The use of social software during the phases of the business process management (BPM) lifecycle
Abstract
Business Process Management (BPM) provides support for managing organisations ' processes and facilitates their adaptation to changing market conditions. Although various BPM solutions have been successfully applied in industry, there are still open issues to be addressed (for example, ensuring commitment of employees in process modelling and re-engineering or enabling automation of the business processes lifecycle). Researchers are currently investigating the use of Social Software technologies to overcome the existing problems. Based on a conducted study, the researcher argues that although semantics and Social Software technologies focus on different problems, they may be combined, as utilised together, they enable organisations to advance their processes and adapt faster to changing market conditions. For this purpose, an extensive study of the literature on existing types of Social Software and the phases of BPM lifecycle were conducted. As much as social software has a positive impact on the BPM lifecycle, no one really knows which of these software are used in which phases of the lifecycle. As organisations do not know 21st century socio-technical work and the impact they have on the organisation in a way that nobody fully explained, they do not know what business processes are impacted and this needs to be addressed as it can be wrongly managed and incorrect business processes would be used. In this study, the researcher aims to investigate which of these types of social software are used in specific phases of the BPM lifecycle and which types of social software can be used in which phases of the BPM lifecycle and the ways in which social software can be used to support BPM lifecycle.