M-PoP: leveraging the systematic modeling of processes-of-business processes

Abstract

PurposeThis paper presents M-PoP, a method to model large, complex, and dynamic business processes. These processes have sometimes resulted from alliances of organizations (i.e. joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions) and are referred to as Processes-of-Business Processes (PoP). Due to the difficulty of modeling these dynamic processes, alliances of organizations have often lost opportunities, competitiveness, and profitability, so requiring suitable modeling methods.Design/methodology/approachThe authors proposed M-PoP that can model PoP through three views in different abstraction levels and using well-known techniques in industry and academia, mainly those from Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). For this, M-PoP presents three main steps: identification of PoP elements, modeling of PoP, and verification of PoP models. To evaluate M-PoP, we applied it in a real-world business process in the health domain.FindingsThe evaluation results point out the capability and viability of M-PoP to deal with dynamic business processes.Research limitations/implicationsM-PoP still needs to be applied in various real-world scenarios to gather evidence of its productivity, efficiency, and scalability.Practical implicationsThis novel method could change the way organizations model their business processes and, as a consequence, it could leverage strategic business opportunities.Originality/valueM-PoP is the first method that makes it possible to model large and complex business processes and, most importantly, dynamic processes.