BPMDS’05, June 13-14 2005 1

A Regulation-Based View on Business Process and

Supporting System Flexibility

Gil Regev, Alain Wegmann EPFL-IC-LAMS

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What is Flexibility?

• Elasticity

• Plasticity

• Adaptivity

• Proactivity

• Agility

• Changeability

• But what is flexibility?

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What is not Flexibility

• Total Fluidity

• Rigidity

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What is this Form?

• Fast change

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What is this Form?

• Less change => Survival

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What is this Form?

• No Change?

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What is this Form?

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What is this Form?

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Survival

• Maintenance of norms

• States that for a given observer remain stable for some period of time

• Dependent on observation period

• The earth seems very stable from a human point of view

• But maybe not from a stellar point of view

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Survival (2)

• In a little changing environment

• Little change to norms is necessary

• In fast changing environments

• Flexibility may be necessary

• Counter example: Dot com bust

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Flexibility

• Change without loss of identity

Rigidity Change

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Norms

• Protect and constrain the system• Enable and limit action

• Example: Compaq couldn’t become Dell• Example: Apple, didn’t want to become

one more PC maker

• Counter example: Nokia but is it the same Nokia?

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Example: Amusement Park

• Reservation system• Flexible cancellation scheme• Very nice for customer but at what cost?

• Inflexible division between reservation types (Tent and hotel)

• Means nothing to customer but what is the cost of change?

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Norms

• In a changing environment norms don’t just remain stable for no reason

• There are automatic mechanisms in place to maintain the norms

• Homeostasis

• The stuff that keeps us healthy also prevents us from being medicated

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Deviations and Norm Change

• Deviations => Short term flexibility

• Norm change => Long term flexibility

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Norm flexibility

• Alignment on some “basic” norms enables more flexibility

• Example: Aligning on free speech allows democracies to be very flexible

• Except on free speech…

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A Parody about Corporate Culture

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Norms Become Invisible

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Process Structure

Act 1 Act 2 Act 3

Process protective envelope

Stakeholder 1 Stakeholder 2 Stakeholder 3

H H

Goal?

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Process Goal

• What is the goal of a university?

• Output graduate students?

• Output failed students?

• What about its role of filter?

• Source Weinberg and Weinberg 1988

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Maintenance of fit

State

Time

Norm

Norm

An optimizing-balancing actAn optimizing-balancing act

Moving equilibrium pointMoving equilibrium point

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Some Flexibility Mechanisms

• Revisiting norms and their interpretations

• Knowing what to change and what not to change

• Problem is: Norms are invisible

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BPS Help to stakeholders

• Maintain knowledge of– the relevant norms– stakeholders’ tolerances for deviations from these

norms– possibilities afforded by technology that can

improve the equilibrium from one or more stakeholders’ point of view

– the projected consequences of changing the norms and equilibrium point

• maintain a pool of possible actions and conditions of their use in the process

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Flexibility

• Survival in changing environments

• Maintaining non perfect fit between multiple stakeholders

• Requires debate/agreement on how much fit and misfit is acceptable

• Moderation in everything, even in moderation Weinberg & Weinberg 1988