The Business Process Design Space for Exploring Process Redesign Alternatives

Purpose – Process redesign refers to the intentional change of business processes. While process redesign methods provide structure to redesign projects, they provide limited support during the actual creation of to-be processes. More specifically, existing approaches hardly develop an onto-logical perspective on what can be changed from a process design point of view and they provide limited procedural guidance on how to derive possible process design alternatives. Design/methodology/approach – Using design space exploration as a theoretical lens, we develop a conceptual model of the design space for business processes, which facilitates the systematic ex-ploration of design alternatives along different dimensions. We utilized an established method for taxonomy development for constructing our conceptual model. First, we derived design dimensions for business processes and underlying characteristics through a literature review. Second, we con-ducted semi-structured interviews with professional process experts. Third, we evaluated our arti-fact through three real-world applications. Findings – We identified 19 business process design dimensions that are grouped into different layers and specified by underlying characteristics. Guiding questions and illustrative real-world examples help to deploy these design dimensions in practice. Taken together, the design dimensions form the “Business Process Design Space” (BPD-Space). Research limitations/implications – Practitioners can use the BPD-Space to explore, question, and rethink business processes in various respects. Originality/value – The BPD-Space complements existing approaches by explicating process de-sign dimensions. It abstracts from specific process flows and representations of processes and sup-ports an unconstrained exploration of various alternative process designs.