Business process management (BPM): terminologies and methodologies unified

Business process management (BPM) is one of the effective performance management methodologies used in managing process-oriented organizations. BPM was adopted by many organizations and impressive results were achieved. However, BPM still in its infancy and many issues yet to be resolved. Having a unified list of the BPM critical success factors (CSFs) and BPM principles considered one of the important research areas. The literature review showed that despite the majority of BPM principles and CSFs are the same or there are minor differences between them, different terminologies were used to describe them. The literature review showed also that the methodologies used for BPM implementation were either very old, it does not cover the human interaction with BPM systems (BPMS), or it describes BPM methodology partially. Therefore, the main objectives of this research are building insights about BPM’s most recent developments, unifying BPM principles and CSFs and proposing a comprehensive BPM. The literature was analyzed to extract BPM’s developments. Moreover, the mapping process was used to propose a unified list of BPM CSFs and BPM principles. A critical success principles (CSPs) name was given to the unified list. 22 CSPs were identified, based on the nature of CSPs and implementation level, CSPs were classified into three main areas or levels namely strategic, supportive and operational CSPs. Out of 22 CSPs, 36.5% of CSPs were classified as a strategic CSPs, 45.5% of CSPs were classified as operational CSPs, and only 18% were classified as a supportive CSPs. A comprehensive BPM methodology was proposed, the proposed methodology combining the steps of generic BPM methodologies and BPMS methodologies and it is unifying the terminologies used in the reviewed methodologies. Pros and cons of the proposed methodology discussed in this research. The implications of this research can be seen in both theoretical and practical sides. For the theoretical side, the researchers can see the most recent developments in the scope of BPM, summarized in this research, and build on it to conduct future research. The proposed CSPs can be further analyzed to find the relationship between CSPs and how each one of them can affect BPM implementation. The proposed BPM methodology can be tested by applying it to the different business sectors and measure organizations’ performance during implementation stages. For the practical side, the proposed methodology can provide a guide for managers and organization leaders about the right steps to be followed during implementing BPM and conducting BPM projects. Moreover, CSPs can guide BPM project managers, organization leaders, and business excellence units to focus their efforts on the significant improvement areas and actions to be taken on strategic and operational levels.