Human Interaction Management - Adding Human Factors to BPM

Yong HanAnni Kauranen

Elisa KristolaJukka Merinen

Final Presentation 16th January 2007

Research Questions - Theoretical What is HIM and what is it’s

relationship with BPM? What is BPM? What is HIM? How do these concepts contradict

with and complement each other?

Research Questions – Practical How can the Humanedj tool

support the HIM of an organization? What is the main functionality of

Humanedj? How can Humanedj improve human

interaction in the organization? What are the challenges related to

using Humanedj and how can these challenges be dealt with?

Structure of Research

Principles of BPM

Principles of HIM

Analysis of relationshipbetween BPM and HIM

Literature Study

Study ofHumanedj

TestingHumanedj

Analysis of the applicabilityof Humanedj for HIM

Practical Study

Summary and conclusions

Literature Study – what was done For both BPM and HIM, we studied

how business processes are viewed how the concept is defined The main elements of the concept how the concept can be implemented

in an organization (including tools available)

challenges related to the concept

Literature Study – results (1/3) View of business processes

BPM 1990s: Workflow process

chain of activities basis in Petri nets

”The Third Wave” (Smith and Fingar, 2003): Collaborative process

network of activities basis in Pi-calculus

HIM: division into mechanistic and human-driven

processes allows unexpected events, (dynamic process) basis in Pi-calculus

Activity 1 Activity 2 Activity 3 Activity 4Input

Output

Activity 1Activity 2Activity 3Activity 4Input

Output

Activity 5Activity 6Activity 7Activity 8

Activity 9Activity 10Activity 11Activity 12

Literature Study – results (2/3) Definitions:

BPM: optimize chain of activities to deliver customer value

HIM: facilitate/support interaction to deliver customer value

Main elements Optimizing the steps of the process (BPM)

vs. the environment for the process (HIM) External best practices (BPM) vs. ”processes

change processes” (HIM).

Literature Study – results (3/3) Main difference between BPM and HIM:

focus on different types of business processes BPM workflow: static, private processes BPM third wave: static, public processes HIM: dynamic, public processes

HIM complements BPM by supporting a new element (human interaction) of a business process

Contradiction: defenders of BPM claim BPM is a suitable approach for all types of processes

Practical study – what was done Main functionality, objectives and

intended use of Humanedj were studied

Humanedj was tested in practice by going through the different steps presented in a tutorial

Practical Study – results (1/3) Functions and objectives of Humanedj

support for business rules, multi-agent system functionality, speech acts, XML schemas, ontology, Web services, scripting languages, web browsing and external document access.

helps users structure their activities, interactions and resources

intended to replace user’s standard desktop

Screen shot of the tool(1)

Screen shot of tool (2)

Practical study – results (2/3) Experiences

joined beta group, software easy to install

testing done by following a tutorial – errors encountered which made it impossible to complete tutorial

user needs to have an understanding of the main concepts of HIM

Practical study – results (3/3)

Comparison of Humanedj with existing collaboration tools (MS Outlook) Existing tools already provide and

equivalent to many of the functions of Humanedj

Proposals for developing Humanedj Relating Humanedj to e-mail Simplify user interface

Summary and conclusions Relationship of BPM and HIM

HIM is not really a distinct concept, but rather an complementary perspective to BPM which emphasizes human relations

Applicability of Humanedj to HIM Difficult to evaluate as software not yet fully

functional Does intend to offer some new functionality

not included in existing collaboration software

Validity of Research Literature review not very extensive

due to scope (focus on main principles of BPM and HIM, not details)

HIM is a very new concept which only a few researchers (mainly one) who have studied it

Information on Humanedj mainly from its developers and thus subjective, no other HIM tools available

Suggestions for further research Humanedj could be re-evaluated

and retested once the software is complete

Humanedj should be tested in a real-life case study in an organization

More research is needed in the area of HIM to establish it as an area of BPM and to determine its practical implications