Business Process Management (ISYS90081)

AIMS 

Business Process Management (BPM) is a well-established discipline for improving organisational performance. By using a ‘process lens’, BPM enables organisations to systematically oversee how work is performed, in order to ensure consistent outcomes and take advantage of improvement opportunities.  

This subject provides an in-depth introduction to BPM by covering the typical phases of a BPM project, from process identification to process monitoring, addressing along the way the discovery, analysis, redesign and implementation of business processes. The subject supports course-level objectives of developing analytical skills to understand the complexity of real-world organisations. It contributes to the development of independent critical inquiry, analysis and reflection. 

INDICATIVE CONTENT 

Topics include methods, techniques and tools for process identification and discovery, for process analysis and redesign, and for process implementation and monitoring. Students will learn how to identify business processes within an organisation, how to organise them in a business process architecture and prioritise the management of these processes. Students will also be exposed to a broad range of techniques to discover business processes in the form of process models (using the BPMN standard), to analyse process issues on the basis of these models, and to assess the qualitative and quantitative impact of these issues on organisation performance. Students will further learn how to evaluate and implement different process redesign options aimed at lifting the identified issues, and how to monitor the adherence of the redesigned processes to set performance targets. The subject also exposes students to recent developments in the area of process mining. 

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this subject, the student is expected to:

• Analyse key concepts of business processes, and the importance of systematically managing such processes to improve organisational performance
• Identify, organise and document business processes at different levels of detail using contemporary process modelling techniques
• Apply qualitative and quantitative techniques to analyse process performance and to assess the impact of process changes
• Analyse how IT can be used to deliver value by automating business processes, and how transactional data can be exploited to build insightful process analytics
• Apply the knowledge and skills acquired holistically on a real-life business problem

Generic skills

• Ability to undertake problem identification, formulation and solution
• Capacity for independent critical thought, rational inquiry and self-directed learning
• Ability to analyse complex business problems using abstraction and conceptualisation skills
• Team-work skills
• Professional writing skills