Introduction to Business Process Management

Systems Concepts

Dimitris Karagiannis, Stefan Junginger and Robert Strobl

University of Vienna, The BPMS-Group, Bruenner Strasse 72, A-1210 Vienna, Austria,
{dk, sjung, robert}@dke.univie.ac.at

Abstract. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are expected to meet

the requirements of new designed business applications by
• supporting different frameworks which enable the modelling of current and
anticipating future business application needs,
• integrating the existing and the new information technology enterprise
environment, and
• providing a continuous performance method for assessment and improvement
of the running business.
Their concepts, methods and technology (realised systems) should support
developers who apply different frameworks (e.g. total quality management, re-
engineering) to gathering and reasoning about various aspects in an organization
in an efficient manner.
Furthermore this paper provides an overview of business process management
issues and gives a quick description of a realised Business Process Management
System named ADONIS.

B. Scholz-Reiter et al. (eds.), Business Process Modelling

© Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg 1996
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1 Business Process Management Systems

(BPMS) Methodology Framework
The BPMS-methodology is based on three abstraction levels; the business level,
the execution level, and the evaluation level. These three levels correspond to the
related graphs. The theoretical background and their interdependencies are
described in chapter 2. The operational model of the BPMS-methodology is
defined through a recursive process-oriented model which is based on the core
activities Criteria Selection, Information Acquisition, Analysis and Simulation,
Design and Evaluation. The BPMS methodology framework (Karagiannis 1989,
Karagiannis 1994a, Karagiannis 1995, Kleinfeldt, Guiney, Miller and Barnes
1994) is tried and tested in different industrial projects. Experiences gained by
some specialisations of the method provide the basis for the realization of specific
application-oriented metarnodels - especially in the banking and insurance area.
In Fig. 1 an instance of the operational model is given. According to that this
BPMS-realization is viewed as a process consisting of five subprocesses, namely:
• Strategic Decision Process
• Reengineering Process
• Resource Allocation Process
• Workflow Management Process
• Performance Evaluation Process
The methodology framework mentioned uses all core activities, which are
associated with each subprocess of the BPMS approach. Every such set of core
activities should be individually refined, ordered and instantiated according to the
requirements and the organizational aspects in the specific application field.