In this book, the phrase “business process transformation” is used to connote a collection of tools and techniques, unified by a methodology, for redesigning today’s business processes. One aspect that distinguishes today’s redesign of business processes from yesterday’s redesign is that process redesign today dramatically changes the existing functioning environment with new operating rules, new work processes, and new reward and success systems. In other words, process redesign work today entails partial organizational revamping.

One reason for the transformational impacts of a business process redesign initiative is that today’s business processes are information technology (IT)-driven, cross-functional, and often interorganizational. That is, IT is not only a performer of the business process, but a controller of process actions that are enabled by code embedded within the software that sometimes is outside the scope of the organizational domain. This embedding of process actions in code radically changes the role, function, and responsibilities of the worker. That is, process redesign triggers organizational change. This book presents a business process transformation framework, called Tangram, which prescribes the technical, managerial, and cultural tools and techniques for successfully undertaking a process redesign project.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter provides a short overview of the remaining seven chapters, and each of these chapters is devoted to a specific area or skill needed to successfully execute a process redesign initiative. Chapter 2 introduces the Tangram framework and presents process analysis tools and techniques. Chapter 3 addresses culture and communications issues in process work. Chapter 4 focuses on critical success factors. Chapter 5 introduces the basic modeling primitives of business process modeling notation (BPMN). Chapter 6 discusses change management, and chapter 7 presents a case study on managed services. Finally, chapter 8 discusses “Recapitulation and Application of The Process Tangram.”

Business process redesign as a field has steadily evolved since its glory days in the 1970s and 1980s when total quality management (TQM), Six Sigma, and business reengineering were invented as continuous and dramatic process improvement approaches. As a consequence, the repertoire of business process redesign tools and techniques is very large. In this book, the authors have made a sensible selection of managerial and technical topics that address contemporary business process redesign challenges.

Although the book provides an adequate introduction to the theories underlying the subject matter, it falls short in bringing out how these theories, tools, and ideas are actually used in practice. This criticism is valid despite the case study in chapter 7, which illustrates how the theories presented in chapters 2 to 6 were operationalized in the context of managed services.