Business Process Modeling for Process Metrics Definition

With the rising popularity for automated process execution, the terms like process performance management, performance monitoring, business activity monitoring have come into frequent usage [32]. Process performance measurement is referred to as determination of business process performance by means of some performance indicators. Process monitoring or process performance monitoring is the continuous follow-up for the process executions in an organization. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is defined by Gartner Group as “processes and technologies that enhance situation

awareness and enable analysis of critical business performance indicators based on real- time data” [51]. It is described to be implemented by many kinds of software tools. Collecting key performance indicators is seen as a prerequisite for a complete achievement of process management [166].

The aim of performance management is to provide the organizations to run in alignment with organizational goals. Business performance management is conceived in conjunction with BPM, which can be defined as “company performance management through processes” [167]. However, there are not extensive studies to build up a performance management infrastructure of an organizational goals and business process models. One of the approaches for this is Scheer’s Advanced BPM Assessment, in which Sheer indicates that business process management and business performance management are two topics going hand in hand. The second approach is of Thiault, which advises business performance management a method applied through processes that helps to improve organization’s performances in a changing and complex environment [168]. Another collection of information in the field is from Taticchi, which is focused on business performance measurement and management [169]. The collection of experiences he provided focuses on sectorial applications, providing some insight on using processes from time to time.

From our literature studies, we observe that performance management is a popular concept that is mostly seen to be related to business process management and utilized in automated workflow systems, which aims to provide the users with metrics collected from run-time data. KPIs defined during descriptive BPMod activities are usually abstract and do not specify how the metric can be defined and collected in the automation software. We have not encountered an infrastructure to focus on guiding organizations to define process metrics which are then can be used as input to process automation.

Key performance indicators (KPI) (or metrics, which are used interchangeably with KPI) are found to be a key instrument to detect the state of the processes and to identify undesired behavior [170]. There are many tools that support the definition of KPIs based on the business processes and collecting data based on these KPIs. Process Performance Manager (PPM) by IDS Scheer is one of them. It enables the definition of attributes related to EPC process models. It is critical to define the connection between the process and its key performance indicators, otherwise it is hard to end up with meaningful results for process monitoring [166].

The usage of KPIs for performance management purposes involves four steps: definition, measuring, analysis and report [170]. As explained above, the definition of KPIs related to process models and the mechanisms to collect related data during the execution of those processes are much studied on the academy and industry [32]. The calculation and evaluation methods of the indicators and the connection of KPIs to processes must be defined clearly [166]. However, there are not many studies on defining KPIs in a

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structured way during descriptive BPMod to be used as input to process automation. Thus, we cannot find much guideline on how to determine KPIs to evaluate the performance of business processes. Kronz in his study mentions that definition of KPIs must be integrated with business process models [166]. Kronz defines “measurement point” as the point in each process execution to collect data related to a KPI. This point must be applied by the application system to be developed. He explains that, within ARIS methodology, the data points for a KPI is defined by means of a KPI allocation diagram. At their enhanced notation, the measurement point, an event, is marked on an EPC diagram. The data to be returned is stored in ERM attributes.

As we claim, Kronz also emphasizes that the definition of measurement points, related data to measure the KPI and calculation rule for a KPI, even if not mathematically expressed at this stage, constitute the requirements of the information system to be developed for the processes [166]. We agree with Kronz to integrate business process models and KPI definition, but believe that a more integrated definition of them is possible. KPIs can be grouped into two types: [32]

 Metrics related to process execution and do not require business-specific data (like system load, number of concurrently running processes)

 Metrics that require business data (like number of project applications collected in one term)

In this study, we refer to group one KPIs as metrics related to system performance and exclude them from KPIs determined in process metrics list of the organization.

An extension is proposed to URN notation [140] to define indicators and monitor performance of business processes [171]. In their methodology, KPI is defined as the measure of the satisfaction of business goals and performance requirements of a system. The required performance indicators and metrics are defined on modeled business processes. Each of the KPIs is attached to the data warehouse to identify the storage from which information will be gathered for KPI. Pourshahid et.al. integrated the business process models with business intelligence and business monitoring tools to monitor KPIs and find improvement opportunities [171]. KPI symbol within GRL metamodel is defined to include the following attributes:

 Boolean attributes to indicate if a KPI is a time, cost, quality or flexibility measure,

 Target Value, threshold value and worst value,

 Data source for value and report.

KPI symbols are attached to the goals which are also attached to tasks on a GRL diagram. In this study which implemented related KPIs with a business intelligence tool and monitored them, we observe the necessity of defining projected values and data repositories to collect and report the values.

In summary, although business performance management is a popular concept in BPM field, similar to the requirements engineering field, we observe a need to integrate business and technological aspects of an organization by defining KPIs in descriptive models that can be used as direct inputs to define metrics in process automation. In BPM notations, metrics are defined in abstract level, without details for measuring [56].

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