INF80028-Business Process Management

Assessment  Requirements

Students should conduct further research for any additional information required to complete the assignment. 

Outline 

This assignment requires you to continue working the same business case. As mentioned in the case description, the current process does not work efficiently. With your help, the company made the first step which adopted some best practices to fix some issues and problems. They also adopted methodologies, such as Lean to reduce wastes. To improve the process in a way that addresses the issues for the long term and reduces manual tasks as much as possible. The management is considering improving the process by using technology and BPMS. 

Your Tasks

Your work should include two parts.

Part 1: Logical Automated Business Processing: 

1.The benefits, drawbacks, risks and opportunities of automation in general. 

2.If automation is one of the solutions for the current business process problems/issues, why and why not?

3.How important it is to consider automation in the long-term business process improvement practices. 

4.How can automation solve the case current process issues and problems?

5.The automation implementation plan (brief).

In the modelling part, you should transform one of the current BPMN level 2 model(s) into a logical automated model that shows how the process can be automated by a process engine (BPMS). It should clearly show how each participant communicates with the process engine and what data is transmitted. You only need to consider ONE of the sub-processes.

Advice for logical Automated Design

1.The automated design model must contain exactly one Executable pool (for the process engine). In the executable pool, there can be no user or manual tasks. There may be service tasks. All parties should communicate with the BPMS. You MUST use BPMN level 2 elements.

2.The automated logical design model will, in general, have many non-executable pools, one for each internal participant, generally human. Non-executable pools may contain just process fragments. Some of them may be no start or end events. Both level 1 and level 2 BPMN are acceptable.

3.A non-executable pool interacts with the executable pool (BPMS) by Message Flows. A Message flow will connect with a Message Event in the executable pool and a task in the non-executable pool.

4.The logical automated design model will have many white-box pools, one for each external participant. An external participant may interact with either an internal participant in a non-executable white pool or directly with the process engine in the executable pool. 

Part 2 Executable Automation Design by using Bizagi Studio or UIPath Community edition (Optional, attempt the task will gain up to 10 bonus marks)

Automation of the main BPMS pool with optional extension into one or more sub-processes. This must be implemented by using an Automation tool, such as Bizagi Studio, Signavio Workflow Accelerator, or UIPath community edition (A copy of the automated model should be in the report appendices and the actual automation file(s) to be submitted via the modelling submission link). It is recommended that students use Bizagi Studio, since Signavio Workflow 

Accelerator has limited automation capabilities, and UIPath requires strong technical skills. Please note that: 

1.University cannot install Bizagi Studio into any labs due to the licencing requirements. However, similar to Bizagi Modeller, it is easy to install into your own computer, it is free for individual users. 

2.Similar to Bizagi Modeller, students with Macs that are not capable of running a Windows emulator will not be able to install Bizagi Studio. If you want to try, you need to find an alternative automation tool.

3.UIPath does not include forms building capability so this must be provided by another toolset that is well integrated with UIPath such as Visual Studio. UIPath is widely used in the industry, but for our unit study, as it involves a lot of work, we do not suggest. 

Advice for executable Automated Design 

1.The automated design should address the whole of the main processing pool and may be extended to address one or more of the sub-processes. So we suggest you focus on ONE of the subprocesses. It should be possible to ‘complete’ the end-to-end process by traversing from the start event to any of the end events. 

2.User or manual tasks may be included in the solution; however, these should be automated wherever this is feasible. The design may also include service tasks that are automated via web services or toolset integrations. 

3.As much as possible of the underlying business data required to support the process should be captured via data forms in the automation solution. The design should also include the capability to review the historical data associated with each completed process instance. 

4.Business rules need to be incorporated into the automated design to ensure that activities, gateways and process flows are all executed correctly. This may involve validating data, performing checks, making calculations and updating business data. 

5.A minimum of one hundred unique process executions should be undertaken to verify the automated design. The record of these process instances and the associated business data must be submitted with the project work.