ABSTRACT
As this entire book outlines, business process management (BPM) is a holistic organizational management practice that requires top management understanding and involvement, clearly defined roles and decision processes as part of BPM governance, appropriate BPM methodologies, process-aware information systems, educated and well-trained people, and a culture receptive to business processes. BPM has its roots in a number of approaches, including business process reengineering, quality management (e.g. TQM, Six Sigma), operations management (e.g. MRP II, CIM, Kanban), business process modeling and process-aware information systems (e.g. workflow management systems, service-oriented architectures). It is widely recognized as a foundation for contemporary management approaches as the analysis of business processes drives understanding to the roots of an organization. The popularity and significance of BPM leads to the question of how advanced different organizations are in their BPM development. The notion of ‘maturity’ has been proposed for a number of management approaches as a way to evaluate ‘the state of being complete, perfect, or ready’ or the ‘fullness or perfection of growth or development’ (Oxford University Press, 2004). This chapter describes a new business process management maturity model that has been developed for the evaluation and advancement of business process management effectiveness across organizations.
