Business Process Management Capabilities: A Scientific Edition

This thesis focuses on analysing Business Process Management (BPM) Capabilities (BPMC) through a practical approach based on design science. The research questions are (i) which capability factors are related to the success and failure of BPM initiatives and (ii) how can organisations take these capability factors into account in their respective environments. This research started from the personal interest of the researcher on BPM. The researcher has been working between the academic and practical worlds over time and knew that although there is a lot of research on the success and failure factors of BPM, that information has not been put to good use in the practical world. This led to an idea to gather the most important factors and to design a practical BPM capability factors artifact. This artifact helps organisations to identify and improve their BPMCs. The artifact is built based on an extensive literature review, expert interviews and case studies. The artifact consists of 35 key capability factors that affect the success and failure of BPM initiatives. It also includes a process that organisations can use to take those capability factors into account in their BPM initiatives. This research contributes by identifying recent important BPM capability factors as well as using design science combined with interviews, surveys and case studies to build the artifact. From a practical perspective, this research was able to produce a process that can be used in organisations first to evaluate their BPMCs and then to improve them. The information produced by using the BPM capability artifact was found to be both useful and interesting by all participating real-life case organisations.