Business Project Management: Steps, Critical Success Factors, and Pitfalls

This article discusses the five steps of building a business case for BPM, critical success factors, and pitfalls to avoid. It covers topics such as validating the starting point, defining success criteria, strategic alignment, culture, and more. The article also provides references for further reading.

Running head: BUSINESS PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Business Project Management
Name of the Student:
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1BUSINESS PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1. The five steps of building a business case for BPM (Business Project Management) are:
 Validating the starting point- This stage enables for the clarity. It is very important to
have careful preparation in this step as it allows for grater the direction.
 Benchmarking the current process- This step is all about understanding the way a
person is doing something and for what purpose.
 Defining the success criteria and performance metrics- This stage is considered to be
more or less elementary. However, it is also to note that a person when arguing at this
stage, must not be overlooked and underestimated in any way (Karle & Teichenthaler,
2018). This is because failure to align the performance goals as well as accurate
metrics could led to failure of the project.
 Optimising for the future process- It is a less controllable stage. However, the
justification for the inclusion of it is because of the fact that the companies must be
well aware of the future needs that might be needed and then plan accordingly
(Salazar & Heyl, 2015).
 Developing a ROI model- This stage provided a financial logic and reason that would
finally help in strengthening the business care.
2. The critical success factors of BPM are as follows:
 Strategic alignment- It is the key success factor of BPM implementation. However,
the success of these initiative is endangered until the firms try to develop BPM
activities that are independent of the strategic ones.
 Culture- In order to ensure success for BPM initiatives, corporate culture is utmost
important.
 Employees along with their BPM qualification- The attitudes of the employees
towards the BPM initiative is likely to determine its success. They must have required

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qualification as well in order to alter the corporate realty with structured process
models (Vuksic, Glavan & Merkas, 2016).
 Performance measurement- It ensures the relation between process orientation and
business goals
 Methodology- Employment of the accurate and suitable methods is important along
with the habits, experiences and capabilities of the person.
 Information Technology- It plays an important role in the atomisation and
implementation process.
Every successful factor could turn into pitfalls. The pitfalls of BPM comprise of the
lack of governance, strategic linking, process owner and the shortage of business need
and user buy-in. In absence of integration of the BPM activities into the corporate
strategy, the outcome of the initiative would not match the expected contribution and
planned objectives (Weibach et al., 2016). All these pitfalls need to be bypassed in order
to ensure successful BPM initiatives.

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References:
Karle, T., & Teichenthaler, K. (2018). Collaborative BPM for Business Transformations in
Telecommunications: The Case of “3”. In Business Process Management Cases (pp.
235-255). Springer, Cham.
Salazar, N. R., & Heyl, B. H. (2015, November). Integration and Implementation of an EA
strategy based operating model with BPM technology-Case Study: Housing credit
process, Banco Estado Ecuador. In Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC), 2015
34th International Conference of the (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Vuksic, V. B., Glavan, L. M., & Merkas, Z. (2016, June). THE SUCCESS FACTORS OF
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF CROATIAN
COMPANY. In An Enterprise Odyssey. International Conference Proceedings (p.
697). University of Zagreb, Faculty of Economics and Business.
Weißbach, R., Kirchner, K., Reher, F., & Heinrich, R. (2016, September). Challenges in
Business Processes Modeling–Is Agile BPM a Solution?. In International Conference
on Business Process Management (pp. 157-167). Springer, Cham.