Abstract
Business Process Management (BPM) is often perceived as a top priority concern in organisations; both in public and private sectors. This has been clearly noticed in the Australian health care sector, evidenced by the Australian Government’s commitment to pursuing a reform agenda that reflects a new approach to improving health and aged care services. The adoption of a business process management approach can be a key tool to facilitate health reform in the public and private sectors. This approach provides a structured and hence rigorous approach to ensure that health processes are reviewed, improved and implemented consistently throughout the organisation, especially where public health services are provided from multiple service points. Process modeling is an embedded component of most BPM initiatives, yet a resource intensive task. How process models can be derived efficiently (i.e. with less resources and time) and effectively (at a high quality to meet the specific needs) is an integral element of interest to most organisations, however, this area of research is still in its infancy. This paper aims to address this gap by proposing a ‘process-pattern’ based approach to process modeling where models are created and managed within a ‘process architecture’. The process pattern approach is explained with evidence from a large state based health organisation using an integrated risk management process for health care service management as an example. The study employed an action research approach and the chapter unfolds its findings around the main phases of the research method. The contributions from this work are twofold. From the perspective of practice, it offers a validated high level example of a process pattern for an Integrated Risk Management Program for health. From an academic perspective: it presents a validated Risk Management process pattern for delivering health services which can be used as or a benchmark in further research.
TopIntroducing Key Concepts
This section is dedicated to describing the many terms and concepts used later in the chapter during the overall research process and findings discussions that are followed.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Work Instruction: The detailed description of the steps person, robot or a computer system must complete in order to fulfill a task.
Business Process Management: Refers to aligning processes with the organization’s strategic goals, designing and implementing process architectures, establishing process measurement systems that align with organizational goals, and educating and organizing managers so that they will manage processes effectively. (http://www.bptrends.com/resources_glossary) last accessed 9/7/2008
Task: A task is an atomic activity that is included within a process.
Value Chain: A value chain is a sequence of activities that is initiated by a firm’s customer and ends when that customer receives an outcome (service or product).
Operations: Operations are ongoing recurring activity that a business is involved in. Business operations deliver direct or indirect value to the organisations customers.
Business Process Modeling: Business process modeling includes techniques and activities used as part of the larger business process management discipline. Business process modeling is an activity performed by business analysts within an organisation. Analysts use modeling tools to depict both the current state of the business and the desired future state.
Business Rules: Business rules describe how an organisation operates and the constraints under which the operations are performed.
Pattern: A pattern in general is “an abstraction from a concrete form which keeps recurring in specific non-arbitrary contexts” (Riehle and Zullighoven, 1995).
Value Chain: A value chain is a sequence of activities that is initiated by a firm’s customer and ends when that customer receives an outcome (service or product).
Policy: A policy is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions in order to achieve an organisation’s objective.
Process Architecture: The process architecture is one of the facets of the Enterprise Business Architecture, where it provides the framework by which the organisation’s processes are structured. The process architecture more importantly provides the relationship between the processes to the other facets of the Enterprise Business architecture such as the People, Finance, Location, Governance etc.
Enterprise Business Architecture: Enterprise Business Architecture provides the guiding framework that describes the relationship between all the parts of the organisation from the strategy to implementation9.
Policy: A policy is a deliberate plan of action to guide decisions in order to achieve an organisation’s objective.
Risk Management: Is the culture, processes and structures that are directed towards realizing potential opportunities whilst managing adverse effects.
Business Rules: Business rules describe how an organisation operates and the constraints under which the operations are performed.
Risk Management: Is the culture, processes and structures that are directed towards realizing potential opportunities whilst managing adverse effects.
Business Process: A business process is a collection of tasks that produce something of value to the organisation, its stakeholders or its customers.
Process Modeling: Process modeling is an approach for visually depicting how businesses conduct their operations by defining the entities, activities, enablers and further relationships along control flows (Curtis et al., 1988; Gill, 1999).
Operations: Operations are ongoing recurring activity that a business is involved in. Business operations deliver direct or indirect value to the organisations customers.
Business Process Management: Refers to aligning processes with the organization’s strategic goals, designing and implementing process architectures, establishing process measurement systems that align with organizational goals, and educating and organizing managers so that they will manage processes effectively. (http://www.bptrends.com/resources_glossary) last accessed 9/7/2008
Best Practice: The term best practice is used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that can be used (i.e. for management, policy, and especially software systems development) by multiple times.
Task: A task is an atomic activity that is included within a process.
Pattern: A pattern in general is “an abstraction from a concrete form which keeps recurring in specific non-arbitrary contexts” (Riehle and Zullighoven, 1995).
Process Modeling: Process modeling is an approach for visually depicting how businesses conduct their operations by defining the entities, activities, enablers and further relationships along control flows (Curtis et al., 1988; Gill, 1999).
Enterprise Business Architecture: Enterprise Business Architecture provides the guiding framework that describes the relationship between all the parts of the organisation from the strategy to implementation9.
Business Requirement: A method of describing in business terms of what an organisation does and how it does it in order to achieve a business objective.
Business Process: A business process is a collection of tasks that produce something of value to the organisation, its stakeholders or its customers.
Business process architecture: A business process architecture is a hierarchical structure of process descriptions levels and directly related views covering the whole organization from a business process point of view. It starts with high-level process maps representing a conceptual business view down to the detailed process flow descriptions describing specific tasks and their relation to roles, organization, data and IT systems. (Davis and Brabander, 2007).
Business Process Modeling: Business process modeling includes techniques and activities used as part of the larger business process management discipline. Business process modeling is an activity performed by business analysts within an organisation. Analysts use modeling tools to depict both the current state of the business and the desired future state.
Business Requirement: A method of describing in business terms of what an organisation does and how it does it in order to achieve a business objective.
Best Practice: The term best practice is used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that can be used (i.e. for management, policy, and especially software systems development) by multiple times.
Process Architecture: The process architecture is one of the facets of the Enterprise Business Architecture, where it provides the framework by which the organisation’s processes are structured. The process architecture more importantly provides the relationship between the processes to the other facets of the Enterprise Business architecture such as the People, Finance, Location, Governance etc.
Business process architecture: A business process architecture is a hierarchical structure of process descriptions levels and directly related views covering the whole organization from a business process point of view. It starts with high-level process maps representing a conceptual business view down to the detailed process flow descriptions describing specific tasks and their relation to roles, organization, data and IT systems. (Davis and Brabander, 2007).
Work Instruction: The detailed description of the steps person, robot or a computer system must complete in order to fulfill a task.