Designing business process variants - Using the BAT framework as a pragmatic lens

Abstract

When designing business processes there is a need to identify and delimit different processes. There exist, however, unclear criteria for delimiting business processes. Business process analysts apply usually a sequential view of business processes. Besides process sequences, there is a need to acknowledge different process variants. Founded in a combined transformative and co-coordinative view on business processes, instruments for describing business process variants are put forward in this paper. Two instruments (matrices) are proposed. One business process division matrix, for distinguishing process variants in relation to each other. The other matrix, a business phase matrix, is to be used to reveal the content of each phase of the business interaction constituting each process variant. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.