Participatory Development of Enterprise Process Models

Abstract

In this chapter we present practical experience from using a technique we call Modeling Conferences, a method for participatory construction and development of enterprise process models. Process models are an important way to support communication, coordination, and knowledge development within an organization. The Modeling Conference method focuses on broad participation from all actors in the organization, is grounded in a social constructivist perspective, and has its theoretical basis in the method of search conferences and process modeling. In an engineering consultancy firm, the Modeling Conference method has been used to develop process models for main common work tasks that have been implemented on an intranet. Independent evaluations show that participation through the Modeling Conferences led to significantly more ownership to the process models, and that the actors have developed new collective knowledge.