Organizational change measurement via change metrics

Abstract

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has been popularized in recent years as the most important technique for restructuring business operations to achieve dramatic improvements in profitability and sustainable competitive advantage [3]. The Re-engineering activity is a transformational change, moving the business outside its current rules and games [5]. Change management is then necessary to manage people trough the emotional ups and downs lead to the massive change and then prevent resistance. Several process evaluation approaches exist to analyze the impact of business processes structural complexity on their performance. To achieve this objective structural and operational metrics are defined upon processes. These metrics are mostly adaptations of software Process or product Metrics. However, these approaches do not target performance problems lead to organizational and business change, that inevitably occur in projects like BPR. This paper defines change metrics that measure the change operated on business process models. Our metrics are also inspired by change metrics defined in Software engineering [6]- [7]-[8]. This work is a first step towards a quantitative and predictive change management methodology to prevent risk related to organizational change in Reengineering projects. © 2007 Springer.