Business Process Management (BPM) - Students

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Lawrence Lim Email: Lawrence.lim@qut.edu.au

Principal Supervisor: Prof. Michael Rosemann

Associate Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Marlon Dumas

Expected completion: June 2010

Research Topic: Service Governance

Abstract: Service governance refers to the decision making processes and the corresponding roles and responsibilities which complement the life cycle of a service-oriented architecture. As such it provides a shell of accountability for service management. This research will investigate frameworks for service governance, applied to a class of service-oriented architectures known as service ecosystems. A service ecosystem is a logical collection of services whose exposure and access are subject to constraints characteristic of business service delivery. Governance in the context of service ecosystems can be approached on different levels, ranging from individual service governance, through aggregated services governance, and up to holistic service portfolio governance. Service governance also has to be integrated with other forms of governance such as policy management, IT governance, and more generally, corporate governance. Furthermore, governance is impacted by demographics such as public/private sector, centralized/federated or decentralized structures, which will impact relevant policies and procedures.

Various methodologies for governance have been proposed, especially for corporate governance and IT governance, and these will impact the initial design of service governance models in this research. Typically governance is driven by the desire to increase conformance and performance. However, there are no dedicated studies on the specific requirements of and approaches for the emerging area of service governance, let alone service ecosystems governance.

The research on service governance will explore the main decisions and relevant roles (e.g. service architect, service administrator) in the area of service ecosystems management. This will govern all stages of the service lifecycle. A focus will be on effective accountability structures and incentives. Well-defined accountability will assign ownership to services and service ecosystems which is a pre-requisite for its integration into the overall (IT) management. Incentive schemas will encourage the continuous population, use and maintenance of the service ecosystem. The research on incentives has to take restrictions within the public sector into account, and will borrow concepts from incentive schemas has they have been designed within knowledge management. Finally, acknowledging that a service governance methodology is dependent on the set of roles and processes that underpin it, the research will address the issue of defining and documenting such roles and processes.