From the Back Cover
S-BPM stands for "subject-oriented business process management" and focuses on subjects that represent the entities (people, programs etc.) that are actively engaged in processes. S-BPM has become one of the most widely discussed approaches for process professionals. Its potential particularly lies in the integration of advanced information technology with organizational and managerial methods to foster and leverage business innovation, operational excellence and intra- and inter-organizational collaboration. Thus S-BPM can also be understood as a stakeholder-oriented and social business process management methodology.
In this book, the authors show how S-BPM and its tools can be used in order to solve communication and synchronization problems involving humans and/or machines in an organization. All the activities needed in order to implement a business process are shown step by step; it starts by analyzing the problem, continues with modeling and validating the corresponding process, and finishes off by embedding the process into the organization. The final result is a workflow that executes the process without the need for any programming. To this end, in the first step a very simple process is implemented, which is subsequently extended and improved in "adaption projects," because additional problems have to be solved. This approach reflects the organizational reality, in which processes must always be changed and adapted to new requirements.
This is a hands-on book, written by professionals for professionals, with a clear and concise style, a wealth of illustrations (as the title suggests), and focusing on an ongoing example with a real industrial background. Readers who want to execute all the steps by themselves can simply download the S-BPM tool suite from the www.i2pm.net website.
Albert Fleischmann is the founder and scientific advisor of Metasonic AG, whose CEO he was from its founding in 2004 until 2009. In 2003 he served as a member of the rating board for the European Quality Award. Before becoming a consultant, he worked for various international hardware manufacturers in the areas of research, service and sales. There his focus was on the development and implementation of distributed software systems and the description and implementation of business processes in particular.
Stefan Raß has worked since 2005 as a management and IT consultant at an international consulting firm, responsible for several IT and BPM projects. He has many years of theoretical and practical experience in the field of S-BPM and is currently working on the open S-BPM project "S-BPM on Windows Workflow Foundation."
Robert Singer is a Professor of Business Management at the Institute of Information Management, FH JOANNEUM-University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria.From 1996 until 1998 he was the department head (production and logistics) at a manufacturing facility for Philips in Hungary. Later, he was CEO of several companies in the field of IT and business consulting and founder of a consulting firm. His research interests are in operations and business process management, socio-technical systems, and management.
