Business Process Management (CA441)

  Lecture Timetable

CA441 Continuous Assessment

Write an essay on a topic of your own choosing, or on one of the topics listed below. The essay should be based on research in the literature on Business Process Management and related topics. Some initial sources of ideas are listed against each topic, but you should also consult the general references for the course, and follow up references given in other articles.

The essay should be typed, and laid out according to accepted academic standards. A short on-line tutorial on report writing can be found on the School of Mechanical Engineering web site at http://www.mecheng.dcu.ie/reports/. Although it is geared towards reporting on experimental results, you should read at least Area 2: Referencing and Layout Guide.

A similar guide is available on the School of Communications web site at http://www.dcu.ie/communications/student_handbook.shtml#REFERENCING.

Note in particular the guidelines to citing and referencing. All material used from the sources you have consulted should be acknowledged and adequately referenced at the end of the essay.

The essay should be no more than 3,000 words long.

Marks will be given for the understanding of BPM shown (30%), for original research (20%), for critical analysis (30%), for structure (10%) and for referencing (10%).

Deadlines.

Your choice of topic should be submitted to me by email for approval before 13th. November 2009.  The overall submission deadline is the last day of semester 18th December 2009.

The complete assignment is worth 50% of your module marks. 

 Essay Titles

• Interoperability in Workflow Management Systems: suggested start-point papers:
• An Architecture for the Interoperability of Workflow Models, Salah, H., Mahmoud, B. & Nacer, B.
• A Practical Approach For A Workflow Management System, Pellegrini, S., Giacomini, F., & Ghiselli, A. in Grid Middleware and Services, Challenges and Solutions, Springer pp279-287, 2008
• The role of Java RMI in designing workflow management system, Wang Shaofeng, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 26 ,  Issue 2  (March 2001) pp49-52
• Success factors for Business Process Re-engineering: suggested start-point papers:
• Grant, D., A wider view of Business Process Reengineering. Communications of the ACM, vol. 45 no. 2 February 2002.
• Bashein, B. J. & Markus, M. L. Preconditions for BPR success. Information Systems Management, vol. 11 issue 2, spring 1994
• Teng, Jeong & Grover, Profiling Successful Reengineering Projects.Communications of the ACM, vol. 41 no. 6 June 1998
• What is Business Process Re-design? : suggested start-point papers:
• Blyth, A., Business Process Re-engineering: What is it? SIGGROUP Bulletin, vol. 18 no. 1 April 1997.
• Riejers, H.A. & Mansar, S. Liman, Best practices in business process redesign. Omega: The International Journal of Management Science, vol. 33 p283-306
• Information Technology: a help or a hindrance to process design?: suggested start-point papers:
• Venkatraman, N., IT-enabled Business Transformation: From Automation to Business Scope Redefinition. Sloan management Review, Winter 1994.
• Information Quality in Information Systems: suggested start-point papers:
• Managing information quality: increasing the value of information in Knowledge-Intensive Products and Processes,  Eppler, M.J., Second Edition, Springer Verlag
• Information Quality, in (Wang, R.Y., Pierce, E.M. et al, Editors), Advances in Management Information Systems, M.E. Sharpe publishers, 2005
• Cultural aspects of Business Process Re-design: suggested start-point papers:
• Martinsons, M.G. & Hempel, P. S., Chinese Business Process Re-engineering. International Journal of Information Management, vol 18 no. 6 , December 1998.
• Sorathia, V., Laliwala, Z. and Chaudhary, S. Towards Agricultural Marketing Reforms: Web Services Orchestration Approach. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing
• The Use of Workflow Tools in Improving Business Processes: suggested start-point papers:
• Smith, H. & Fingar, P. Workflow is just a Pi process. BPTrends, January, 2004 http://www.bpmi.org/downloads/LIB-2004-01-4.pdf
• Pyke J. and Whitehead R. (November 2003) Does Better Math Lead to Better Business Processes? WorkFlow Management Coalition. http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/better_maths_better_processes.pdf
• Kutvonen, L. Addressing interoperability issues in business process management. In 2nd Interop workshop at EDOC2005. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/summanen/publications/addressing05.pdf
• A Case Study in Business Process Re-design: suggested start-point papers:
• Business Process Management and Service-oriented Architecture: suggested start-point papers:
• Erl, Thomas. SOA : principles of service design. Prentice Hall, 2008.
• Social Factors in Business Process Re-engineering suggested start-point papers:
• Oram, M. and Wellins, R. S, (1995), Re-engineering's Missing Ingredient: The Human Factor, Institute of Personnel and Development, London. (DCU Library 658.3/ORA )
• Munkvold, B.E,(20), Tracing the Roots: The Influence of Socio-Technical Principles on Modern Organisational Change Practices, in Coakes, E. ,Willis, D. and Lloyd-Jones, R., eds., The New SocioTech, Springer, London.
• Business Process Re-Engineering in the Public Sector suggested start-point papers:
• Hughes, M., Scott, M., Golden, W., 2006. The role of business process redesign in creating e-government in Ireland. Business Process Management Journal, 12(1), 76-87
• Scherlis, W., Eisenberg, J., 2003. Digital government: IT research, innovation and e-government. Communications of the ACM, Volume 46(1), 67-68