Description

Process maps and process landscape models are two types of models used for describing business process architecture. Currently there is both a lot of research and a lot of confusion about these types of models. They are generally considered as being very useful (and are currently in the picture of organisations that wish to (better) integrate their Business Process Management initiatives into their Enterprise Architecture management). At the same time, there are many open questions regarding their use, their representation (i.e., how to model them?), their difference, the types of analysis that can be performed, tools that can be used, and the underlying theoretical basis providing credibility to the modeling and analysis results.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a detailed account of the state-of-the-art (both state-of-the-research and state-of-the-practice) in process mapping and process landscape modeling: what theoretical or conceptual frameworks are used? What methods and techniques? What tools? But also, how does it work in practice? What is the perceived utility? What are the benefits and do they outweigh the costs and risks?

Answers to these questions are instrumental for the further development of this field on the boundary between BPM and EA, and in particular for companies struggling with these questions regarding the mutual relation between BPM and EA.

Research methods include systematic literature mapping and systematic literature review and survey research and (2 students) /or (1 student) case-study research.

The main difference between literature mapping and literature review is that a mapping study is limited to investigating what research has been performed, by means of which methods and by whom (often by just reading a paper’s abstract, introduction and conclusion), whereas a literature review looks into the actual research results (requiring reading the entire paper). For guidance on how to conduct systematic literature studies and report their results, see (Kitchenham & Charters 2007, Okoli 2015, vom Brocke et al. 2015). For general guidance on research methodology in Information Systems, see (Recker, 2013).

References

Kitchenham, B., and Charters, S. (2007) Guidelines for performing Systematic Litera- ture Reviews in Software Engineering. Technical Report EBSE-2007-01. Soft- ware Engineering Group of Keele University Durham UK.

Okoli, Chitu (2015) “A Guide to Conducting a Standalone Systematic Literature Review,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 37, Article 43.

Recker, J. 2013. Scientific Research in Information Systems: A Beginner’s Guide. Springer.

vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Riemer, K., Niehaves, B., Plattfaut, R., & Cleven, A. (2015). Standing on the shoulders of giants: Challenges and recommendations of literature search in Information Systems research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 37(1), Article 9, 205-224.
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