Strategic alignment of business processes

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SSttrraatteeggiicc aalliiggnnmmeenntt ooff bbuussiinneessss pprroocceesssseess
Evan Morrison
University of Wollongong
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Morrison, Evan, Strategic alignment of business processes, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of
Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Wollongong, 2014. https://ro.uow.edu.au/
theses/4569
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STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT OF BUSINESS PROCESSES
ADissertationSubmittedinFulfilmentof
theRequirementsfortheAwardoftheDegreeof
Doctor of Philosophy
from
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
by
Evan Morrison
B.ComputerScience
SchoolofComputerScienceandSoftwareEngineering
FacultyofEngineering
2014
(cid:13)c Copyright2014
by
EvanMorrison
ALLRIGHTSRESERVED
CERTIFICATION
I,EvanMorrison,declarethatthisthesis,submittedinfulfilmentoftherequirements
for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the School of Computer Science and Soft-
ware Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Wollongong, is wholly my
ownworkunlessotherwisereferencedoracknowledged. Thedocumenthasnotbeen
submittedforqualificationsatanyotheracademicinstitution.
(Signature Required)
EvanMorrison
10January2014
Contents
ListofmyPublications iv
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 OutcomesandContributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 ThesisStructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 LiteratureReview 7
2.1 FormalPreliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 GoalandStrategyModeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 SpecificationandVerification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 BusinessProcessModelingandWorkflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.6 SimilarityModelingandRedesign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.7 QualityofService . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.8 Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3 ProcessModeling,Annotation,andComposition 41
3.1 SemanticProcesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.2 NeedforSemanticProcessComposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.3 MotivatingExample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 TaskCompositionandChoreography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.1 SemanticEffectsandAccumulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4.2 SemanticalAnnotatedProcesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.4.3 SemanticProcessComposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4 BusinessProcessIntegration 62
4.1 NeedforProcessIntegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.2 ApproachestoIntegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
4.3 AnnotatedProcessNets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4.4 SemanticProcessNetIntegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
i
CONTENTS ii
4.4.1 CaseSequenceIntegrationCriteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4.2 CaseSequenceIntegrationMethodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.5 SummaryandConclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
5 StrategicAlignment 81
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.2 StrategyModeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.2.1 StrategyModelingLanguage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.2.2 StrategyOntology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.2.3 Organisational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.2.4 Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.2.5 Operational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2.6 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.3 StrategicAlignmentofBusinessProcesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.4 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6 OrganisationalComplianceManagement 101
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
6.2 Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.2.1 RunningExample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.3 MeasuringDegreesofCompliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.3.1 ComplianceAssessmentFramework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.3.2 IdentifyingImpreciseComplianceRequirements . . . . . . . . . 117
6.3.3 EngineeringComplianceRequirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
6.3.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.4 Prioritizingrepairofnon-compliantprocesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6.5 SummaryandConclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7 ToolkitDevelopment 125
7.1 GraphEncodingaProcessModel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
7.1.1 DecisionFreeTaskSequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.2 Effects,WFFsandAccumulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
7.3 QOSPreferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
8 Conclusion 158
8.1 Summaryofcontributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.2 Benefitsandapplication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
8.3 Shortcomings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
8.4 Futurework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
AppendixA CaseStudy 162
A.0.1 Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
A.1 CompanyOverview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
A.1.1 BusinessOpportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
CONTENTS iii
A.1.2 BusinessDevelopment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
A.1.3 Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
A.1.4 Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
A.2 Stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
A.3 ProductOverview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
A.3.1 FeaturesandBenefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
A.3.2 ExternalRequirementsandConstraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A.3.3 Strategicalignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A.3.4 ProcessUseCases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
A.3.5 ProcessDescriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
A.3.6 ProcessRequirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Bibliography 210
List of my Publications
[1] Evan Morrison, Alex Menzies, George Koliadis, and Aditya Ghose. Business
ProcessIntegration: MethodandAnalysis. InProceedingsoftheSixthAsia-Pacific
ConferenceonConceptualModelling(APCCM09),2009.
[2] Evan Morrison, Aditya Ghose, and George Koliadis. Dealing With Imprecise
Compliance Requirements. In Second International Workshop on Dynamic and
DeclarativeBusinessProcesses,June2009.
[3] Aditya Ghose, Lam-Son Le, Konstantin Hoesch-Klohe, Evan Morrison. The
Business Service Representation Language: A Preliminary Report. In Proc. of
the 1st International Workshop on Service Modelling and Representation Techniques
(SMART-2010), held in conjunction with the ServiceWave-2010 conference, Ghent,
Belgium,2009.
[4] Lam-Son Le, Evan. Morrison and Aditya Ghose. Definition of a description
language for business service decomposition. In Proc. of the First International
ConferenceonExploringServicesSciences,Geneva,Switzerland,2010.
[5] Evan Morrison, Aditya Ghose, Hoa Khanh Dam, Kerry Hinge, Konstantin
Hoesch-Klohe, Strategic Alignment of Business Processes. In Proc. 7th Interna-
tionalWorkshoponEngineeringService-OrientedApplications(WESOA’11),Paphos,
Cyprus,2011.
[6] Aditya Ghose, Evan Morrison and Yingzhi Gou A novel use of big data ana-
lytics for service innovation harvesting. In Proceedings of the 2013 International
ConferenceonServiceScienceandInnovation.Taiwan,2013.
[7] AdityaGhose,Lam-SonLe,EvanMorrison CorrelatingServiceswithBusiness
ObjectivesintheServAlignFramework. InLectureNotesinBusinessInformation
Processing,148,162-167.,2013.
[8] HongyunXu,BastinTonyRoySavarimuthu,AdityaGhose,EvanMorrison,Q.
Cao and Y. Shi. Automatic BDI Plan Recognition from Process Execution Logs
and Effect Logs. In Proc. of the EMAS-2013 Workshop, held in conjunction with
AAMAS,2013.
iv
LISTOFMYPUBLICATIONS v
[9] Joshua Pratt, Vishal Pandian, Evan Morrison, Alexis Andrew Miller Using
crowd-sourcing to Verify a Radiation Oncology Ontology: a Summer Project.
InJROI-JournalofRadiationOncologyInformaticsvol6no1,2014.
[10] EvanMorrison,AdityaGhose,HoaKhanhDam,AlexMenzies,KatayounKho-
daei Declarative Service Modeling through Adaptive Case Management. In
Demand-Derive Webservices: Theory, Technologies and Applications, Zhaohao Sun,
IGIPublishing,2014.
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT OF BUSINESS PROCESSES
EvanMorrison
AThesisforDoctorofPhilosophy
SchoolofComputerScienceandSoftwareEngineering
UniversityofWollongong
Abstract
S
TRATEGICbusinessprocessalignmentisthepracticeofcorrelatingbusinesspro-
cessestoorganisationalstrategy,addressingproblemswithinorganisationswhere
processes are misaligned. A business may have processes that do not contribute
towards their organisational strategies. Additionally, there may be organisational
strategies that are unfulfilled as there are no processes within the business that can
satisfy them. Through process composition and assessing strategic alignment, busi-
nessescanensurethatallcomponentsoftheorganisationworktowardsthecoregoals
andthecompanyvision. Themotivationofthisthesisstemsfromalackofformalun-
derstandingofthesubject.
To develop and define concept of alignment in the space of organisational strategy,
thisdissertationexploresthenatureofstrategy,businessprocessmanagement&com-
position,integration,complianceand,goalrealization. Itthenprovidesdeepanalysis
onhowthesefieldscanbeconnectedtocreateageneralmethodforalignment.
This thesis seeks to develop a methodological framework and supporting toolkit
to provide a measurable assessment of alignment between a portfolio of business
processes and the strategic landscape of an organisation. This can be further used
to establish re-alignment in a dynamic enterprise context. A suite of tools (TextSeer)
as well as a method to assess strategic alignment has been designed and developed
through this thesis. These tools enable businesses to better understand their oper-
ations. This understanding allows an organisation to manage their processes more
efficientlywithclearprocessdescriptionsandprocesstostrategymappings. Thethe-
sis aids in the modeling and management of processes and business strategies by
relatingeachprocesswithinanorganisationtorelatedorganisationalstrategies.
KEYWORDS: BusinessProcessManagement,Strategy,ProcessIntegration,
ComplianceManagement,RequirementsEngineering