Consider the case of East State Technology College (ESTC),

Objective:

  • To describe a process with a Scope Diagram
  • To describe a process and represent it using Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0
  • To demonstrate an understanding of LAP theory and the Commitment Management Protocol in describing transactions with Actor Transaction Diagrams.

Business Scenario:

Consider the case of East State Technology College (ESTC), a 4-year public college located in AnyState, USA. ESTC is an EEO/AA employer. The current processes for recruiting and hiring faculty and instructors is largely automated, through the ESTC portal and Human Capital Management Information System (HCMIS) licensed from Oracle. The current process works as follows:

  1. Academic Department Heads wishing to hire a position submit a position requisition to the Human Resources (HR) Recruitment office.
    1. If this is a vacancy in an approved existing position, the recruitment process continues.
    2. If this is a new, unbudgeted position, the position must first be approved by the Budget Office. If not approved, the process ends.
  2. The HR Recruitment Office prepares job announcements for multiple external job posting services and discipline-specific professional society sites to cast a net for the widest possible pool of applicants.
  3. Potential applicants who monitor such public job posting sites learn of positions and submit application packages via the ESTC jobs portal on the ESTC website.
  4. The HR Recruitment Office reviews all application packages received for completeness. Applicants with incomplete packages are contacted and asked to provide all required information before application packages are considered complete and moved forward for consideration.
  5. When application packages are complete, the HR Recruitment Office reviews application packages to ensure applicants possess the minimum required requirements for the position. Those applicants who do not meet the minimum requirements for the position are notified of such and thanked for their interest in ESTC.
  6. Minimally-qualified application packages are stored in an Active Search status in the HCMIS and forwarded to the Search Committee.
  7. After a position announcement has been publically available for 3 weeks, the Search Committee begins their review process:
    1. This review process first determines which minimally-qualified applicants will not receive further consideration and they are notified of such and thanked for their interest in ESTC.
    2. The remaining applicants are prioritized into two groups: (i) Group A – Those to be interviewed, and (ii) Group B – those whose interview decision is pending (i.e. the Search Committee feels these individuals could be a good fit for the department, but those in Group A, appear on paper, to be a better fit). Group A is initially targeted to be approximately 7-10 individuals.
    3. The Search Committee then begins scheduling and conducting interviews for Group A applicants and at the conclusion of interviews produces a rank-ordered list of candidates to which they recommend a hiring offer be made.
    4. If the rank-ordered list contains less than three candidates, additional interviews are scheduled and conducted from Group B.
    5. If there are no candidates worth of interview, the search committee reports such and the search process ends as a search failure.
  1. The Search Committee presents their rank ordered list of candidates for hiring offers to the HR Recruitment office. This Office begins going through the list in the order provided and:
    1. Contacts a third party HR partner and requests they conduct a background check on the candidate.
    2. When complete, the Background check is reviewed by the HR Director pf Compliance and if there are no issues raised, the HR Recruitment office continues by making an offer of employment to the candidate.
    3. If the HR Director of Compliance has issues with the background check, an offer of employment is not made and the candidate is notified and thanked for their interest in ESTC.
    4. If the candidate accepts the offer of employment, hiring documents are prepared and the process ends.
    5. If the candidate does not accept the offer of employment, the HR recruitment office proceeds with the next individual on the list, until a candidate accepts the offer.
  2. If no candidates accept an offer of employment, the Search Committee reconvenes and considers additional applicants, choosing another 7-10 potential “Group A” candidates for interviews and consideration.
  3. The process continues until a candidate accepts an offer of employment or the ends in failure. The AssignmentPart I – Scope DiagramCreate a Scope Diagram for the Business Scenario Described above. You should make assumptions about what is implied in the discussion about Guides and Enablers. The Lecture Resources for Unit #4 include a Scope Diagram template. Please use this as a starting point to draw your scope diagram. Chapter 8 of Harmon’s Business Process Change has additional details on the Scope Diagram. In regard to the Scope Diagram as described by HarmonLinks to an external site., you need not identify aspects of the process that are acceptable, questionable, or inadequate. We will revist this later. However, please answer the following two additional questions:
          • What triggers this process?
          • What is the process outcome?

Part II – BPMN Model Draw a business process diagram of this process using BPMN. You need to use Pools, Events, Activities, Gateways, Sequence Flows, and Message Flows as described in the White Introduction to BPMN article and the BPMN Lecture notes. Use the BPMN version 2.0 notation from BPMN 2.0 by Example article or BPMN 2.0 poster. (Do not follow the adapted notation used by Harmon in the textbook.)You will need to use the notation for Event-based Gateways, Exclusive Gateways, sub-processes, event timers, attached events and possible Parallel Gateways in this diagram.Use the concept of a “black box pool” for the applicant and the HR Partner. Represent Step #2 and Step #7 as sub-processes as well as any other activities for which you don’t have sufficient details. You need not show the details of Step #2 and Step #7 in separate BPMN diagrams. Part III – CoordinationUsing the fundamentals of LAP Theory and the Commitment Management Protocol and in applying the theory of Actor Transaction Diagrams discussed in the Dietz article on The Deep Structure of Business Processes and in lecture examples:

        1. In the ESTC scenario, if the applicant and ESTC are two separate actors, what is the transaction between them?
        2. Dietz says the two actors engage in a series of steps in a generic coordination pattern as part of this transaction. What are those steps, specific to this scenario?
        3. The ESTC process looks for complete application packages before continuing. How would the Commitment Management Protocol describe this step looking for complete application packages before proceeding?
        4. In examining all of the steps in the actual process described above, which, if any, of the generic coordination pattern steps are missing and how would adding them to improve communication between the actors?