BPM Change Planning Using the Matrix of Change and Discrete Optimization Methods

Abstract

Every process-improvement initiative involves some kind of change. But the more complicated the efforts are the more they need tools for managing the change process. A lack of change management tools has been recognized as a substantial reason of low success rates of business process reengineering efforts. The Matrix of Change can help managers identify critical interactions among processes and deal with issues such as how quickly the change should proceed, the order in which changes should take place, whether to start at a new site, and whether the proposed systems are stable and coherent. But one of the disadvantages of the Matrix is its size limitation. The authors describe a way of overcoming the limitation, introduce a formal model of the matrix and formulate the problem of BPM change planning as a discrete optimization problem within the model.