Department of Computing

Semester 2, 2020

COMP3760/6760: Enterprise Systems Integration

Assignment 2: BPM for improved Project Management

(20% of the semester)

Dr. Peter Busch

Due 11:55 pm Tuesday - 8th September, 2020

COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

Business Process Modelling for improved Project Management Processes

(source: Busch, P., Amirmazaheri, A., (2012) "Workflow Knowledge Sharing through Social Networks"
Pacific-Asia Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (PKAW 2012)/Lecture Notes in Artificial
Intelligence (LNAI 7457) Kuching, Malaysia, September 5-6th pp: 343–349.

LCPL: A SYDNEY-BASED COMPANY

LCPL is an actual mining and construction enterprise headquartered in Sydney with more than 5000
employees across Australia. LCPL undertakes projects within the Asia-Pacific region, mainly in Australia and
New Zealand. The company delivers projects for clients across the infrastructure, resources, civil engineering,
energy and telecommunications sectors.

The Process: Oracle Primavera P6

The Control and Planning group of LCPL provides systems and processes to manage and control projects.
Oracle Primavera P6 1 is a project management tool managed by Group Operational Services (GOS) of the
Control and Planning (CP) division of LCPL. Group Operational Services supports other business units
through developing and maintaining control and planning standards and methodologies.
All divisions within LCPL should use P6 for their project planning, update and control purposes. The GOS
supports all Oracle Primavera P6 users across the company through a defined process (figure 1). To support P6
users, the GOS cooperates with LCPL’s IT group to integrate the support process with the IT service desk for
the company. The IT service desk uses IT Service Management (ITSM) help-desk software 2 as a support tool
to log requests, changes and incidents. The P6 support process is illustrated here for brevity (figure 1), but
articulated later.

Figure 1: The GSO support process (source: LCPL intranet).

Through interviewing employees we could determine if employees actually used P6. Summarised results of
the interviews are shown in table 1 below. 3 We were also able to determine who worked with whom in the
organisation, meaning we could compare a real Business Process Management (BPM) process with the actual
social networks between employees. 4 That is to say - do the GOS staff actually use P6 in their day to day

1
“Primavera P6 EPPM is the solution for globally prioritizing, planning, managing, and executing projects, programs, and portfolios” (source:
https://www.oracle.com/industries/construction-engineering/primavera-p6/ accessed 28/7/20).
2
http://www.itsm.info/ITSM.htm (accessed 28/7/2020).
3
Only for your interest. You don’t need to be too concerned about this table.
4
Remember the KM material we looked at in week 4?

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COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

5
work? From the interview data (table 1) and a review of P6 blogs on the LCPL intranet it appears a P6 issue
can be raised by phone, email, Microsoft Office Communicator and ITSM.
Table 1: Questions and answers on the use of P6
Questions Summarised Answer
How often do you use Oracle Primavera P6? We use primavera on a daily basis to update and create new
activities in the plan.
If you have any issues, how and where do you raise them? - I use my phone to raise my issue; I think it’s the fastest way I
Through email, Phone, ITSM etc? can get support.
Do you use Dashboards and score cards for high level project Yes, we use P6 Web Access for high level report.
reporting from P6 Web Access? 6
Which application do you use in addition to Primavera P6 for We use only Excel for our reporting and analysis purposes.
reporting and analysis purposes? Linear plus, 7 Excel, Acumen
Fuse 8 or …?
When working with Oracle Primavera P6 to plan and analyse I work with the site engineer to update my plans. And, with
projects, who else do you interact with? What is the purpose of the project manager to acquire plan changes. Also, one of the
that interaction? How does it occur? planners (Mr. X) guides me to update the plan and creates the
report.

Usually, I raise questions when they are around or call them

to answer my questions.
If you have any issues in working with Oracle Primavera P6, with I raise my issues with my colleague Mr. Y first. We discuss the
whom will you raise your problem? issue and try to solve it. Then we ask others who have
experience and if we don’t get a proper result I’ll call a
[technical] support staff member.

The P6 group through Social Network Analysis

During their interviews, the P6 group were asked to nominate colleagues they networked with and how often,
which led to the establishment of the sociogram (figure 2) illustrating the group of employees associated with
the P6 process.
An examination of the nodes in the network reveal twelve actors or staff varying from Senior Planners (3
staff), an Optimisation Manager, Planners (3 staff), a Site Engineer, a Planning Manager, a Scheduler, a
Systems Analyst and a Business Analyst. Square nodes represent males and circle nodes represent females etc.
The colours of the nodes simply relate to the ages of employees (red 40yo; green 36yo ….). 9 The edges in the
graph reveal the strength of the flow of information, given that relations among actors provide access to
resources (Wasserman and Faust, 1994; Wetherell, 1998). Note the thickness of the lines - solid for stronger
lines of communication (i.e. hourly) down to thin dashed lines (weekly) for less frequent communication
among actors.
Some aspects are immediately apparent from figure 2. The male senior planner (bottom left) is a relative
P6-process isolate who works on the process only through the female senior planner to his top right. The
female business analyst (light blue) in the centre of the graph works with both Microsoft Communicator with
her male planner colleague to her bottom right; her communication flow with this colleague is particularly
strong as she communicates with him hourly. The only staff involved in the P6 process who communicate via
the IT help-desk’s ITSM software are the female senior planner (bottom right), the ‘star’ business analyst in
the centre, the male site engineer (in green - right centre), as well as the planning manager (in grey - centre
left). The remaining communication flows with regard to working on P6 related issues are by way of verbal
communication. Again note how often employees see one another.

5
An intranet is basically the internet but for internal organisation use only. An analogy is iLearn which is available over the internet to people only
enrolled in the unit.
6
P6 web access is the web based application version of Oracle Primavera P6. In some projects project managers use this application to approve
timesheets.
7
Planners in some projects use Linear Plus to create time charts of the project. This application imports schedule data from Oracle Primavera P6
8
Acumen Fuse is metric analysis and visualization tool that assesses quality of schedules, accuracy of forecasts, and realism of risk models, earned
value and project performance.
9
The colours of the nodes and genders are not particularly relevant here but are mentioned for interest only.

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COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

Figure 2: illustrating the Social Network in LCPL (edge-strength in descending order: 6.0 hourly contact; 5.0 every few
hours; 4.0 daily contact; 3.0 once every couple of days; 2.0 weekly contact).
Our bottom-left senior planner sees his female senior planner colleague only daily, but other employees
involved in the P6 process, such as the P6 Optimisation Manager (top), meets with a senior planner (top) only
weekly. Another planner (bottom centre) is also a relative isolate in the P6 process and has no other connection
with her employees other than through our (SNA high-centrality ranked female) business analyst in the
middle, and even then only on a weekly basis.
SUMMARY
To recapitulate - the specific process in question is the Oracle Primavera P6 project portfolio management
support process as part of Group Operational Services in the Control and Planning division of LCPL. The P6
process provides the steps for users and Group Operational Services to raise any P6 related issues, change
management and service requests through the use of ITSM. Again, ITSM is an IT service-desk application for
supporting users among disparate organisational divisions. The steps of the P6 process (figure 1) are:
1. A user raises a request through ITSM and receives a ticket number;
2. The service desk assigns the request to a related team;
3. The support team receives the ticket and accepts the request through the ITSM IT help-desk software;
4. The support team revises any issues and logs their resolution;
5. The support team advises users;
6. If the issue is resolved it will be closed, or else the support team will undertake further investigation.
The above process has always been documented in LCPL business documents, and it was assumed all requests
were raised based on the above routine. In fact an analysis from a multitude of sources: blogs, internal company

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COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

literature and also SNA results (figure 2), reveals discrepancies between the ‘official’ documented P6 support
process and a real work-flow in LCPL. For one thing, users raise their P6 issues through phone and email or by
approaching the IT help-desk personally, rather than through the official channel of ITSM help-desk software.
In addition, some P6 related staff use Microsoft Office Communicator to chat with the support team, which was
also never intended as part of the official P6 support process in LCPL. Furthermore, results of the above
analysis reveal that users raise their issues first with their colleagues in a tacit knowledge sense (Sanzogni,
Guzman and Busch, 2017), 10 and then more broadly with the P6 support team. These extra steps in the P6
support process were also never originally envisaged by LCPL management. Furthermore our analysis revealed
issues received by the support team differ markedly amongst diverse LCPL groups’ that is to say employees
with P6-savvy colleagues raise fewer issues.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albino, V., Garavelli, A., Gorgoglione, M., (2004) “Organization and technology in knowledge transfer”
Benchmarking: An International Journal 11(6) pp: 584-600.
Busch, P., Amirmazaheri, A., (2012) "Workflow Knowledge Sharing through Social Networks" Pacific Rim
Knowledge Acquisition Workshop (PKAW 2012)/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI 7457)
Kuching, Malaysia, September 5-6th pp: 343–349.
Busch, P., Fettke, P., (2011) “Business process management under the microscope: the potential of social
network analysis” Proceedings of the 44th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System
Sciences, HICSS-44 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), pp: 1-10
Bruque, S., Moyano, J., Eisenberg, J., (2008/2009) “Individual Adaptation to IT-Induced Change: The Role of
Social Networks” Journal of Management Information Systems Winter 25(3) pp: 177-206.
Deokar, A., Kolfschoten, G., de Vreede, G., (2008) “Prescriptive Workflow Design for
Collaboration-intensive Processes using the Collaboration Engineering Approach” Global Journal of
Flexible Systems Management 9(4) pp: 11-20.
Fisher, D., (2004) “The Business Process Maturity Model: A Practical Approach for Identifying Opportunities
for Optimization” Business Process Trends (www.bptrends.com accessed 28/7/2020).
Guzman, G., Wilson, J., (2005) “The “soft” dimension of organizational knowledge transfer” Journal of
Knowledge Management 9(2) pp: 59-74.
Hanachi, C., Khaloul, I., (2008) “Discovering Protocols and Organizational Structures in Workflows”
NOTERE 2008 June 23-27th Lyon, France pp: 93-105.
Hanneman, R., (2002) Introduction to Social Network Methods (http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext/
accessed 28/7/2020).
Hassan, N., (2009) “Using Social Network Analysis to Measure IT-Enabled Business Process Performance„
Information Systems Management Vol. 26 pp: 61–76.
Houy, C., Fettke, P., Loos, P., (2010) “Empirical Research in Business Process Management-Analysis of an
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Jeston, J., Nelis, J., (2006) Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful
Implementations Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann Oxford U.K.
Kao, S-Y., Busch, P., Guzman, G., Sanzogni, L., (2018) “Success factors for effective use of KM systems in
SMEs” Proceedings of the 32nd International Business Information Management Association
Conference, IBIMA Seville Spain pp: 115-127
Keshishi, A., Busch, P., (2014) “Interpreting overlaps in business process mapping via organisational soft
knowledge flows13th Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, PKAW 2014 Gold Cost, Qld,
Australia, December 1-2, Switzerland: Springer, Springer Nature, pp: 209-222.

10
Unwritten internalised knowledge, typically transferred by word of mouth or by learning through watching others perform actions.

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COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

Kim, E., Busch, P., (2016) “Workflow interpretation via social networks” 14th Pacific Rim Knowledge
Acquisition Workshop, PKAW Switzerland: Springer, Springer Nature, Vol. 9806 pp: 241-250.
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Business Processes: An Exploratory Study in Oil Production Processes” Information Systems
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Oritogun, K., Busch, P., Picoto, W., (2018) “Effectiveness of social media for KM tools in SMEs” in
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Sons Ltd. Chichester West Sussex U.K.
Rosemann, M., de Bruin, T., Power, B., (2006) “A Model to Measure Business Process Management Maturity
and Improve Performance” in Business Process Management Butterworth-Heinemann.
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Questioning the Tacit Dimension" Prometheus 5(1) pp: 37-56.
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Supported Cooperative Work Vol. 14 pp: 549–593
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Berlin Heidelberg

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COMP3760/6760 Assignment 2 Semester 2, 2020

Assignment algorithm!

You are a Business Analyst (BA) undertaking BPM to improve processes within LCPL.

a. Read pages 335-340 (section 12.6 - 12.7) with regard to BPMN (Papazoglou and Ribbers, 2006).
These pages are included with this assignment.
b. Consider the software you wish to use – either BPM 4.2 in the labs or other options (appendix 1).
c. Re-read pages 2-5 above, taking what you feel is relevant and ignoring what is not.
d. Examine figures 1 and 2 (above) 11 and appendix 2 (below) for an idea of how to create your To-Be
process.
e. Consider the employee social networks and tools actually used by employees (figure 2). Take what
ideas here you might consider relevant to creating a To-Be process model.
f. Implement one To-Be process model only for the scenario above (using figures 1, 2 and 3 to help
you).

You are free to make intuitive judgments as to processes (figure 1 above is a guide) and personnel needed
(figure 2 is a great start). You are free as a business analyst to re-work processes!
12
1. Implement the above scenario

How would you improve the processes?

What would you add?
What would you take away?
Who are the personnel? 13

Explain your assumptions!

2. Take your BPM models, screen-dump them in to a report and briefly discuss what you have done.

3. PDF your report.

4. Submit your report on iLearn.

Deliverables
Soft copy only

One <pdf> file as a report explaining what you have done etc.

- The <pdf> file should include supporting data which could be relegated to appendices.
- Use connectors in your diagrams and export to your document using screen shots (PrtSc).

Submission

Place your soft copy in your assignment 2 submission folder on iLearn.

DUE: 11.55pm, Tuesday 8th September

11
You can consider figure 1 to be the As-Is process basically.
12
… in BPM 4.2 or Adonis or other BPM software of your choosing (as listed in appendix 1).
13
Figure 2 tells you who the staff are.

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Marking Rubric

Developing Functional Proficient Advanced

(Borderline Pass-Fail) (Pass) (Credit) (Distinction-High
Distinction)
Limited use of BP Competent use of Good understanding of Excellent
Modeller showing BP Modeller the software, modelling understanding of the
some understanding showing workflows proficiently software, modelling
of the tool understanding of and using tool workflows proficiently
Modelling
the software and appropriately without and using tool
software
ability to use it any significant appropriately at an
effectively, perhaps mistakes expert level
making some basic
mistakes
Limited Competent Some incorporation of An excellent grasp of
understanding of understanding of the literature beyond workflow modelling,
workflow modelling, workflow just competent also drawing on the
some obvious modelling, some understanding of literature widely to
Workflow mistakes trivial mistakes still workflow modelling exemplify in the case of
modelling in evidence, but further examples how
generally an workflow modelling has
understanding of aided other
what is taking place organisations as well
and why

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14 15
Appendix 1 - Business Process Modeling Notation Tools

Business process modeling (BPM) refers to the activity undertaken to represent processes of an organization
to analyze and conduct process improvement if necessary (Jeston and Nelis, 2006). Business Process
Modelling and Notation (BPMN) is a business process-modelling standard enabling graphical notation for
specifying business processes in a Business Process Diagram (BPD) using a flowcharting technique. 16

BPMN
Name Platform/OS Feature Software license
Version
Activity Modeler Cross-Platform 2.0 Simulation, Modeler, Execution Apache License 2.0
Business Process Analysis (BPA) tool.
Supports business process management
ADONIS
Windows 2.0 enabling process modeling, simulation, Proprietary/Freeware
(Software)
analysis, evaluation, automation, and
publishing.
BPMN Collaboration Diagrams, Petri
Nets, EPC, integrated with FMC Block
Windows and
ARCWAY diagrams for business and Information Proprietary, free
Mac. Linux 2.0
Cockpit Technology architecture, UML Class single user edition
unofficially
diagrams for data models and
Requirements management.
Process Animator to learn about the
dynamic behaviour of the model,
BPMN Web Shareware,
Cloud 2.0 migration BPMN 2.0 tool, live teamwork
Modeler Proprietary
support, process repository, process
simulator, Interchange capability.
Effective as a standalone Business
Process Model application. Integrated
suite of applications to offer end-to-end
Solutions for Content and Human
HP Process
Java/Windows 2.0 Centric Processes. Single vendor Proprietary
Automation
solution from HP MFPs to Document
Capture, Process Automation, Content
Management, Records Retention, Legal
Holds and Content Distribution
Sophisticated process
management platform, Specific custom
IBM BlueWorks Browser based properties for documentation, Analysis
2.0 Proprietary
Live cloud and comparison of process metrics,
sharing processes in the cloud,
automatically backs up and saves
BPMN2 Modeling and validation. Does
Microsoft Visio not provide support for Data
Windows Proprietary
2013 Input/Output. Does not also provide
support for BPMN file format

14
Just some examples of software you may choose to use in this assignment – up to you!
15
Source: World Heritage Encyclopaedia, 2017
16
https://www.omg.org/bpmn/ (accessed 3/8/20).

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Appendix 2 – As Is Hospital Stores Procurement Process

Minimum/ Report Run on NO

Calculate Reorder Key New Order Item has Autofax Purchase
Maximum Levels Current Stock
Quantity into ERP System backorders ? Order to Supplier
Set Levels

YES
NO

Supervisor
Alternate supplier
resolves with
available ?
Supplier

YES

Adjust ERP
Discuss with
Supplier for all
Supervisor
orders of item

NO

Fax all orders for

Supplier accepts
item to new
credit request ?
supplier
YES

Submit Credit
Cancel old order
Request to
on old supplier
Supplier

NO
Receive Item into Reconcile GRN NO Enter received Mail delivery of Invoice
Are there Book Invoice into
Store with GRN with Supplier items into ERP Put items on shelf Invoice matches GRN
errors ? ERP system
Form Delivery Docket System and PO ?

YES YES

Resolve error with

End Pay Supplier
supplier

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