Design principles for process improvement and innovation systems

Abstract

Purpose: Given today’s dynamic environment, process improvement and innovation (PII) are a central activity for business process management. Despite increasingly available process data and advances in artificial intelligence, only a few works address the automation of PII, highlighting the need for so-called PII systems that support human process designers. However, previous research focuses on problem statements and expository software engineering artifacts. In contrast, design knowledge for PII systems remains scarce, presenting challenges for researchers and practitioners alike. Prescriptive knowledge could address this issue and support future PIIS development. Thus, this paper provides design knowledge for PII systems in the form of 14 design principles.

Design/methodology/approach: We follow the design science research paradigm, building on two systematic literature reviews, 20 exploratory expert interviews and two evaluation surveys.

Findings: This paper presents three design requirements and 14 design principles for PII systems as the main contribution. They help to identify necessary functionalities, guide the design and development of future PIIS and serve as a starting point toward comprehensive design knowledge for PII systems.

Originality/value: The original contribution of this paper consists of prescriptive design knowledge for PII systems based on literature and qualitative insights. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to define design principles for PII systems, bringing together knowledge from related system classes as well as unique requirements from a process design perspective.