Magister Commercii (Information Management) - MCom(IM) / The purpose of the research case study was to assess the current state of alignment of business processes to Provincial Strategic Goals (PSGs) and services in the Provincial Government and to identify the way to align business processes to PSGs and services for an effective e-government implementation. Existing literatures were reviewed in order to identify relevant models to achieve the purpose of the research case study. An empirical research case study and comparative approach were used in order to identify suitable models, by means of strengths and weaknesses of the identified models and discussed. A qualitative research design and methodology was applied while assessing existing models from various literatures. A model to identify the current state of business processes was identified by the researcher and tested to assess the current state of business processes in the Provincial Government in question. There was no existing model to assess the alignment of business processes to Provincial Strategic Goals and services. Alignment elements that were cited by various literatures were used by the researcher to design and propose a Business Process Alignment Model (BPAM). The BPAM was tested and accepted by the Provincial Government where the study was conducted. The research case study predominantly used a qualitative research design and method. The quantitative illustrative approach was applied only to validate the proposed model that was designed by the researcher. A questionnaire was used to conduct interviews with research participants that were selected within the Provincial Government in question. It should further be noted that a quantitative approach was used to illustrate some findings that were analysed by the researcher. Results confirmed that the current state of business processes within the Provincial Government in question was still at level two (repeatable state). Yet the alignment of business processes to Provincial Strategic Goals and services did not exist; this alignment was assessed using the proposed BPAM which was designed by the researcher during this research case study. The effectiveness of e-government services is dependent on proper alignment of business processes and the maturity level of business processes across the organisation. Without proper alignment of business processes, it is a challenge for the public sector organisations to realise effective e-government implementation, not excluding other factors that have been identified by other literatures. This research case study will contribute to the current body of knowledge regarding effective e-government implementation, particularly in the public sector at Provincial level. Public sector organisations in South Africa could leverage on this work to address issues associated with business process alignment.

Background: South Korea is one of the countries currently enforcing more strict emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles, as a result of the global push to restrict pollution. In addition, there has been recent scandals involving several well-established automotive companies manipulating emissions tests and not fulfilling regulations. This has resulted in the government increasing the pressure for companies to apply the correct certifications even further. For companies to sell vehicles on the South Korean market, the vehicles must be certified and approved by the government, known as homologation. This process partly involves self-certification, meaning that companies are responsible for applying the correct certification themselves. It is therefore of great importance to have structured and clear processes to mitigate risks of error-making, in order to avoid financial and legal repercussions. Purpose: The study aims to identify and analyze the risks in error-making. Therefore, the purpose is to understand and propose improvement actions to the current homologation processes at Scania Korea Group. Method: The thesis utilized a case study strategy with a descriptive approach to illustrate the process. An exploratory approach was used in combination to identify risks and provide improvement actions. Qualitative data in conjunction with theory around business process improvement were utilized to fulfill the purpose. Firstly, interviews and focus groups were conducted to map the process. Thereafter, a failure mode and effect criticality analysis(FMECA) was used to analyze the process. Lastly, improvement actions were decided based on best practices and benchmarking. Findings and recommendations: The homologation process contain many high severity risks such as certifying the incorrect truck specifications or not complying with regulations, due to not updating the certifications when product changes occur. Furthermore, government approvals incorporate a substantial part of the process lead-time. As such, it is concluded that quality is of utmost importance, both to decrease lead-time and minimize risks with detrimental consequences. The analysis showed evidence of lacking controls/gates in the process, which enables errors and incorrect applications to move through. Improvements regarding increased project structure, planning and communication within SKG were suggested. Further improvement points were an increased number of controls and more clear delegation of responsibility. Recommendations for future studies: We propose to further investigate the root-causes of the inherent risks in the process. Future studies should also look to gather additional data from other heavy-duty automotive companies in South Korea, since it could provide deeper and more generalizable results. Lastly, we recommend future research to utilize a quantitative research approach, providing more statistical evidence.

O gerenciamento de processos de negócios (Business Process Management - BPM) é uma abordagem de gestão cada vez mais utilizada pelas organizações para a operacionalização da estratégia devido a sua capacidade de geração de benefícios; contudo, há crescentes e elevados os índices de insucesso as iniciativas de promoção de BPM. Isso vem ocorrendo principalmente porque BPM vem tendo foco nos processos de negócios internos e não tem conseguido se ajustar com rapidez e flexibilidade para lidar com a dinâmica do ambiente de negócios. A agilidade é um elemento que ajuda a lidar com esses aspecto; tal como aconteceu com a manufatura e com o gerenciamento de projetos (que evoluíram para manufatura ágil e gerenciamento ágil de projetos, respectivamente) BPM vem tendo elevada demanda por agilidade, e um BPM Ágil se apresenta como uma evolução de BPM com elevado poder de contribuição para o tema. BPM Ágil traz o cliente para atuar de maneira ativa no processo e impõe uma flexibilidade para interação da operação com a dinâmica ambiental de maneira mais assertiva. Um gerenciamento é realizado por meio de Práticas (conjunto formado por técnicas, ferramentas e ações), de maneira que o presente estudo tem como principal objetivo propor Práticas para a promoção da BPM Ágil nas organizações. Para o alcance de novas iniciativas empíricas e avanços na teoria, este estudo se propõe a construir um novo conceito de BPM Ágil, uma nova definição e estabelecer as suas práticas. É fundamental que os processos de negócios alcancem seus objetivos produzindo respostas com rapidez e flexibilidade para mudanças, de modo que BPM Ágil deve aumentar a exploração e o aproveitamento de oportunidades. A proposição de Práticas para o BPM Ágil presente nesta tese é uma contribuição inicial que deve ajudar a desbravar um novo campo de estudos por meio de uma abordagem científica. Para tanto, foram utilizadas 7 abordagens metodológicas distintas para a elaboração deste estudo: revisão sistemática de literatura, análise indutiva, consulta a especialistas, análise de juízes, survey, painel de especialistas e mais dois estudos de caso. Como principal resultado tem-se 78 Práticas, sendo 23 técnicas, 13 ferramentas e 42 ações para a promoção do BPM Ágil / Business Process Management (BPM) is a management approach increasingly used by organizations to operationalize the strategy because of their ability to generate benefits; however, there are increasing and high failure rates for BPM promotion initiatives. This has been mainly because BPM has been focusing on internal business processes and has not been able to adjust quickly and flexibly to deal with the dynamics of the business environment. Agility is an element that helps deal with these aspects; as occurred with manufacturing and project management (which evolved to agile manufacturing and agile project management, respectively). BPM has been in high demand for agility, and an Agile BPM is an evolution of BPM with a high power of contribution for the theme. Agile BPM brings the client to act in an active way in the process and imposes a flexibility to interact the operation with the environmental dynamics more assertively. A management is carried out through Practices (a group formed by techniques, tools and actions), so that the main purpose of this study is to propose Practices for the promotion of Agile BPM in organizations. For the achievement of new empirical initiatives and advances in theory, this study proposes to build a new concept of Agile BPM, a new definition and establish its practices. It is critical that business processes reach their goals by producing responses with speed and flexibility for change, so that Agile BPM must increase exploration and se\'ize opportunities. The proposal of Practices for Agile BPM in this thesis is an initial contribution that should help to open up a new field of studies through a scientific approach. In order to do so, 7 different methodological approaches were used for the elaboration of this study: systematic literature review, inductive analysis, expert consultation, judges analysis, survey, panel of experts and two other case studies. As a main result there are 78 Practices, being 23 techniques, 13 tools and 42 actions for the promotion of Agile BPM

The current business environment is rapidly and fundamentally changing. The main driver are digital technologies. Companies face the pressure to exploit those technologies to improve their business processes in order to achieve competitive advantage. In the light of increased complexity of business processes and the existence of corporate Big Data stored in information systems, the discipline of process mining has emerged. Investigate how process mining can support the optimization of business processes. In this qualitative study, an illustrative case study research is utilized involving eight research participants. Hereby, data is primarily collected from semi-structured interviews. The data is analyzed using content analysis. In addition, the illustrative case serves the purpose to demonstrate the application of process mining. The research revealed that process mining has important impacts on current business process improvement. Not all of them were explicitly positive. The derived success factors should support vendors, current and potential users to apply process mining safe and successfully.

Nowadays, business processes are increasingly supported by IT services that produce massive amounts of event data during the execution of a process. These event data can be used to analyze the process using process mining techniques to discover the real process, measure conformance to a given process model, or to enhance existing models with performance information. Mapping the produced events to activities of a given process model is essential for conformance checking, annotation and understanding of process mining results. In order to accomplish this mapping with low manual effort, we developed a semi-automatic approach that maps events to activities using insights from behavioral analysis and label analysis. The approach extracts Declare constraints from both the log and the model to build matching constraints to efficiently reduce the number of possible mappings. These mappings are further reduced using techniques from natural language processing, which allow for a matching based on labels and external knowledge sources. The evaluation with synthetic and real-life data demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach and its robustness toward non-conforming execution logs.

A realização de diagnóstico de processo auxilia a compreensão dos fatores internos e externos que influenciam o Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos (PDP) e de suas características, como capacidade técnica da equipe, forma como as atividades são organizadas, recursos disponíveis, exigências dos clientes ou poder de barganha com os fornecedores. No entanto nas últimas décadas não foi vista uma atenção especial aos métodos e ferramentas de diagnósticos voltados ao PDP. Analisando diagnósticos reais do PDP de empresas que utilizaram o método da árvore da realidade atual foi levantada a possibilidade de existir um conjunto significativo de problemas comum a todos os diagnósticos do PDP que poderiam servir de referência para diagnósticos futuros. O objetivo, portanto, desse trabalho é propor um método de diagnóstico que utiliza problemas recorrentes para aumentar a eficiência e eficácia do diagnóstico do PDP e apoiar a identificação de oportunidades de melhoria. O método proposto, denominado de Diagile, aprimorou o método de construção de árvore da realidade atual e é composto de melhores práticas de gestão de projetos e identificação e priorização de oportunidades de melhoria. Para apoiar a execução do método foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta de automação de diagnóstico (FAD) e uma planilha eletrônica para priorizar projetos de melhoria. As principais entregas da aplicação do Diagile são uma árvore da realidade atual e um portfólio de projetos de melhoria customizado por empresa. Para avaliar o método proposto foram executados um experimento controlado e dois estudos de casos. De acordo com os resultados do experimento, primeiramente, foi confirmado que a utilização do Diagile aumentou a eficiência da realização de diagnóstico comparado com a realização de um diagnóstico aplicando o método tradicional da árvore da realidade atual. Após as realizações dos estudos de caso, que serviram para avaliar o método, foi visto que as empresas ficaram satisfeitas com os resultados obtidos com o diagnóstico, relatando a boa qualidade das árvores e a pertinência dos projetos de melhoria sugeridos. Conclui-se que o objetivo desse trabalho foi atingido, demonstrando o aumento da eficiência e eficácia do diagnóstico utilizando o método proposto. / The execution of process diagnostic assists the comprehension of internal and external factors that influence the product developing process (NPD) and its characteristics such as team technical capacity, way that the activity are organized, available resources, client requirements or suppliers negotiation power. In the last decades, any special attention it was given to the diagnostic methods and tools focused to NPD process. The analysis of real NPD diagnosis cases from enterprises that used the reality tree method suggested the possibility that it may found a significant group of problems that are common to all NPD diagnostic that can be used as reference for future diagnosis. The objective of this work is to propose a diagnostic method based on the use of recurrent problems to increase the efficiency and efficacy of the NPD diagnosis and assist the identification of improvements opportunities. The proposed method, called Diagile, is based on the construction of the current reality tree and is composed of project management best practices prioritizing improvements opportunities. To support the application of the proposed method a computational diagnostic tool and an electronic spread sheet has been developed to prioritize project improvements. The main deliverables of the application of Diagile are a current reality tree and a customized portfolio of improvements project of the company. To evaluate the proposed method a controlled experiment and two cases studies was performed. According to the experiment results, it was first possible to confirm that the use of Diagile increased the efficiency of the diagnostic execution when compared with the performance of the diagnosis using the traditional current reality tree method. After the execution of the two case studies, that was used to evaluate the proposed method, if has been confirmed that the companies where satisfied with the obtained diagnostic results, reporting the good quality of the tree and the importance of the suggested improvement projects. With this it has been concluded that the objective of this work was complete, and that the proposed method and tools increase the efficiency and efficacy of the NPD diagnosis.

The use of design process models is of great importance for developing better products. Indeed, it is one of the factors that may differentiate the best companies from the rest. However, their adoption in companies is declining. Usefulness and usability issues may be responsible for process models not to meet the needs of its users. The goal of this research is to provide deeper understanding of the users needs of design process models. Three main perspectives are provided: (1) why organizations use process models, (2) who are the users of process models, and (3) how the context of use of process models is. The research methodology adopted was the Design Research Methodology (DRM). Three stages were performed: (i) Research Clarification, (ii) Descriptive Study I, and (iii) Prescriptive Study. In the first stage, an initial literature review was carried out to collect evidences of why researching process models and their users needs is relevant for the design theory. During the second stage (Descriptive Study I), literature was reviewed to identify the purposes of use of design process models and its potential users; a focusgroup section with 24 subject matter experts was carried out to evaluate these purposes and identify process model users; and, lastly, a case study was perfomed to investigate the context of use of design process models in one organization and to portray the profile of the core users. Finally, the third stage (Prescriptive Study) aimed to uncover directions for organizations develop user-centered design process models. Four main results were achieved through this research. The first result is a deep understanding of three types of application of the design process models: (a) develop the design activity, (b) manage the design project, and (c) improve the design process. The purposes for these aplications were investigated and their level of importance were revealed. In addition, it was mapped the core users of process models for the three applications. The second result is the definition of the context of use of the models.Three dimensions of the context were depicted: the product, the design process, and the organizational structure. The third result is the set of users profiles. Empathy Maps were elaborated to represent the profiles of product engineers, project managers, and technical leaders. The last result consists in recommendations regarding the content provided to users and the process models system design. Finally, industrial practitioners will benefit from this research once it was provided evidences that the activity development application type is not properly considered in organization and that important users needs are not getting proper attention in the current models. Therefore, they will be able to make use of the recommendations outlined here. / O uso de modelos de processo de design é de grande importância no desenvolvimento de novos produtos. De fato, isto é um dos fatores que pode diferenciar as melhores empresas das outras. De qualquer modo, a adoção dos modelos nas empresas esta declinando. Problemas em utilidade e usabilidade podem ser responsáveis pelos modelos não satisfazerem as necessidades de seus usuários. Nesta pesquisa, busca-se entender as necessidades dos usuários dos modelos de processo de design. Três perspectivas são dadas: (1) porquê organizações usam modelos de processo, (2) quem são os usuários dos modelos de processo e (3) como é o contexto de uso de modelos de processo. A metodologia de pesquisa adotada foi a Metodologia de Pesquisa em Design (DRM). Três estágios foram realizados: (i) Clarificação de Pesquisa, (ii) Estudo Descritivo I, e (iii) Estudo Prescritivo. No primeiro estágio, uma revisão inicial da literatura foi executada para coletar evidências do porquê estudar modelos de processo e as necessidades de seus usuários é relevante para a teoria de design. No segundo estágio (Estudo Descritivo I), revisão da literatura ajudou a identificar os propósitos de uso de modelos de processo de design e os seus potenciais usuários; uma seção de focus group com 24 especialistas no assunto foi executado para avaliar estes propósitos e identificar usuários dos modelos de processo; e, por fim, um estudo de caso foi realizado para investigar o contesto de uso dos modelos em uma organização e para retratar o perfil dos usuários principais. Finalmente, o terceiro estágio (Estudo Prescritivo) buscou revelar direções para que as organizações desenvolvam modelos de processo de design centrados em seus usuários. Quatro principais resultados foram alcançados por meio desta pesquisa. O primeiro resultado é um entendimento profundo dos três tipos de aplicação dos modelos de processo: (a) desenvolver atividade de design, (b) gerenciar o projeto de design, e (c) melhorar o processo de design. O propósito destas três aplicações foram investigadas e os níveis de importância evidenciados. Além disso, os usuários centrais dos modelos de processo foram mapeados. O segundo resultado é a definição do contexto de uso dos modelos. Três dimensões do contexto foram retratados: o produto, o processo de design, e a estrutura organizacional. O terceiro resultado é o conjunto de perfis dos usuários. Mapas de Empatia foram elaborados para representar os perfis de engenheiros de produto, gerentes de projeto, e líderes técnicos. O último resultado consiste em recomendações feitas a respeito do conteúdo fornecido aos usuários e o sistema a ser desenvolvido. Finalmente, profissionais da indústria podem beneficiar desta pesquisa uma vez que evidências são fornecidas de que a aplicação de desenvolvimento das atividades não é adequadamente considerada em organizações e que necessidades importantes dos usuários não recebem atenção satisfatória nos modelos atuais. Sendo assim, eles serão capazes de fazer uso das recomendações aqui feitas.

O advento do BPM (Business Process Management) ofereceu uma nova abordagem para a melhoria do alinhamento estratégico entre negócio e TI nas organizações, através do desenvolvimento de EIS (Enterprise Information Systems) orientados a processos, que permitiu não somente derivar requisitos de software a partir dos modelos de processos de negócio como também obter sistemas flexíveis, capazes de se ajustar a mudanças na operação a partir do redesenho dos processos. Esta pesquisa explora a compreensão, tanto do ponto de vista teórico como prático, da aplicação de diferentes abordagens orientadas a processos de negócio para a especificação de requisitos de EIS. A pesquisa resultou no panorama do estado da arte da literatura no tema e na avaliação de casos reais de aplicação de BPM à Engenharia de Requisitos de EIS em organizações que reestruturaram seus processos de negócio e precisaram desenvolver ou ajustar seus sistemas de informação aos novos processos. A revisão sistemática de literatura revelou seis diferentes tipos de abordagens, com variação no grau de automação de desenvolvimento de software, sugerindo diversas estratégias para a adoção de EIS orientados a processos. O estudo de casos múltiplos explorou a influência de diferentes variáveis relacionadas às características das organizações, de seus processos de negócio e de seus EIS no sucesso da aplicação das diferentes abordagens orientadas a processos de negócio na derivação de requisitos. Os resultados da pesquisa podem fornecer os fundamentos para a formulação de um modelo de recomendação de tipo de abordagem, visando melhor alinhamento entre processos de negócio (business) e sistemas de informação (IT) e maior flexibilidade dos EIS para adaptação a mudanças na operação. / The advent of Business Process Management (BPM) offered an innovative approach to improve business and IT strategic alignment in organizations throughout development of process-aware Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). For that matter, extracting softwar requirements from business process models leverages engineering of adaptive information systems, which can adjust to changes in operation as of process redesign. This research explores theoretical and practical comprehension of the application of different business process-oriented approaches for EIS requirements specification. Research has provided the state-of-the-art academic overview on this research topic and real case evaluation about BPM application to Requirements Engineering of EIS in organizations that have restructured its business processes and demanded development or adjustment of its EIS to the new processes. Systematic literature review has revealed six different approach types, with variations on software development degree of automation, suggesting diverse strategies for process-oriented information systems adoption. Multiple case study has explored influence of different variables related to organization characteristics, its business processes and EIS on the success of application of different business process-oriented approaches to requirements derivation. Research results can provide fundamentals for a recommendation model for approach type, aiming to provide a better alignment between business processes and information systems, and better flexibility of EIS do adapt to changes in operation.

Business Process Management (BPM) is a relatively new development paradigm that takes a high-level approach to coding by leveraging a graphical, “flow chart” aesthetic that allows users to assemble modular tasks into a larger process. The resulting diagrams effectively enshrine the organizations processes into an executable model that provides an objective and transparent view of the process and the activities contained within. In doing so, BPM models serve as both a system to guide employees through proper business procedures as well as documentation of the businesses processes. Similar to most other software development environments, BPM development platforms possess several features intended to address the needs of code versioning, dependency management and impact assessment. However, due to the unique way that development is done in BPM platforms, the more traditional functionality of these features sometimes renders them ineffective and ill suited to the task of BPM development. Changes to lower level reusable components in these BPM models can result in impacts to diverse processes across an organization that are difficult to predict and onerous to locate. There is much room for improvement in BPM development tools. This thesis proposes a new framework for dependency management and impact assessment to improve the usability, effectiveness and efficiency. The framework is composed of a Business Process Component Architecture, a Dependency Data Model and an Upgrade Algorithm which are all used to provide increased visibility over dependent processes and superior guidance during upgrade operations. Several example case scenarios are be used to evaluate our proposed framework. The cases represent progressive degrees of complexity to test the capabilities and robustness of the framework. Overall, the framework was able to appropriately handle the case examples used and showed promise in terms of providing practical effort, time and cost savings for BPM developers. The framework can also provide developers assistance in locating circular dependencies, but is subject to the same limitations as developers when attempting to upgrade these relationships.

La mondialisation, la croissance continuelle des tailles des entreprises et le besoin d'agilité ont poussé les entreprises à externaliser leurs activités, à vendre des parties de leurs procédés, voire même distribuer leurs procédés jusqu'à lors centralisés. En plus, la plupart des procédés métiers dans l'industrie d'aujourd'hui impliquent des interactions complexes entre un grand nombre de services géographiquement distribués, développés et maintenus par des organisations différentes. Certains de ces procédés, peuvent être très complexes et manipulent une grande quantité de données, et les organisations qui les détiennent doivent faire face à un nombre considérable d'instances de ces procédés simultanément. Certaines même éprouvent des difficultés à les gérer d'une manière centralisée. De ce fait, certaines entreprises approuvent le besoin de partitionner leurs procédés métiers d'une manière flexible, et être capables de les distribuer d'une manière efficace, tout en respectant la sémantique et les objectifs du procédé centralisé. Le travail présenté dans cette thèse consiste à proposer une méthodologie de décentralisation qui permet de décentraliser d'une manière optimisée, générique et flexible, des procédés métiers. En d'autres termes, cette approche vise à transformer un procédé centralisé en un ensemble de fragments coopérants. Ces fragments sont déployés et exécutés indépendamment, distribués géographiquement et peuvent être invoqués à distance. Cette thèse propose aussi un environnement pour la modélisation des chorégraphies de services web dans un langage formel à savoir le calcul d'événements. / In mainstream service orchestration platforms, the orchestration model is executed by a centralized orchestrator through which all interactions are channeled. This architecture is not optimal in terms of communication overhead and has the usual problems of a single point of failure. Moreover, globalization and the increase of competitive pressures created the need for agility in business processes, including the ability to outsource, offshore, or otherwise distribute its once-centralized business processes or parts thereof. An organization that aims for such fragmentation of its business processes needs to be able to separate the process into different parts. Therefore, there is a growing need for the ability to fragment one's business processes in an agile manner, and be able to distribute and wire these fragments together so that their combined execution recreates the function of the original process. This thesis is focused on solving some of the core challenges resulting from the need to restructure enterprise interactions. Restructuring such interactions corresponds to the fragmentation of intra and inter enterprise business process models. This thesis describes how to identify, create, and execute process fragments without loosing the operational semantics of the original process models. It also proposes methods to optimize the fragmentation process in terms of QoS properties and communication overhead. Further, it presents a framework to model web service choreographies in Event Calculus formal language.