Business process management curriculum development with the design science research methodology

Research Brown Bag PresentationsThe immense economic growth that Kenya has experienced in recent times has made it necessary for organisations in the country to institute well-defined business processes by developing business process management (BPM) initiatives. There is also an increasing move towards the automation of business processes through the implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Furthermore, Kenya hopes to position itself as a global hub for business process outsourcing. This has given rise to the need for business process analyst (BPA) role. BPAs are essential to driving the implementation of both BPM initiatives and ERP systems. The first motivation for this study, therefore, was to investigate the status of BPM and the role of the BPA in organisations in Kenya. The study specifically investigated BPA competency-building interventions required to drive BPM maturity and ERP systems implementation projects. Since no BPM curriculum existed in higher education institutions (HEI) in Kenya at the commencement of the study, the second motivation of the study was to investigate how these BPA competency-building interventions could be adapted into a BPM curriculum. The pragmatic research paradigm, consisting of a hybrid inductive deductive approach was used and a novel BPM curriculum was designed. The curriculum incorporated the 4I framework of organisational learning and activity systems in its design and implementation. The results of the evaluation of the curriculum show that students found it useful for building critical BPA competencies such as business analysis, business requirements elicitation and business process improvement.Strathmore University Faculty of Information Technolog