models, constructs, etc., which are utilized in the Develop/Build phase of the IS Research element. The Methodologies provide the guidelines for the Justify/Evaluate phase. Methodologies: This element provides the guidelines which are used in the Justify and Evaluate phase of the IS Research element. It consists of e.g. guidelines for data analysis, techniques and validation criteria.

16 15 Although this framework describes what should be delivered in qualitative design research supported by several guidelines, no method is proposed how to model, design and construct these deliverables. To address this issue, the method engineering discipline is used to model and describe the activities with the corresponding deliverables. This method is defined as follows: Method engineering is the engineering discipline to design, construct and adapt methods, techniques and tools for the development of information systems (Brinkkemper, 1996). Although no method will be adapted, its techniques and modeling notations will be used to describe which activities will be used with their corresponding deliverables. Its meta modeling approach stimulates the reusability of method fragments, which can be useful for describing the construction of the maturity model (Brinkkemper, 1996). 1.4 Scientific and practical contribution This research provides new insights in how to achieve a BPM/SOA Synergy and what disciplines and key factors are important in achieving that synergy. In addition, the BPM/SOA Alignment maturity model is the first model that focuses on BPM as well as SOA factors and goes beyond these disciplines by incorporating enterprise architecture, SOA governance and Business/IT alignment aspects. In addition, its holistic and broad perspective enables future extensions to other or new emerging disciplines. For the environment, or practical contribution, this research provides an assessment tool to measure the agility and flexibility of an business driven service oriented enterprise. As such, it enables discussion between business, IT and executive managers about their as is situation as well as their desired state. In addition, the roadmap provides organizations directions on what activities are important to evolve towards their desired state. In effect, the roadmap can be used to support available improvement plans.

17 Outline of this study The chapters of the thesis will be structured as follows: Chapter two will use a scientific literature study to answer the sub research questions Q1, Q2 and Q3. The first subchapter will discuss Business Process Management (BPM); its definitions, lifecycle, technologies, how BPM affects the structure of an organization, and techniques. The second subchapter will discuss Service Oriented Architecture (SOA); definitions, (web) services, brief history, middleware technology and operations. The third subchapter will use the results of the previous subchapters of chapter two, literature about combining BPM and SOA and achieving the optimal alignment (synergy) to answer the research questions Q1 and Q2. Subchapter four will evaluate maturity models which could serve as a quick scan to measure BPM and SOA. From the results of a pre literature study the conclusion was drawn that there were no quick scan maturity models available to measure the BPM/SOA maturity. Therefore, from the results of subchapter three, reference models are selected to support the construction of a BPM/SOA maturity model in subchapter five. In addition, a IS Research Framework is used as a foundation for the construction of the model. This is discussed in subchapter six. Chapter three will discuss the methods that are used in this research; the literature study, qualitative semi structured interviews and the methods to validate the model. The results of the research are divided into four chapters: Results of the interviews with expert of Capgemini to answer the research questions Q5, Q6 and Q7. The results of the phases to construct the BPM/SOA maturity model and to answer research question Q8b The description of the BPM/SOA Alignment Maturitymodel; its maturity levels, dimensions, key factors and how it should be utilized. Final, chapter seven will discuss the application of the model in practice at a large financial organization. In chapter eight the research questions will be answered with the findings and results of the previous chapters. The final chapter will discuss the recommendations for future research and the limitations of the research.

18 17 2 Literature study 2.1 Business Process Management T his chapter will discuss Business Process Management; its definitions, elements and techniques. Because BPM is seen as a holistic management approach and the research focuses on the construction of a BPM/SOA maturity model quick scan, this chapter will discuss the most important elements as defined by literature. The results of this literature study will provide the chapter 2.3 with information how BPM can be supported by SOA. To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often (Winston Churchill) The BPM approach Introduction and definitions Organizations have continuously been striving to increase revenue, improve quality and reduce costs. Many methods, techniques and approaches were developed to support organizations in their endeavor. These methods and approaches however, have been changing continuously. The last decade, Business Process Management (BPM) has received a lot of attention as a new or reemerging approach (Elzinga, Horak, Chung Yee, Bruner, 1995; DeToro & McCabe, 1997). Two domains provided significant support to BPM: business administration and computer science communities. Where the business administration focuses on increasing customer satisfaction, reducing costs and improving operations, the computer science communities are interested in providing robust and scalable software systems (Weske A., 2007). However, BPM does not always need technology to be successful, but it can be an important enabler and useful contributor (Jeston & Nelis, 2008). BPM originates from Business Process Reengineering (BPR), described by Hammer (1990), Hammer and Champhy (1993) and Davenport (1993), and Total Quality Management (TQM) (Lee & Dale, 1993). Although both approaches have similarities, TQM has a more continuous process improvement perspective, with a focus on learning, where as BPR is rule breaking and radical, aimed at the development of entirely new processes, and with a focus of entirely new processes (Ravesteyn, 2007; Chang, 2005). Hackman and Wageman (1995) identified a number of practices of TQM assumptions, which preponderantly returns in BPM (Chang, 2005): identification of customer requirements in order to provide the quality the customer wants to perceive, form strategic supplier relationships to select the best cost and quality ratio, the use of cross functional teams to improve quality by identifying problems that span multiple functions within an organization, and develop and test solutions to resolve these problems, scientific methods for monitoring quality and identifying areas for quality improvement, like statistical and probabilistic techniques, process management techniques to improve the generation of quality improvement ideas. DeToro and McCabe (1997), describe BPM as an approach that presents a more comprehensive array of improvement options and can help organizations to avoid the tendency to fall prey to the hype of a new management fad. Drivers to adopt BPM are globalization, changing technology, regulation, the action of stakeholders, and the eroding of business boundaries (Armistead, Machin, Pritchard, 1997; McAdam, McCormack, 2001). There are many definitions of BPM ranging from an ITfocused view to a holistic management practice (Rosemann & Bruin, 2005), such as: A systematic, structured approach to analyze, improve, control, manage processes with the aim of improving the quality of products and services (Elzinga et al., 1995), Business process management includes concepts, methods, and techniques to support the design, administration, configuration, enactment, and analysis of business processes (Weske, 2007) and

19 18 A structured approach to analyze and continually improve fundamental activities such as manufacturing, marketing, communications and other major elements of a company s operations (Zairi, 1997). In this research BPM will be viewed as follows: BPM is a holistic approach to manage organizations; focusing on processes and process improvement activities on a ongoing basis with a sound focus on culture change and strategy development (Armistead & Machin, 1997; Zairi, 1997). This definition has been created from the definitions of Armistead and Machin (1997) and Zairi (1997) Business processes A business process consists of interdependent activities designed and structured to deliver a specific output, which can serve as an event, input, assignment or invocation to other applications, business processes, or human actors (Papazoglou, 2007). As an activity performs a specific function, ordering a set of activities from the beginning to an end, can be as seen a process. Another way to describe a process is as a sequence of steps, with a desired input, like an event, to transform information, material, or commitments, to produce a specific output (Harmon, 2003; Papazoglou, 2007). Coupling these processes to serve a business context, in order to produce a specific output for a customer or market or business goal, forms a business process (Papazoglou, 2007; Weske, 2007; Chang, 2005). In BPM, there is a high emphasis on improving the business processes, in order to increase the quality of the output, time to market or decrease costs (Elzinga et al., 1995; Zairi, 1997). In effect, determining performance measures of the process, like cost, quality, time and customer satisfaction, is vital to maximize their performance (Papazoglou, 2007; Chang, 2005). This is emphasized by a statement of Chang (2005) who states, if processes are not measurable, it is not possible to determine the value they create. Although Business processes serve a single organization, they can interact with business processes performed by other organizations. Because business process can provide events or deliver information to other business processes, they can be composed into a set of internal and external business processes. As such, they can be composed into a business processes supporting the entire value chain, to produce a product or product line (Weske, 2007). Thus, improving these business processes can provide significant benefits to multiple parties in the supply chain, like time to market, quality improvement, increased productivity, faster response to the rapidly change customer demands, etc. (Weske, 2007; Doyle, 1998; Adam & McCormack, 2001). However, especially in an enterprise wide environment, these business processes may include complex actions, like the coordination or execution of other (distributed) processes and activities, making improvement activities extremely complex (Papazoglou, 2007) Integrating business logic Before any measurements and analysis can be performed, business processes need to be described. Process descriptions provide means to prescribe which entities are to perform which tasks at what time. Managers can utilize this information to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, process defects and faulty coordination (Zhu, Osterweil, Staphles and Kannengiesser, 2008). Business process models define business processes, describing the activity models and execution constraints between them, as a simple example depicts in Figure 1 (Weske, 2007). In this example, each order that is processed is a business process instance, thus the business process model can be reused in a one to many relationship. The same holds for the activity models, which can also be instantiated. Figure 2. A simple ordering process of a reseller (Weske A., 2007)

20 19 Integrating the business logic of various systems throughout multiple enterprises to support, structure and design a business process into a business model is called Business Process Integration (BPI). Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is concerned with the integration of systems and application within a single enterprise. BPI interconnects with the EAI of multiple enterprises in such a way that no major investments are necessary to couple the various distributed legacy systems in order to extract specific application logic (Papazoglou, 2007). BPI is often supported by workflow management systems (WfMS) when complex and intricate processes need additional human input and intervention (Papazoglou, 2007). Jung et al. (2006) define WfMS as, systems that provide modeling, executing and administrating of business processes in consideration of organizational models. According to Papazoglou (2007), the extension of BPI with management is commonly referred to as Business Process Management, emphasizing on the automation of processes to achieve maximum flexibility with minimum development cost and time Organizational structure and BPM In many companies, the traditional organizational structure has evolve d in a way of thinking where every department (silo) focuses on their own activities and operates in their own way, with little regard to the overall process (Harmon, 2004a). This is also known as silo thinking, where every department in the organizational grap h is depicted as an isolated silo. By focusing on the end to end process, from supplier to customer perspective, including all of the core and support processes necessary to turn the raw resources into deliverables (products or services), organizations get a clearer picture of e.g. the costs and revenues of each process in the value chain (Harmon, 2004a). McAdam (1997) calls this a process based approach, which should improve customer satisfaction, as the traditional structure suffers from poor communication and turf protection between departments (Zaire, 1997). This process based view of looking at the organization is based on the value chain definition described by Porter (Porter & Fuller, 1986). He refers to value as something the customer perceives and is willing to pay for (Harmon, 2003). Mapping this process based approach onto the organization, results in the example of Figure 2. In this depiction, major business processes overlap multiple functional units, forming in a horizontal structure. The relation between BPM, business processes and value is emphasized by Zaire (1997), as he states BPM is concerned with the main aspects of business operations where there is high leverage and a big proportion of added value. He also mentions that BPM has to be governed by certain rules. One of these rules is that BPM has to create a focus on customers through horizontal linkages between key activities (Zairi, 1997). However, restructuring an organization from a vertical to horizontal way of thinking has a severe impact on employees and management, as their traditional way of working and thinking has to change. Change management should support this transformation, in order to get people engaged in delivering success, encourage people to process oriented thinking and give their full support to the project (Miers, 2006). A simple example would be a workshop where the employees get familiar to BPM, best practices, and process oriented thinking. A vital role in achieving successful change management and improvement process is for by toplevel management,, as they determine strategies, designing processes and enabling employees to contribute (Zaire, 1997; Harrington, 1995; Zhu, Osterweil, Staphles and Kannengiesser, 2007). Zaire (1997) also states, The achievement of a BPM culture depends very much on the establishment of total alignment of corporate goals and having every employee s effort focused on adding value to the end customer. Figure 3. Functional Units, Value chains, and Processes (Harmon, 2004)

21 The Business Process lifecycle Figure 4. The business process lifecycle (Weske A., 2007) The business process lifecycle by Weske (2007), depicted in Figure 3, describes concepts and technologies related to BPM. The lifecycles illustrates several phases in support of operational business processes, logically organized in a cyclical structure. Although these divisions, flows and dependencies indicate a rigid and definite movement through the lifecycle, many of the activities in the design and development are performed during each of the phases (Weske A., 2007).The lifecycle is centered on administration and stakeholders, who are responsible in managing, organizing and executing various tasks defined in the surrounding lifecycle phases. This emphasizes the imperative human factor in BPM Design & Analysis The Design & Analysis phase is the first step to initiate the lifecycle. According to Muehlen and Ho (2006), the first step is to specify the organizational process goals by means of a assessment of environmental and organizational factors and constraints. These assessments are often conducted in the form of surveys. The results of these surveys are in the form of informal descriptions and are translated into business process models by means of specific modeling notations (Weske, A., 2007). One of such a notation is the Business Process Modeling notation (BPMN), which is developed by the Object Management Group (OMG) and is generally accepted as a standard process definition language (OMG, 2006). This notation provides a way to capture activities, decision responsibilities, control and data flow in business process within an organization (Decker, G., Barros, A., 2007). Chapter further discusses the use of standards in BPM. The business process models facilitate the communication of the business processes to improve the understanding of stakeholders, allowing them to identify those processes the organization would like to analyze, redesign and/or automate (Muehlen, Ho, 2006; Weske, 2007). Elucidating important variables, like process limitations, is according to Muehlen and Ho (2006) one of the first steps in designing and redesigning processes. Workshops are commonly used for this purpose. During these workshops the validation of the initial design models are often in are discussed with the stakeholders, to ensure that all valid business process instances are translated appropriately (Weske, A.,

22 ). Simulation is a important enabler in these activities, as it enables the stakeholders to not only walk through each step of the entire process but, most importantly, to shows if a sequence does not contain any undesired properties and actually displays the desired behavior (Weske, 2007) Configuration According to Weske (2007), there are two ways to translate the business process models into the operational information. The first way is to manually implement the models by a set of policies and procedures were the employees must comply to. The second way is to automate the implementation process by utilizing process aware information systems, like workflow software (Muehlen, Ho, 2006; Weske, 2007). Nowadays, it is most common to use a process aware BPM system to model, test and deploy the business processes. While selecting or configuring a system, stakeholders must bear in mind the organizational environment of the enterprise, like existing (legacy) systems and usability to support employee interaction. Especially the current technological infrastructure, like legacy systems, can bring about additional implementation efforts to integrate the BPM system (Weske, 2007). According to Weske (2007), integration and performance testing plays a vital role in detecting run time errors. These errors are normally only returned when the system is implemented, thus providing significant added value in reducing costs and effort. Other activities after the implementation could be the training of personnel and the integration of data into the new platform Enactment The BPM system actively controls the execution of business process instances, often initiated by a predefined event. For example, when the customer sends a receipt, the system will define the necessary steps at run time. These steps are controlled by the orchestration and execution constraints defined in the process model. As discussed in the Chapter , managers depend on accurate information of the status of the process to define and determine the improvement options. Therefore, it is vital that the system presents accurate information about the status of the business process instances, as such that the stakeholders can accurately respond to additional requests or to notice any undesired behavior and performance issues (Weske, 2007). During the run time business process enactment this information is stored in an execution log, which can be utilized in the evaluation phase (Weske, 2007). According to Chen, Zhang and Zhou (2007), there are three process management tools which support users to manage instances of business processes throughout their lifecycles: Tool for process operation: These tools provide end users interactive means to instantiated business processes. Furthermore, they are able to manually change the status of a process instance, by interacting with web services (Chapter Web services2.2.6). For process monitoring: Monitoring tools are able to track the status and the progress of process instances. Process owners or participants, or even application processes can be notified through alerts automatically generated when certain events occur. Process performance measuring Analysis makes it possible to continuously manage and improve processes. A process performance measuring tool produces reports, constructed of statistical analysis of e.g. the Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Based upon these results managers can determine whether or not the processes need to be improved Evaluation In the evaluation phase, the execution logs, from the enactment part of the lifecycle, are evaluated using business activity monitoring (BAM) and process mining techniques to provide stakeholders with performance information of the executed business processes Stakeholders & Administration As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the phases of the lifecycle are centered on stakeholders and administration, indicating that they have important responsibilities in each lifecycle phase. Some tasks and responsibilities where already discussed while describing the phases in the lifecycle. Weske (2007) defines several roles for knowledge workers who have some kind of responsibility in the various activities in the Business Process Management.