Business Process Knowledge Base

This paper presents a Knowledge Management System to support the design of performing business processes. The system is a joint project of the Systems and Information Department (University of Pavia) and BIP (Business Integration Partners). To organize the knowledge about business processes the system uses and integrates some major conceptual frameworks on business processes and performances. These include a stakeholder oriented framework of business process performances (HIGO) that supports the analyst in defining sustainable and competitive performances. Second, the business process taxonomy of the MIT process handbook allows an easier navigation on the collection of process knowledge stored in the system. Third, the Service Level Agreement framework helps organizations in setting and controlling performance objectives for processes. The knowledge base stores both the above knowledge structures and case studies indifferent forms, such as diagrams, text, multimedia. The analyst can navigates stored case studies and create new processes by using the design methodology, that includes the definition of process structure, the association of performances to the process structures and the design of a individual process performances by using inheritance methods. The knowledge base software is a Web 2.0 application, that enables collaborative approaches and assists the user in navigating models by industry and by case examples