Handbook of Research on Business Process Modeling Jorge Cardoso SAP Research, Germany Wil van der Aalst Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands
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Chapter XXIV
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes Laura Sanchez University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Andrea Delgado University of the Republic, Uruguay Francisco Ruiz University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Félix García University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain Mario Piattini University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Abstract The underlying premise of process management is that the quality of products and services is largely determined by the quality of the processes used to develop, deliver and support them. A concept which has been closely related to process quality over the last few years is the maturity of the process and it is important to highlight the current proposal of Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM), which is based on the principles, architecture and practices of CMM and CMMI for Software and describes the essential practices for the development, preparation, deployment, operations and support of product and service offers from determining customer needs. When maturity models are in place, it is important not to forget the important role that measurement can play, being essential in organizations which intend to reach a high level in the maturity in their processes. This is demonstrated by observing the degree of importance that measurement activities have in maturity models. This chapter tackles the Business Process Maturity Model and the role that business measurement plays in the context of this model. In Copyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
addition, a set of representative business process measures aligned with the characteristics of BPMM are introduced which can guide organizations to support the measurement of their business processes depending on their maturity.
INTRODUCTION As stated in (OMG, 2007), “the underlying premise of process management is that the quality of products and services is largely determined by the quality of the processes used to develop, deliver and support them”. Regardless of what the business of an organization is, whether software development, government business or manufacturing, the need to explicitly define, manage, measure, control, analyze and improve its business processes is the same. A concept which has been closely related to process quality over the last few years is the maturity of the process, especially in the context of software processes. Process maturity is based on the first ideas of (Crosby, 1979) and (Humphrey, 1987) and represents the degree of explicit definition, management, measurement, control and effectiveness a process has. The works of Humphrey (Humphrey, 1987) were carried out in the context of the development of CMM (Paulk et al., 1993) and later CMMI (CMMI Product Team, 2002 and 2006), and have become important reference models for improving the capability of software organizations. Since then, many similar standards have been developed for other processes, for example the People CMM (Curtis, 1995) which applied process maturity to the management and development of an organization’s workforce. In a mature organization, processes are defined, performed and managed and accurately communicated to the staff, and work activities are carried out according to planned processes. These processes are documented and usable with roles and responsibilities that are clearly defined and understood by the people performing the associated activities. The needed improvements in selected processes are developed and controlled
and aligned with business objectives. The quality of products and services are monitored, as well as the processes that produce them (OMG, 2007). Thus, the importance and benefits of process maturity in an organization are clear. Recently, earlier proposals which have shown themselves to be useful in the context of software processes have been applied to business processes. The main example of this is the current proposal for a Business Process Maturity Model (OMG, 2007), which is based on the principles, architecture and practices of CMM and CMMI for Software and describes the essential practices for the development, preparation, deployment, operations and support of product and service offers from determining customer needs. The BPMM, like other maturity models, is expected to benefit organizations in terms of rework reduction, consistency and improvements in quality (OMG, 2007). When maturity models are in place, it is important not to forget the important role that measurement can play. As a matter of fact, measurement is essential in organizations which intend to reach a high level in the maturity in their processes. This is demonstrated by observing the degree of importance that measurement activities have in maturity models. Measurement provides objective information about and a view of project performance, process performance, process capability and product and service quality. Moreover, measurement helps to provide objective insight into issues in order to identify and manage risks and to provide the early detection and resolution of problems. The use of measures and other information makes it possible for organizations to learn from the past in order to improve performance and achieve better predictability over time. It also
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provides information that improves decisionmaking in time to affect the business outcome. Therefore measurement activities are fundamental for the improvement of process, product and service quality, since they provide objective information that can be used for decision making. An organization with a mature approach in this area will have confidence in its abilities to deliver products or services that meet its customers’ needs (Goldenson et al., 2003) According to the issues identified above, this chapter tackles the Business Process Maturity Model (OMG, 2007) and the role that measurement plays in the context of this model. In addition, a set of representative business process measures aligned with the characteristics of this maturity model are introduced to illustrate how measurement can be applied to organizations in relation to each maturity level. The chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the BPMM, including its maturity levels and Process Areas. Section 3 presents measurement and analysis activities in BPMM by each maturity level, including those with defined guidelines and those without them. Section 4 enumerates and discusses measurable concepts and measures aligned with BPMM maturity levels, and finally, Section 5 presents some conclusions and reflections.
BUSINESS PROCESS MATURITY MODEL The Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) (OMG, 2007) is one of the Object Management Group (OMG) (OMG,1989) business process standards, released in July of 2007 in its first version 1.0. Conceptually it follows the approach of the maturity models for software: Capability Maturity Model (CMM) (Paulk et al., 1993) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) (CMMI Product Team, 2002) and was developed by the co-authors of these models. “The BPMM can be mapped to CMMI, but has been written to guide
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improvement of business processes which tend to be more transactional and are better characterized as workflows across organizational boundaries rather than the more bounded project orientation of CMMI” (OMG, 2007). Like the CMMI, it defines five process maturity levels to assess the achievement of specific characteristics that make it possible to determine the maturity level that the processes of the organization present. It is important to define and establish the different meanings of the terms process capability, process performance and process maturity. Process capability describes the range of expected results that can be achieved by following a process, providing one means of predicting the most likely outcomes to be expected from the next effort undertaken. The Process Areas and maturity levels of the BPMM are indicators of process capability. On the other hand, process performance describes the actual results achieved by performing a process. The implementation and institutionalization of BPMM Process Areas incrementally improve this performance, where institutionalization refers to the infrastructure and culture built into the organization to support methods and practices that become the method of working. Finally, process maturity is the extent to which processes are explicitly defined, managed, measured, controlled and are effective. Process maturity implies that process capability has improved over time, so, as an organization matures, the institutionalized methods, practices and procedures endure even after those who defined them have left. The continuous improvement of processes is based on taking small but evolutionary and innovative steps in the processes. BPMM provides a reference framework to organize these steps and innovations at the five maturity levels, which establishes the basis for the continuous improvement of the processes. The priorities in BPMM, expressed for those levels, are not focused on the (individual or group) work units, but on the processes that are of value to the whole organization. A work unit is a well-defined collection of people,
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managed as a single unit within the organization, who work closely together on tasks specifically related to developing, preparing, maintaining and delivering the organization’s products and services or performing internal business functions. Figure 1 shows the five maturity levels of BPMM including for each: its name, a brief description and its main objectives. An organization that implements the BPMM could obtain the advantages associated with using this kind of model, which include: •
•
•
Standardization of its processes and best practices and more knowledge and control of processes; Record of good practices and identified problems which would improve the instances of new processes or projects to perform; History of data on the processes executed, both qualitative and quantitative, which contributes to the definition of the improvements to make, and makes it possible to assess the impact of the changes made and the achievement of the planned improvements.
Thus, improving the organization can be based on sound practices implemented at each maturity
level, making progress possible at the various existing levels.
The Five Maturity Levels of BPMM Each maturity level is composed of a set of Process Areas, each containing a cluster of related practices for that area that when implemented collectively, provide a process capability that is an important component of its maturity level. Each Process Area is composed of various elements: area purpose, specific and institutionalization objectives of the area and specific and institutionalization practices which may contain subpractices. Each one also has practice guidelines for selected practices, such as the guidelines for Measurement and Analysis which are presented in the following section. There are thirty Process Areas in total: nine for level two, ten for level three, five for level four and six for level five. It is also possible to create a domain-specific BPMM, such as the Services Operations or Marketing, which have already been defined, adding domain Process Areas at level three to extend the BPMM for the specific domain with the aid of domain experts. An organization at maturity level one or Initial shows inconsistent process practices and results.
Figure 1. The five maturity levels of BPMM from (OMG, 2007)
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There are no specific defined objectives, so, the success of the organization depends on personal competence and heroics, and not on the use of proven processes. Some processes and/or projects may work well but there is no knowledge of how the positive results are achieved and the rest of the processes and/or projects, which in general, are the majority, are not usually successful. So, at this level there are no defined Process Areas. Moving to maturity level two or Managed, each work unit and/or project has established basic processes for planning and management, control and management of its requirements and performs all essential activities to prepare, distribute, operate and support its products and services. The procedures which describe those processes are defined and repeatable, i.e., they can be used again in another project with similar results. At this level the organization, through its work units, achieves the expected results both in products and services, in planned schedule and budget and according to the requirements. At maturity level three or Standardized, the organization’s standard processes to prepare, distribute, operate and support its products and services are documented for their use through the entire organization. These standard processes include work, support and management processes, which are defined at an abstract level that makes it possible to apply them to different sections and projects. Thus, the standard processes will be instantiated by each unit of work or section making the necessary adaptations. For example, the process to model business process will be defined in a standard way, establishing notations and tools to use to make the model, which can be, for example, Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) (OMG, 2006) using a compliant tool. When a work unit or section has to model a business process, it will follow the standard process defined, using the notation and tools that it established. At this level the organization takes full advantage of its best practices. Maturity level four or Predictable, sets achievable quantitative targets for performance 536
and quality results to obtain in the business process of the organization -- for example to develop a product or provide a service -- and they are used as criteria to manage the associated effort. At this level, the main objective is to manage and take full advantage of the organizational processes, infrastructure capability and associated process assets, established at level three, to achieve predictable results with controlled variations. At maturity level five or Innovating, the organization has knowledge about its critical business characteristics or areas of interest, for example, competitiveness, and sets quantitative improvement objectives to deal with them. The improvements are identified, evaluated, put into practice in pilot experiences and distributed in order to achieve the defined improvement objectives. The main objective at this level is the continuous improvement of the organization’s processes and the resulting products and services, through defect and problem prevention, continuous capacity and innovating planned improvements. Like CMM (Paulk et al., 1993), BPMM does not have a specific Process Area for measurement and analysis and the associated activities can be found spread across the Process Areas defined. This fact means that the process of measurement and analysis instead of being explicit is implicit in the model. In subsequent versions of CMM, CMMI v1.1 (CMMI Product Team, 2002) and CMMI v1.2 (CMMI Product Team, 2006), a specific Process Area for measurement and analysis is included, thus making the process explicit and guided by the sequence of activities defined by the Process Area. In next section, the activities for measurement and analysis included in BPMM are presented.
MEASUREMENT ACTIVITIES IN BPMM As shown in the previous section, BPMM is a five-level maturity structure model where each
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maturity level is composed of various Process Areas. Measurement activities are defined in the different Process Areas to satisfy their goals. For example, in the Process Area “Organizational Process Management”, some practices for defining organizational measures can be found and a set of guidelines are provided. These guidelines are optional, but facilitate some difficult activities for reaching higher maturity levels. The measurement activities must be done by a different work group than the decision making group, to assure objectivity. They consist of seven steps, and some of them generate artefacts for improving the measurement repository, for creating measurement plans and a list of measurement indicators. These guidelines are shown in Figure 2. As can be observed in Figure 2, the first activity defined in the guidelines is to establish and maintain a description of the information needs. This refers to the identification and documentation of measurement-related objectives and issues. The next activity is to establish and maintain a specification of measures and this refers to specifying the operational definition of the measures.
The third activity concerns establishing and maintaining a specification of the information package. This refers to defining the measurement information package, which includes the measures, indicators, criteria and other information that the users of the data need to understand and use the data in making decisions. The fourth activity, establish and maintain measurement plans and procedures, refers to defining how the measures will be collected, verified and stored. The fifth activity, collect and verify measurement data, refers to obtaining and verifying base measures, and then generating derived measures and indicators under change management. The next activity concerns assembling an information package, meaning that the measurement data are assembled into a measurement information package as defined in the measurement plans and procedures for improving the measurement repository. The last activity concerns analyzing the measurement data for making decisions as defined in the measurement specifications, plans and procedures.
Figure 2. The measurement and analysis guidelines steps
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Process Areas with Guidelines for Measurement At maturity level two, the relationship between business measurement and the business process is undefined. The reason for this is that the organization at this level does not have any explicit business processes, it is said that the “business process has still not been discovered”. At this level, it is possible to create workflow measures for monitoring the performance of the business units and business activities. A business unit is a single well-defined organizational component within an organization
and an activity is an element of work performed as part of a planned effort. Table 1 shows the Process Areas and corresponding activities for using guidelines for measurement and analysis and a brief description of each one. While maturity level two defines measures at a work unit level for showing the performance of the work units, at maturity level three measures are defined at a process level. So, from the second to the third level, the measures are defined with two different levels of granularity: work unit level and process level. Table 2 shows the Process Areas and corresponding activities for using guidelines for measurement and analysis.
Table 1. Process Areas and activities at maturity level two for using guidelines for measurement and analysis Process Areas and activities with guidelines at maturity level two Organizational Business Governance (OBG) SP2-Define business measures: Definitions of the business outcome measures related to the organization’s near-term and long-term business goals are established and maintained SP8 - Maintain definition of workflow measures: Definitions of the workflow measures used to monitor the performance of the units and business activities are established and maintained Work Unit Planning and Commitment (WUPC) SP5 - Maintain definitions of measures: Definitions of the measures used to plan and manage a work unit are established and maintained Work Unit Monitoring and Control (WUMC) SP6 - Monitor and adjust work assignments: The work assigned to individuals and workgroups in a work unit is monitored on a regular basis, and adjustments are made as needed SP7 - Analyze measures: Measures defined in the plans for a work unit are collected, analysed, and used to manage the work SP8 - Review performance and status: The performance and the status of the activities, work products, and services for a work unit are reviewed against its requirements, plans, and commitments on a regular basis Work Unit Performance (WUP) SP8 - Measure work performance: Measurements of the work activities performed by the individuals and work groups within a work unit and the work products produced are collected and analyzed to understand the performance and results SP9 - Improve work performance: Improvements are identified and incorporated into the way individuals and workgroups within a work unit perform their work Sourcing Management (SM) SP5 - Maintain sourcing agreement: The sourcing agreement for a selected supplier is established and maintained SP7 - Maintain supplier work orders: Work orders are established and maintained with a supplier to provide specified products and services SP8 - Resolve planning conflicts: A supplier’s plans and commitments are balanced with a work unit’s internal plans and commitments
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At maturity level four, the organization compares the previous results to make an analysis. This maturity level does not include any new measures since it only compares results. There are no guidelines for measuring and analysing the practices implemented at this level, but it provides some activities for performing statistical control and analysis of the results which are shown in next section. At maturity level five, measures are performed about the clients’ satisfaction and to
give insight into the improvements made to the selected processes. The most important measures were developed at the third maturity level. Table 3 shows the Process Areas and corresponding activities for using guidelines for measurement and analysis.
The Implicit Process of Measurement and Analysis in BPMM As mentioned in the earlier sections, there is no specific Process Area for measurement and analy-
Table 2. Process Areas and activities at maturity level three for using guidelines for measurement and analysis Process Areas and activities with guidelines at maturity level three Organizational Process Management (OPM) SP7 - Maintain definitions of organizational measures: Definitions of measures are established and maintained to characterize the organization’s standard processes and process assets SP9 - Maintain process repositories: Repositories for storing and making available the organization’s process descriptions and measures and information on their use are established and maintained SP11 - Collect process assets: Process-related work products, measures, and improvement information derived from performing the organization’s processes are collected, packaged, and maintained in the organizational repositories SP12 - Analyze process information: Information, work products, and measures derived from performing the organization’s processes are analyzed to provide insight into and improve the organization’s standard processes and related process assets Organizational Competency Development (OCD) SP8 - Monitor competency development activities: Status and performance in meeting the organization’s competency development plans are monitored, and significant deviations are identified SP9 - Measure competency development effectiveness: The effectiveness of the organization’s competency development activities is measured and evaluated, and significant deficiencies are identified Product and Service Work Management (PSWM) SP4 - Maintain definitions of measures: Definitions of the measures used to plan and manage the product and service work for an offer and to satisfy organizational measurement requirements are established and maintained. SP9 - Manage product and service work: Definitions of the measures used to plan and manage the product and service work for an offer and to satisfy organizational measurement requirements are established and maintained SP11 - Report utilization of organization’s resources: The amount of each type of resource needed to perform the product and service work for an offer is determined and reported to executive management for use in managing the organizational resources SP12 - Contribute to organization’s process assets: Work products, measures, documented experiences, and improvements from the product and service work for an offer are contributed to the organization’s process assets Products and Service Deployment (PSD) SP15 - Support parallel operations: Each terminated or replaced product and service offer is continued as needed to allow the customers and users to transition off the terminated or replaced offer.
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Table 3. Process Areas and activities at maturity level five for using guidelines for measurement and analysis Process Areas and activities with guidelines at maturity level five Organizational Improvement Planning (OIP) SP3 - Maintain improvement goals Quantitative improvement goals for the organization and their priorities are established and maintained SP7 - Maintain organizational improvement plans Plans for improvement efforts that the organization will perform are established and maintained SP8 - Monitor improvement activities and results The organization’s improvement activities and results are monitored against the organization’s improvement strategies and quantitative improvement goals SP9 - Compare improvement measures to goals Measures and quantitative projections of the organization’s improvements are monitored against the organization’s quantitative improvement goals Organizational Performance Alignment (OPA) SP1 - Allocate business goals and responsibilities to units The allocation of the organizational quantitative business goals and responsibilities to the organization’s product and service offers and units is established and maintained. SP2 - Adjust unit plans for overall results The responsibilities, plans and commitments of the units are evaluated and aligned to ensure that, individually and in aggregate, they provide the best fit for the organization’s business strategies and goals SP3 - Align work assignments within units The work assignments of workgroups and individuals in the work units are established and maintained to support the achievement of the business goals for the units SP4 – Monitor local Alignment and results The performance and results of the individuals, workgroups, units and product and service offers are monitored on a regular basis against their business goals SP6 – Monitor Organizational Alignment and results The overall performance and results of the organization are monitored on a regular basis against the organization’s quantitative improvement goals and strategies Defect and Problem prevention (DPP) SP8 – Measure effects of preventive actions The effects of the work unit’s workgroup’s defect and problem prevention actions on its plans and quantitative improvement goals are measured and analyzed. Organizational Innovative Improvement (OII) SP4 - Evaluate candidate improvements Candidate innovative improvements are rigorously evaluated to determine their costs, impacts, and contribution to achieving the quantitative improvements goals assigned to an improvement workgroup SP5 - Prepare improvement solution A set of changes that makes up a complete improvement solution are prepared and evaluated to determine if the solution will achieve the assigned quantitative improvement goals
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sis in BPMM like in CMM; thus, the activities are spread across the defined Process Areas. There are some activities with guidelines as presented in the previous section and there are some other activities related to this topic that do not have guidelines to perform them, which are presented in this section. Table 4 shows the Process Areas and activities for maturity level two for measurement and analysis without guidelines. Table 4 shows the activities without guidelines for measurement and analysis defined in the Process Area “Organizational Process Leadership”, which aim to guide the process improvement program in the organization. It involves the definition of measures for planning, managing and evaluating the results of the program, and reviewing the results obtained from the values registered for the defined measures. In maturity level three there are no Process Areas that contain activities without guidelines for measurement and analysis. Table 5 shows the activities without guidelines for measurement and analysis for maturity level four. Table 5 shows the activities without guidelines for measurement and analysis for maturity level four, which are defined in three different Process Areas. In the Process Area “Organizational Capability and Performance Management” the critical process elements, attributes and measures that characterize these aspects of the standard processes established for maturity level three are
defined. Also the techniques that are going to be used for the quantitative control of the process are identified and selected, and the measures collected and stored in the organization’s measurement repository for further analysis. In “Product and Service Process Integration” the definitions of measures for integrated processes are defined. In “Quantitative Process Management” the definition of measurable attributes for understanding and controlling the variation in the processes is established, and the quantitative and analytic techniques that are used to understand and control this variation are determined. Also the performance, quality goals, capability measures, analysis and results of corrective actions to be used in the organization are recorded. Table 6 shows the Process Areas and activities without guidelines for measurement and analysis for maturity level five. Table 6 shows the only activity without guidelines for measurement and analysis at maturity level five, which is in the Process Area “Organizational Improvement Planning” and refers to the collection and analysis of measures on a regular basis to identify areas that need improvement. From all the Process Areas and activities related to measurement and analysis practices (with or without guidelines), we can identify four principal aspects which must be taken into account in the implicit process with its corresponding
Table 4. Process Areas and activities at maturity level two for measurement and analysis without guidelines Process Areas and activities without guidelines at maturity level two Organizational Process Leadership (OPL) SP7 – Maintain definition of improvement measures: Definitions of the measures used to plan, manage, and evaluate results of the organization’s process improvement program are established and maintained SP10 – Review Process improvement results: Progress in achieving the organization’s process improvement goals is reviewed by executive management on a periodic basis
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Table 5. Process Areas and activities at maturity level four for measurement and analysis without guidelines Process Areas and Activities without guidelines at maturity level four Organizational Capability and Performance Management (OCPM) SP2 – Maintain Process attribute measures The critical process elements, attributes, and measures that are used to quantitatively characterize the performance of the organization’s standard processes are identified SP3 – Maintain Capability Analyses Definition of statistical and other quantitative techniques for evaluating the capability of organization’s product and services processes for achieving performance and quality goals are established and maintained SP4 – Collect measures Measures of process attributes and performance and quality results emerging from the organization’s product and service work are collected on a periodic basis and stored in the organizational measurement repository Product and Service Process Integration (PSPI) SP3 – Define measures for integrated processes Definitions of measures used to plan and manage the product and service work using functionally integrated processes are established and maintained Quantitative Process Management (QPM) SP2 – Maintain definitions of measures The definitions of the measurable attributes of a work effort that are relevant for understanding and controlling the variation in the work processes and managing the achievement of the work effort’s quantitative performance and quality goals are established and maintained SP3- Determine quantitative and analytic techniques Quantitative and other analytic techniques needed to understand and control the variation in the work processes and manage the achievement of a work effort’s quantitative performance and quality goals are identified and adapted for use SP10- Record work effort results The performance and quality goals, performance and capability measures, analyses, and the results of corrective actions for a work effort are recorded for local use and organizational use
Table 6. Process Areas and activities for maturity level five for measurement and analysis without guidelines Process Areas and activities without guidelines at maturity level five Organizational Improvement Planning (OIP) SP4 – Analyze measures to identify improvements Measures of the organization’s processes, activities, performance, and results are analyzed on a regular basis to identify areas that are most in need of improvements
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activities as defined in BPMM. Figure 3 proposes a summary of the activities logically grouped according to these criteria by maturity level. As can be observed in Figure 3, the grouping of activities involves the definition of high level concepts that all the activities share, in the first one, to define and maintain the definition of objectives, measures, procedures and techniques, in second one to collect measures, monitor and review status, in third one to store and analyze measures and results and in fourth one to review results and needed improvements. When comparing this proposal with the specific goals and associated practices in the CMMI family for Process Area measurement and analysis, it can be noted that it defines only two logical concepts for grouping the activities which correspond to Specific Goal 1: “Align measurement and analysis activities” and Specific Goal 2: “Provide measurement results”. The former is
equivalent to the first defined in our proposal, and the latter is equivalent to the other three together in our proposal. We think that to explicitly state the goals identified with fewer specifics shows better insight in the process and the objectives of each one can be better understood.
MEASURABLE CONCEPTS AND MEASURES ALIGNED WITH BPMM First of all, it is necessary to establish a definition for a measurable concept and a measure. For this purpose, the Software Measurement Ontology (SMO) defined in (García et al., 2005) is used. The SMO aims to contribute to the harmonization of the different software measurement proposals and standards by providing a coherent set of common concepts used in software measurement. It is believed (Rolón et al., 2006b) that software
Figure 3. Grouped activities identified in the implicit process for measurement and analysis ordered by maturity level
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processes and business processes present some similarities including the fact that both seek to capture the main characteristics of a group of partially ordered activities that are carried out to achieve a specific goal. Based on that, the SMO can be used to define concepts also related to the measurement of business processes, as was done by (Rolón et al., 2006a;2006b). The main features and characteristics of the SMO as mentioned in (García et al., 2005) are the following: “it uses the term ‘measure’ instead of ‘metric‘, it differentiates between ‘measure’, ‘measurement’, and ‘measurement result’, and it distinguishes between base measures, derived measures, and indicators, but considering them all as measures and generalizing their respective measurement approaches (measurement method, measurement function and analysis model), and integrates the software measures with the quality model that defines the information needs that drive the measurement process”. Some of the concepts defined in SMO are described below, especially those on which the presentation of the concepts included in this section rely. The concept of “information need” refers to the information needed to manage a project (for example, goals and risks, among others). An “entity” is an object characterized by the measurement of its attributes as defined in (ISO/IEC-15939, 2002), e.g. a software or business processes model. An “attribute” is a measurable property, physical or abstract, shared by all entities of an entity category, e.g. activities or nodes in a software or business process model. A “measurable concept” is an abstract relationship between attributes and information needs, so, it is ultimately what is wanted to be measured or what makes it possible to make the measurements. Finally, a “measure” is defined with a measurement approach, which can be a measurement function, measurement method or an analysis model and the measurement scale. Measures are applied to measurable attributes of the entities. The SMO defines more concepts related to measurement, which are not
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presented here; the interested reader is referred to (García et al., 2005).
State of the Art of Measures for Business Process The current literature includes some different classification measures for business processes. For example, according to (Vanderfeesten et al., 2008a), business process measures can be inspired by software measurement and experimental work on process model measures. However, in this section, measures are classified in design measures and execution measures based on Tjaden (1999) which defines operative measures and structural measures. Operative measures measure how the process is executing over time and are directly related to the dynamic properties of business processes. Structural measures treat the static properties of business processes and are defined upon the business process model at the design time. Design measures quantify the quality of business processes related to some measurable attributes of the model. These measures are made before the business process is executed. Moreover, such measures could inform about if the model has an appropriate size, is clearly structured or is easy to comprehend. The great majority of these measures are independent from the modeling languages because they use only high-level information from the business process models. For example, a design measure could measure the complexity of a business process model, expressed in terms of BPMN and it could measure the number of elements of a particular type. Table 7 shows some important measures for business process models. The goal is to highlight some of the most important measurement initiatives in the current literature and not to provide a complete state of the art about the measurement of business processes. For further information the interested reader is referred to the sources listed.
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
For each measurable concept, there are different initiatives. Each author has interpreted complexity, cohesion and coupling from different perspectives, as can be seen in Table 8. As can be observed in Table 8, there is high heterogeneity in measuring complexity for business processes. Some of them could be used to complement others. For example, some authors
have proposed the measure number of activities for calculating complexity, but this measure is rather simple and it is necessary to complement it with others. Tables 9 and 10 present coupling and cohesion measures are presented. Coupling is related to cohesion, because the ideal situations are a business process model that
Table 7. Measurable concepts for business process models Measurable Concept
Description
Complexity
Hard to separate, analyze or solve. (Latva-Koivisto, 2001) Complexity measures the simpleness and understandability of a design (Vanderfeesten et al, 2007). The degree to which a process is difficult to analyze, understand or explain. It may be characterized by the number and intricacy of activity interfaces, transitions, conditional and parallel branches, the existence of loops, roles, activity categories, the types of data structures and other process characteristics (Cardoso, 2005).
Cohesion
Relationship of the elements within the design. It is hypothesized that a design with low cohesion will contain more errors than a design with higher cohesion (Vanderfeesten et al, 2007).
Coupling
Number of interconnections among modules of a design. The degree of coupling depends on how complicated the connections are. It is hypothesized that a design with a high coupling will contain more errors (Vanderfeesten et al, 2007).
Table 8. Complexity measures in the design stage Complexity Author
Measure
J. Cardoso (Cardoso, 2007)
NOA: number of activities in a process. This measure is highly criticized because of its simplicity. It could be used as a complement of other measures
J. Cardoso (Cardoso, 2007)
CFC: control-flow complexity. This is measured considering the complexity of the splits (AND, XOR,OR), joins, loops and ending and starting points It considerers the number of mental states that have to be taken into account when a designer develops a process.
V. Gruhn and R. Laue (Gruhn and Laue, 2006)
Cognitive complexity: cognitive effort to understand a model. This means how easy or difficult it is to comprehend a design. Nesting depth: information about the structure of the design. Number of decisions in the control flow that are necessary to perform this action. Antipatterns: counting the usage of antipatterns in a design can help to detect poor modeling. An antipattern is a design pattern that appears obvious but is ineffective or far from optimal in practice. Fan-in/Fan-out: this is the count of all other modules that calls the module under investigation and are called from it. Number of handles: measure of well-structuredness. This is always 0 for well-structured models.
J. Mendling (Mendling, 2006) E. Rolón (Rolón et al., 2006a)
Testing Density: number of arcs for a given set of function, event and connector nodes. Structural Complexity: depending on two aspects of maintainability and usability: understandability and modifiability, measures elements of a business process model modeled with BPMN (OMG, 2006).
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is strongly cohesive and weakly coupled, the same desirable properties defined for the design of software systems. A coupling/cohesion ratio is defined to enable the comparison between various design alternatives. The design with the minimal process coupling/cohesion ratio is the most favourable design. Regarding the execution of business processes, measures that can be obtained from it are going to be used to obtain insight into the execution of processes primarily for making improvements in business processes. In the literature of business process and workflows measures, there are not as many works about execution measures as about design measures. We think this is due to the fact that execution measures can be seen from two viewpoints which have their own type of defined measures: general execution measures that can be applied to processes of any kind (for example, software processes) and execution measures specific to the business process domain. In the case of general execution measures, all of them refer to process attributes such as progress, duration, cost and quality, among others, with no reference to the type of processes they are
measuring. Measures such as in the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide (Project Management Institute, 2004) for project management can be used to measure and control the execution of the processes. In the case of execution measures specific to the business process domain, the attributes could be, for example, the quantity of products delivered in the process or by activity, the total price of products delivered, average time to deliver a product, among others, which are defined as Process Key Indicators (PKI) for business processes by business analysts or managers with specific knowledge of the business of the organization, and presented in scorecards (Kaplan et al., 1996). The BPMM provides examples of the information needs for the process improvement program and the measures to address them in Process Area Organizational Process Leadership at maturity level two in activity SP7. It can also be used to measure business process execution attributes even if this process is not part of the improvement program, since they also refer to attributes such as progress, cost, quality and customer satisfaction. These are shown, slightly adapted to be general for any process, in Table 11.
Table 9. Cohesion measures in the design stage Cohesion Author
Measure Process cohesion: coupling focuses on how strongly the activities in a workflow process are related or connected to each other. A certain activity is connected to another one if and only if they share one or more information elements
I. Vandersfeesten (Vanderfeesten et al., 2008b)
Table 10. Coupling measures in the design stage Coupling Author
Measure
I. Vandersfeesten (Vanderfeesten et al., 2008b)
Process coupling: Number of interconnections among modules of business process model
M. Latva-Koivisto (Latva-Koivisto, 2001)
Coefficient of connectivity: average number of connections that a node has with other nodes of the process graph
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Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Table 11. Measurable concepts for execution stage of business processes Measurable concept
Description
Progress
Provides information about • Progress against the plans for process; • Progress toward achieving the related goals.
Cost
Provides information about the progress compared with savings and benefits.
Customer satisfaction
Provides information about changes in customer satisfaction.
Quality – trouble reports
Provides insight into the quality of the product and processes and the quality of the model being executed.
Measures for Business Processes at Each Maturity Level Tables 12a and 12b provide a general insight into measurement in BPMM. These tables show the relationship between measurement, process and product. This relationship is based on (Pfleeger, 1996), which presents this relationship in the context of CMM and in an adaptation from (Lee et al., 2007). As can be observed in Tables 12a and 12b, at level 2, business processes are shown as a black box at maturity level 2. Execution measures are applied because the organization only knows the inputs and outputs of the processes. At maturity level 3, the business processes are viewed as a white box and defined from an organizational perspective, instead of the work unit perspective used at maturity level 2. At this level it is possible to apply design measures to the defined processes because the process visibility makes it possible to have a consciousness of the intermediate products. At maturity level 4 it is possible to apply techniques such as Business Process Mining (van der Aalst et al., 2007) to establish conformance between models and processes (the process is executed following the steps described in the model), to extend the business process models with new information extracted from event logs for improving models and even to register execution measures of the business processes in event
logs files to analyse and improve the business processes. At this level, statistical control of the processes is used to control their variation. At maturity level 5, process quantitative management helps to achieve a continuous improvement of the processes. In the next section, a more detailed vision about measures for business process modelling and execution is provided, along with the illustration of its usage based on an adaptation of the very well known example of a business process for trip reservations in a travel Agency (Singh et al., 2004).
Measures for Business Process Modeling Design measures cannot be applied for organizations at the second maturity level. The main reason is shown in Tables 12a and 12b. It is possible that some work units can have visual descriptions of their processes, but not in a standardized way, so it is possible to analyze their attributes but with isolated efforts. On the other hand, at maturity level three some intermediate products are known. Work units are white boxes, so it is possible to apply design measures. The results of these measures could help business processes in facilitating maintainability and some potential points of errors would not be continued in later stages of the business process life cycle. The business process model for the travel agency is shown in Figure 4 expressed in BPMN (OMG, 2006). 547
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Table 12 a. Relationship between measurement, process and product with respect to maturity Maturity process and measurement Maturity Initial
Related measurement activities
Characteristics Ad hoc manner
Execution measures
Standardized
• Defining process • Monitoring and controlling process performance for overall organization • Processes are monitoring in a systematic manner and controlled in a ad hoc manner
Design measures
Business Process
Final product
Execution information for measuring
Design for measuring
Figure 4 shows the workflow of elements that define the business process for the travel agency, which starts when a client sends a request to the travel agency with information concerning the trip, including place, dates, and payment data. Mean-
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ActivityN
ProductN
Activity 2
Product2
Activity 1
Product1
inputs
monitoring
• Not defining or partially defining process • Measuring process performance partially • Monitoring and controlling process performance for a work unit in an ad hoc manner
controlling
Managed
while, the travel agency asks its partners to carry out the flight, hotel and car rental reservations; if a positive result is obtained a message is sent to the client with the information concerning the reservations and payment, while the travel agency
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Table 12 b. Relationship between measurement, process and product with respect to maturity Maturity process and measurement Maturity
• Measuring process performance quantitatively • Systematically controlling and monitoring process performance
Business Process
Quantitative management
monitoring
controlling
Predictable
Related measurement activities
Characteristics
Quantitative management
Final product
Execution information for measuring
Design for measuring
Innovating
ActivityN
ProductN
Activity 2
Product2
Activity 1
Product1
inputs
• Monitoring and controlling process performance in a proactive way
Improvement of processes
Business Process
monitoring
controlling
Improvement strategies
Quantitative management
ActivityN
Execution information for measuring
Design for measuring
registers the successful booking, otherwise the reason of the failure is sent to the client. To exemplify the use of the measures for business process modelling, we present the calculation
Final product
ProductN
Activity 2
Product2
Activity 1
Product1
inputs
of the CFC (Control Flow Complexity) (Cardoso, 2007) of the business process presented. This measure takes into account the quantity and characteristics of the gateways the business process
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Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Figure 4. Business process for the travel agency
presents, in order to give a numerical indication of the complexity of the business process flow. This is based on the McCabe’s cyclomatic complexity for software programs expressed as graphs, but semantics have been added to the gateways according to their type. The formula for the measure is as follows:
where the value of CFC AND-Split is 1 for each AND-Split in the process (since all the transitions from the gateway are executed in parallel thus reaching the same state space when they are finalized), the value of CFC XOR-Split is calculated as the fan out of the split (since only one transition can be executed from it but could be any of the possibilities, so the reachable state space is therefore the sum of all the transitions) , and the CFC OR-Split is the result of calculating 2n − 1 where n is the fan out of the split (since the execution of the transitions could correspond to one, some, or all, so the state space corresponds to all the possible combinations between the
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transitions to be executed). The fan out of the split corresponds to the number of transitions that start from it. For the calculation of the CFC for the business process of the travel agency the quantity and type of the gateways involved has to be counted, the definitions applied in order to obtain a number for each type of gateway and all must then be added up to obtain the final number for the complexity of the model. Although the McCabe’s cyclomatic complexity also defines a range with which to map the numeric result to the complexity of the program, with the CFC measure this range has not yet been defined. Although it is interpreted as the highest value of the CFC it indicates greater global architectonic complexity of the process modelled. The numeric result of the calculation could, therefore, give an approximate idea of the complexity of the model, which could help to improve it. In the case of the example shown, the calculation is as follows: CFC = AND result + XOR result + OR result = total number
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
CFC = (1) + (2+2) + (2 (n=3) -1) = 1 + 4 + 7 = 12
process measures lie between the second and third maturity level, since the organization undergoes an important change in establishing the standard business processes to be measured. The purpose of the design measures at the fourth and fifth maturity levels is the same.
Based on the number obtained for the travel agency business process, the complexity of the model could be associated with neither a very simple nor a highly complex model, but with a model of medium complexity. Let us consider another example, in which the business process measures defined by Rolón et al. (2007; 2008) are calculated on the model shown in Figure 4. These measures are divided into two main groups: base measures and derived measures. There are 46 base measures, which are calculated by counting the different types of elements in a BPMN model. Derived measures are obtained as a result of applying measurement functions to another base and/or derived measures. There are 14 derived measures. This initiative evaluates the structural complexity of these models at a conceptual level. The goal is to obtain evidence with regard to the influence that the structural complexity of business models may have on their maintainability. Tables 13 and 14 show the calculation results of some base and derived measures applied to the model in Figure 4. It is important to note that the most fundamental differences in applying design business
Measures for Business Process Execution In this section some examples of business process execution measures are presented, adapted from the Process Areas “Organizational Process Leadership” and “Organizational Business Governance” of (OMG, 2007) and from (Baumert et al., 1992). In each table the formulas associated with the defined measures are presented and the maturity level in which they apply is proposed. Table 15 shows some examples for maturity levels two and three, and Table 16 shows some examples for maturity levels four and five. The measures presented in Tables 15 and 16 are examples of general execution measures which can be applied to processes of any kind. For the business process of the travel agency presented in the previous section (see Figure 4), some execution measures specific to the business
Table 13. Base measures applied to the model in Figure 4 Base measures Start events NSNE: number of simple start events
Inclusive decision 2
End events NENE: number of simple end events
2
Parallel decision 2
Tasks
NPF: number of parallel forks/joins
2
Participants
NT: number of simple tasks
11
NTC: number of compensation tasks
3
Exclusive decision (data-based) NEDDB: number of exclusive decisions/joins
NID: number of inclusive decision
NP: number of participants
3
Message flow 3
NMF: number of message flows
4
Sequence flow NSF: number of sequence flows
28
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Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Table 14. Derived measures applied to the model in Figure 4 Derived measures TNT: total number of tasks of the model TNT=NT+NTL+NTMI+NTC
15
CLA: connectivity level between activities CLA= TNT/NSF
0.54
CLP: connectivity level between pools CLP=NMF/NP
1.3
Table 15. Measurable concepts, measures and formulae for process business execution at maturity levels two and three Measurable concept
Repeatable level (2)
Defined level (3)
Progress
• Actual vs. planned completion of task and milestones (Gantt chart) • Actual vs. planned consumption of resources
• Actual vs. planned completions with ranges (Gantt chart, PERT chart)
Cost
• Actual vs. planned cost • Cost and schedule variances
• Actual vs. planned costs with ranges • Cost and schedule performance indices • Range of customer satisfaction with the organization’s products and services
Customer satisfaction
Quality Trouble reports
• Status of trouble reports • Number of trouble reports opened, closed, unevaluated during reporting period • Trouble report density • Comparison of trouble reports and test cases passed
Process stability
process domain can also be defined. For example, it could be interesting for the travel agency business to measure: • • •
Quantity of request received per hour and/ or per day Quantity of successful request including payment authorization Quantity of reservations cancelled due to failures in booking
Business goals provide a defined foundation for guiding the implementation and evaluation of
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• Status of trouble reports • Number of trouble reports compared with historical data • Length of time trouble reports remain open • Number of trouble reports per process • Number of process changes • Number of process waivers
business processes. The relation between business measures and business processes can be imprecise at maturity level two, but these measures can provide guidance for the results the organization wants to achieve through its business processes. In the presence of standard business processes, a set of standard organizational measures can be defined and collected. It is important to note, also, that many of the measures needed for the organization’s process improvement program will have to be obtained from the units, so they need to understand the requirements for collecting and reporting them and how they will be used in the organization (OMG, 2007).
Measurement and Maturity of Business Processes
Table 16. Measurable concepts, measures and formula for process business execution at maturity levels four and five Measurable concept
Managed level (4)
Innovating level (5)
Progress
• Actual vs. planned completions with control limits (Gantt chart, PERT chart)
• Ratio of rework time to total project time per project • Rate of time spent in activities undergoing process change
Cost
• Actual vs. planned costs with control limits • Cost and schedule performance indices. • Return on investment (ROI) of the process
Customer satisfaction
• Percent of customers that rate their satisfaction with the organization’s products and services as satisfied or very satisfied
• Comparative costs and benefits of alternative process improvement and defect prevention activities and technologies
• Same as Managed level
Quality trouble reports
• Causes of trouble reports. • Testing, development and implementation efficiency
• Same as Defined and Managed levels
Process stability
• Same as Defined level
• Same as Defined level
CONCLUSION In this chapter the importance of measurement activities in the maturity of business processes was analyzed. A Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) was presented, which aims to guide the organizations in the maturity of its business processes, providing the benefits associated with this kind of models. By following the steps defined for each maturity level, an organization can take a path between ad hoc defined processes to continuous improving ones, where objective defined measures and the analysis of the processes results gives insight into the various aspects that have to be taken into account in decision making to achieve the defined business goals. In addition, a guide to help an organization to support the measurement of business processes depending on maturity was provided. Creating the BPMM as a specific maturity model for business processes has led to some discussions. Although the importance of measurement when improving the organization and maturing its processes was presented in the introduction section, BPMM does not have
a specific area for this purpose, following the CMM approach instead of the CMMI one. We strongly believe that the CMMI approach, which has a specific Process Area for measurement and analysis activities, explicitly defining the process, goals and specific practices to achieve them, is clearly better. Having this Process Area supports the activities for measurement and analysis that should be performed in all the other Process Areas to define, manage, measure, control, analyze and improve the business processes. The importance of having a defined measurement process to support the related activities is clear. Regarding the existing literature on business process measurement, we found that a classification of design and execution measures is appropriate, and provides the foundation to improve both the models of the business processes prior to deploying automated systems, and their operation at the time of execution. Although design measures are a relatively new area of research, we believe that their importance is becoming well-known, making it possible to correct problems detected in early stages of the development process, with the associated benefits. On the other hand, even
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though execution measures have been defined for a long time, their use and benefits are not always understood and put into practice as they could be. We believe that an organization that follows the directives stated in BPMM to improve and mature its business processes, should make use of both types of measures to gain knowledge about its business processes and achieve its business goals with certainty.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work has been partially financed by the INGENIO Project (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha, Conserjería de Educación y Ciencia, PAC 08-0154-9262), ESFINGE Project (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Dirección General de Investigación/Fondos Europeos de Desarrollo Regional(FEDER), reference IN200615175-C05-05).
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Key Terms Activity: An element of work performed as part of a planned effort. An activity is often the lowest level work element in a work breakdown structure. It normally has an expected duration, an expect cost, and expected resource requirements, (BPMM, 2007). Business Process Execution: Business process execution refers to the actual run of a process by a process engine, which is responsible for instantiating and controlling the execution of business processes. Process models are used by the process engine to instantiate and control the enactment of process instances, (Weske, 2008). Business Process Model: A Business process model is a model of a business process of an organization, where a business process describes one of the standard sets of activities the organization needs to do to address one or more business requirements, (BPMM, 2007). Guidelines: They are a list of advices that can be used to support the implementations of practices of the process areas. They cover topics that are applicable for many practices, but they are considered to be optional for the practices, (BPMM, 2007). Maturity Level: A maturity level is a defined evolutionary plateau of process improvement.
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Each maturity level stabilizes an important part of the organization’s processes, (BPMM, 2007). Maturity Model: A maturity model is an evolutionary roadmap for implementing the vital practices from one or more domains of organizational process. (BPMM, 2007) Measurement and Analysis: A list of activities which principal objective is to use quantitative information (obtained with measurement activities) to guide management decisions. Moreover, they involve planning and preparing for measurement, specifying the measures and measurement activities and performing them. Later, measurement results are studied to offer utility for organizations. Examples of the types of analyses that are performed include: a) estimation to support planning, b) analyzing feasibility of plans and alternatives, c) monitoring work performance, and d) monitoring performance of products, (BPMM, 2007). Process Improvement: A program of activities designed to improve the performance and maturity of the organization’s processes, and the results of such a program, (CMMI, 2002). Process Maturity: Is the extent to which processes are explicitly defined, managed, measured, controlled and effective. Process maturation implies that process capability is improved over time, (BPMM, 2007).
