A Research Strategy for Investigating Business Process Management Approaches

We are witnessing a revolution in industry which, if successful, will change forever how business systems are developed and the type of staff required. This paradigm shift has only recently become possible as business process conceptual understanding evolved, technologies have matured and higher abstraction levels have become possible. Industry leads Business Processing Systems research as it has the strategic imperative and resources to be effective. Academic research is faced with three challenges: firstly, how to do effective research in an area of such broad scope, secondly, how to make research relevant to practice, thirdly how to spend limited resources effectively. This paper defines the research framework for effective academic research at the University of Wollongong by the Software Effective Process group. Effective research is enabled by co-ordinating research based on the primacy of the business model and its resultant effective representation in executable systems. The framework aims to build a core research team, promote strong synergy with existing research areas, and create academic and industry relevant research.. We report on the results to date of our pilot program and seek feedback and advice to help us refine our approach. A major Australian project is utilising a new software development lifecycle for ‘system of systems’ development which has arisen out of this research strategy. Later papers will report on both the theoretical basis and practical impacts of this work and other research by the group