An Action Design Research

This master’s thesis focuses on studying how modularity can be applied in designing robotic process automation (RPA) solutions and what effects it has to the RPA implementations. Past research has found several benefits of increasing modularity in designing, coordinating, and managing complex systems and many kinds of design problems have been solved with it. This thesis examines how the principles of modularity resonate with RPA. The study follows the Action Design Research method to examine a case in real-life context and to enable the participation of practitioners and end users in the case organization. It describes in detail how a modular RPA solution was created for automating an entity consisting of several different tasks in the case organization. The solution can be viewed as an artifact that can be utilized to calibrate an organization’s RPA journey by adding efficiency in RPA projects. This is achieved by enhancing the scalability and reusability of the RPA components. The results of this study suggest that RPA solutions can be viewed as complex systems into which modularity principles can be adapted, generating a variety of benefits from the viewpoints of automation development and administration. The main benefits include decreased implementation time and cost, enhanced error management, increased control of automation, increased capability to respond to versatile automation demand, and enhanced automation complexity management