A Social Framework to Underpin Collective Awareness in BPM
Nuno Pina Gonçalves, Sérgio Salazar, Francisco Cascão and José António S. Pereira
Superior School of Technology, Polithecnical Institute of Setúbal, Rua Vale de Chaves, Setúbal, Portugal
Keywords: Business Process Management, Social BPM, Process Awareness, Social Framework, Social Media
Software, BPM Lifecycle.
Abstract: People are changing the way how they interact with the internet. They are using it to connect virtually with
other people for sharing ideas, opinions about a specific item/product or process. BPM involves a detailed
analysis of the organization, and often a change in organizational structure. Organisations will be able to
reach additional benefits in the usage of BPM Software and Social Software for the coordination of
activities that involve processes and it supports new communication patterns between costumers and
enterprise. The solution found was the combination of social technology and Business Process Management.
This paper proposes a framework focused on design and analysis stage in BPM life cycle that enables all the
stakeholders to interact and share knowledge in order to fill some of the existing gaps in BPM life cycle,
creating a harnessing collective awareness.
1 INTRODUCTION
For quite some time the web was seen as a tool.
Nowadays we don´t use it just as a tool, but we´ve
became a part of it. The use of internet has been
growing rapidly not only inside the organisations but
also around our lives. The extraordinary
breakthrough of communication technology with
online access anywhere allows people, machines and
organisations to be always connected.
We are changing the way how we interact with
the internet. The use of this tool only for information
dumping has reached its end. We are using it to
connect virtually with other people sharing our
opinion about a specific item/product, process, ideas,
etc.
Without knowing we started to communicate,
exchange opinions, information and off course
bonding with other people through the web. This
new way of communication is accomplished through
blogs where we insert our comments, social
networking (MySpace, Facebook) create friendships
and Wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia) used for sharing
information.
Social Media started to gain a life of its own. Its
effect on us has been changing the way how we
organize formal and informal relationships, how we
started to change the way we work with process
inside and outside organisations. For personal and
professional reasons we are constantly using social
networks.
For personal reasons, for example, before
acquiring a specific product we attempt to find out
other people’s opinions. Social networks may also
be used to meet new people online or to discover
long gone friends.
Professionally social networks are used as a tool
to find a job, to be able to work anywhere,
communicate with colleagues, manage processes, or
occasionally to promote organizations. Nowadays
we live in a virtual world where we are all connected
by a simple click.
The great goal of Social BPM is in fact to
realize, within an organisation, how they are applied
to your operations and how they relate to each other
(Richardson, 2011).
For this it is necessary that teams from various
departments are synchronized to realize their needs.
BPM brings greater clarity to processes, making
them visible, allowing you to change the methods of
operation and offer greater precision and increases in
efficiency (Jeston and Nelis, 2008).
Nowadays, more than ever, the result of
increasing globalization and the corresponding
increase in competition, organisations need to be
well organized and communication between
different departments should be a multilateral so that
all occurrences in procedural terms, critical or not
335
Gonçalves N., Salazar S., Cascão F. and António S. Pereira J..
A Social Framework to Underpin Collective Awareness in BPM.
DOI: 10.5220/0004179903350340
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (RDBPM-2012), pages 335-340
ISBN: 978-989-8565-31-0
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
critical, are described and documented.
For this it is necessary to combine Social
Software with BPM systems in order to incorporate
the richness of social relationships into the
technology supporting the organisation of work
(Sarini, 2010).
It´s now necessary not only to focus on new
technologies, but also on innovation and
relationships about sharing of the information and
knowledge both produced and used by participants
working for the same organisation or for different
organisations with common business goals.
Formal hierarchical communication model,
which is strongly implemented in organisations,
using a “top-down” approach, has gradually been
losing strength due to the advancement of new
technologies and Web 2.0 platforms (Blogs, Wikis
and Facebook) allowing there for a multilateral
communication between the various areas of the
organisation in real time.
According to (Hendler, 2007) Web 2.0 is mostly
a social revolution in the use of Web technologies, a
paradigm shift from the Web as a publishing
medium.
These new ways of communicating allow
breaking the traditional models of management,
introducing more transparency in the development
of business processes, and a greater involvement of
all stakeholders in these processes.
A good implementation of organisational
processes helps organisations to improve its
distribution system overheads by activity of the
organisation and achieve its objectives more
effectively.
A business process depends not only on a
department. Directly or indirectly all departments
end up being involved in the development / drafting
of this processes. The exchange of ideas coming
from various areas (departments) allows discovering
new and more creative solutions, a greater
understanding between the participants
(stakeholders) in the process development, helping
to unlock complex processes.
People learned that it is more efficient sharing
information through social networks, whether the
network is an internally or externally social network,
rather than sending documents / information by
email to a large group of people. The active
collaboration and coordination between departments
bring more accuracy and helps to reduce errors in
the development process.
Business processes of an organisation represent
the resource management activity and processes
management within the business.
2 BUSINESS PROCESS
The world has witnessed major changes in
organisational and economic areas. The rigid
structures, characterized by an intense bureaucracy
have been superseded by other more horizontal and
more flexible structures.
The traditional vertical organisational model, as
shown in Figure 1, based on a "top-down" structure,
ensuring the excessive command, control and
responsibility, putting people in the background,
gave greater emphasis to the processes and
technologies.
The concept of a department or functional area is
too embedded in the organization. The processes and
technologies used in different departments or
functional areas come to be quite heterogeneous.
People only know what tasks to be performed in his/
her department / functional area.
Such postures generated results inconsistent with
the expectations of organisations, low productivity,
quality and sometimes inadequacies and adapting
their tasks that people played.
Figure 1: Vertical chart Model.
Radical changes in the organisational world have
revolutionized the role of human beings in modern
society.
Today's organisations begin to adopt an
organisational "bottom-up" structure (i.e. not
focused on command and control), the worker is
seen as an asset and not as a cost, and technologies
are beginning to be seen as tools to support their
activities.
Organisations are changing the relationship
between their employees and the employers, in
response to the need to maintain competitive
organisations. This requires that all stakeholders
contribute with their knowledge and their creative
ability and responsibility.
In addition, greater work autonomy allows
integrating teams and who are able to determine
their own services and coordinate, rather than simply
obeying orders.
The reality of the organisations as shown in
Figure 2 has become so complex and
KMIS2012-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
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multidimensional, that there is no way to split the
company into hierarchical structures.
Figure 2: Horizontal Chart Model.
These changes in the organizations result in a
need to place the processes and technologies used in
different departments to communicate with each
other.
In order to allow this communication,
organisations implement systems that manage
processes and their connections to heterogeneous
technologies. This system is well known as BPMS
(Business Process Management Systems).
According (Weske, 2007) BPMS is a generic
software system that is driven by explicit process
representations to coordinate the enactment of
business processes.
For this it is necessary to understand the phases
of the BPM, how they are interrelated and their
mode of operation. Figure 3 depicts these same
phases (Weske, 2007).
Phase 1 – Design & Analysis Phase. The BPM cycle
begins at the design stage. During this phase
processes are identified and modelled.
All processes that can be made explicit through a
graphical notation will help to facilitate
communication between different stakeholders. This
processes allow improvements and refinements as
they are already explicit (Weske, 2007).
The achieved models need to be analysed using
techniques such as validation, simulation and
verification.
We will be focusing our research in this phase in
order to help validating business processes by
creating a collective awareness.
According (Weske, 2007) a workshop is a useful
instrument to validate a business process, during
which persons involved discuss the process.
However with the proliferation of collaborative
platforms and emerging technologies (i.e. web 2.0,
web 3.0) becomes easier the involvement and
coordination of people making them more visible.
Phase 2 - Setup ("Configuration") where we choose
the system where it will be implemented and where
the application will perform the respective approval
tests.
The system needs to be configured according to
the organizational environment of the organization
including all employee interactions with the system,
as well as the integration of BPMS with existing
software systems (Weske, 2007).
Phase 3 – Enactment Phase (“Enactment”). In the
enactment of processes, are considered only the right
processes, ensuring that activities are conducted in
accordance with the restrictions of execution
specified in the process model.
In this phase business process instances are
initiated to fulfil the business goals of an
organisation and valuable execution data is gathered,
typically in some form of log file (e.g. execution
log).
Monitoring as a part of the enactment phase is a
component of a BPMS that visualizes the status of
business process instances. This is a very important
part because it allows detailed information about the
status of running instances of the processes and the
information can also be viewed and monitored using
techniques based on colors (Weske, 2007).
Phase 4 - Evaluation Phase ("Evaluation"). This
phase will evaluate and improve processes and their
implementation. This assessment will allow
understanding if a process took too long to complete
or not.
In this phase execution logs are evaluated using
business activity monitoring and process mining
techniques (Weske, 2007).
According (Dumas et. al., 2005) process mining
is to extract knowledge from logs recorded by an
information system and offers new ways to find
organisational and social structures, discovering
processes, ability to monitor and improve the
existing processes.
Figure 3: BPM Life Cycle – Source: (Weske, 2007) -
Business Process Management, concepts, languages
architectures – Springer – p12.
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337
3 SOCIAL BPM
A business process is a set of activities that are
executed in coordination, technical and
organisational environment included concepts,
methods and techniques to support the
administration, configuration and analysis of
business processes.
(Van der Aalst et al., 2003)
The management of these processes, known by
BPM (Business Process Management), are by
nature, social activities. In the last decade it has
become clear that the processes are equally
important and need to be supported in a systematic
way.
Communication and collaboration patterns that
are now increasingly referred to as "Social
Computing" were also fundamental for the BPM
templates in the 90’s. Today we have witnessed the
transformation of BPM technologies as well as the
increasing adoption of social tools to improve the
techniques of design and process development
(Layna, 2011).
Web-based social networks such as Facebook,
MySpace and LinkedIn are great tools to stay in
touch with the world and create personal and
professional connections.
SMS (Social Media Software) through the use of
wikis, blogs, forums or other SMS will allow
stakeholders to provide input to the organisation,
capture and share ideas in order to define the
business process in terms of different perceptions
constructed by various individuals and groups as a
result of different frames of interpretation. (Erol, S.,
et al., 2010, Gonçalves et al., 2011)
Organisations will be able to reach additional
benefits in the usage of BPM Software and Social
Software for the coordination of activities that
involve processes and it supports new
communication patterns between costumers and
enterprise. Multidirectional communication replaces
the former unidirectional from one enterprise to the
costumer.
The solution found was the combination of social
technology and Business Process Management (i.e.
Social Web + BPM). It should be an automation tool
allowing drawing, managing and modifying
workflows to best meet the needs of the business and
satisfy stakeholders.
This is all about harnessing collective
intelligence. According (O’Reilly and Battelle,
2009) collective intelligence applications depend on
managing understanding and responding to massive
amounts of user-generated data in real time.
4 PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
The BPMS (BPM Software) supports most of the
elements of the BPM life cycle since the discovery
of new process, drawing, analyse, implement and
modelling.
The use of BPMS allows:
• The collaboration between stakeholders at
any time during the business process;
• Streamline routines so that processes can be
changed quickly and at any time to meet the
same goals;
• The collection of information on the case in
question, through internal or external sources,
with a view to completing that process.
In order to involve all stakeholders in this
process we intend to create collective awareness
about each process, create collective intelligence and
also make more visible the best reviews,
achievements and shares.
The proposed framework based on Weske BPM
life cycle (Weske, M., 2007), depicted in Figure 4
will be focused mainly on the phase of design &
analysis in order to help identify and modelling the
business processes.
During this phase and in order to validate the
business process, persons must be involved during
the implementation and modelling process - social
clients enrolment.
After the enrolment of social clients to the
process, the social core is intended to monitor all
social interactions between stakeholders in the
business process identification and modelling (e.g. a
scoring system for the best reviews and
achievements, messaging, rating, tagging, authoring,
shares, etc.).
Figure 4: Social BPM Framework – Design & Analysis.
This social core is intended also to contribute for
the Collective Awareness and Collective Intelligence
KMIS2012-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
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using Social Graphs (who interacts with who, how,
where and when).
Social core manages the social interactions
among stakeholders. These interactions are usually
computed with social media software. Our
framework intents to bring together social media
software functionalities (e.g. wikis, forums, blogs,
etc.) with BPMS. BPMS provides design and
analysis functionalities, but lack to provide a
modelling process awareness. Starting process
awareness at this phase, all the process will have less
constraints and difficulties during the rest of the
BPM lifecycle.
5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
WORK
Today organisations operate in an environment
characterized by intense changes and great
competitiveness. To adapt to reality, they need to
create a flexible and agile structure and being
constantly innovating. The changes in society, the
development of new technologies, have provided the
new changes in the behavior of people, either by
creating new needs or even by their values.
When people start to feel members of a business
process they tend to take responsibility for the same.
Such participation gives you a broader view of the
means of production in question and it makes it
possible to develop its freedom of choice on the
context.
In a modern organisation, people think together
to jointly exploit the new opportunities, create
products and services, and of course they can find
more efficiently certain problems that may exist in a
process.
Therefore, there is a challenge for the new
administrators to create environments and
opportunities for the integration of people in their
workplace, forcing them to shirk their traditional
values and valuing the potential and the capacity of
people within the organization.
To get people to think together and overcoming
the challenge to create environments that integrate
people in creating a collective awareness, was taken
into account new forms of communication between
people, changes in the relationship between
employees and employer and adoption of business
processes that cut across the entire organization.
This adoption of business processes will be given
an emphasis on analysis and design phase to ensure
that all stakeholders are aware of all restrictions on
the activities and processes.
In conclusion the proposed framework aims to:
• Improve of the design and analysis of
business processes;
• Include all the stakeholders in process
definition and design;
• Integration with social networks, blogs and
chats;
• Share and store all the information about
business processes of an organisation.
• Improve the collective awareness and
intelligence.
• Improve the following phases of the BPM
lifecycle (i.e. configuration, enactment,
evaluation)
In order to grab collective intelligence future
work is needed to explore the process mining
techniques for extract information about the
processes in organizational perspective in order to be
able to know which performers are involved and
how they are related.
The goal is to apply these techniques in the
organizational structure, classifying people in terms
of roles and organizational units or to show the
relationships between individual participants, to
ultimately build a social network of participants in a
process (van der Aalst, W.M.P., et al., 2007).
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