A Case-Study of Wiki-Supported Collaborative Drafting of Business Processes Models

Abstract

Redesign of business processes is an activity frequently performed in modern organizations as a response to intrinsic and extrinsic change requirements. The way (methods, techniques, tools) a process is redesigned varies greatly with the process context. In contrast, involving stakeholders of a process in process redesign can be considered a common practice throughout organizations of all kinds. Hence, research and industry have only recently investigated the characteristics of collaboration in process redesign and the challenges that arise for software-support respectively. In this paper we will systematically describe findings from a case-study where we adapted a particular type of collaboration technology - a wiki engine - towards collaborative process modeling support and exposed it to a real-world setting. The case-study shows how a small team of domain experts within a large office supply manufacturing company redesigned a recruiting process by using a wiki as their primary process modeling environment.