PurposeThis study explores how process managers perceive the adoption, use and management of process mining in practice. While research in process mining predominantly focuses on the technical aspects, our work highlights organizational and managerial implications.Design/methodology/approachWe report on a focus group study conducted with process managers from various industries in Central Europe. This setting allowed us to gain diverse and in-depth insights about the needs and expectations of practitioners in relation to the adoption, use and management of process mining.FindingsWe find that process managers face four central challenges. These challenges are largely related to four stages; (1) planning and business case calculation, (2) process selection, (3) implementation, and (4) process mining use.Research limitations/implicationsWe point to research opportunities in relation to the adoption, use and management of process mining. We suggest that future research should apply interdisciplinary study designs to better understand the managerial and organizational implications of process mining.Practical implicationsThe reported challenges have various practical implications at the organizational and managerial level. We explore how existing BPM frameworks can be extended to meet these challenges.Originality/valueThis study is among the first attempts to explore process mining from the perspective of process managers. It clarifies important challenges and points to avenues for future research.

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Purpose Business Process Management (BPM) is key for successful organisational management. However, BPM techniques are often criticized for their inability to deal with continuous and significant change and uncertainty. Following recent calls to make BPM more agile and flexible towards change, this study presents the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) of agile concepts in BPM. Analysing and synthesising previous works and drawing on agility research in the field of IS, this paper introduces a framework for agile BPM. Integrating different components that define agility in the context of BPM, this framework offers a number of important implications. On the theoretical side, the authors argue that the concept of agile BPM departs in some important ways from traditional BPM research. This, in turn, points to various opportunities for future research. On the practical side, the authors suggest that emerging technologies, such as process mining, embody important features that help organisations to be more responsive to change. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach To assess the state of the art of agility in the BPM research, the authors conducted an SLR. More specifically, the authors drew on the approach of vom Brocke et al. (2009, 2015), which consists of five steps: defining the scope of the review; conceptualising the topic; searching for literature; analysing and synthesising literature; and developing a research agenda. Findings This study presents the results of a systematic review of agile concepts in BPM. This study then proposes a resulting research framework that can be used to strengthen the concept of agile BPM and provides an agenda for research in this rapidly growing and increasingly necessary area of BPM. Originality/value In this paper, the authors establish a shared understanding of agile BPM and develop an agile BPM framework that represents the current state as well as implications for research and practice in agile BPM.

PurposeProcess redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an ontological perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view, and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. This paper aims to provide structured guidance during the to-be process creation.Design/methodology/approachUsing design space exploration as a theoretical lens, the authors develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic exploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. The authors utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing the conceptual model. First, the authors derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, the authors evaluated their artifact through three real-world applications.FindingsThe authors identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space).Research limitations/implicationsPractitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question and rethink business processes in various respects.Originality/valueThe BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process design dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and supports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs.