Enterprise knowledge communities and Business Process Modelling

An integrated approach to knowledge management together with an appropriate modeling notation is introduced. It not only combines recognized existing approaches and models for process- oriented and community-oriented knowledge management. In addition this new approach reflects the important contributions of different types of knowledge (i.e. explicit and tacit knowledge) and the various ways of knowledge conversions between them. Furthermore the human roles as single persons, teams, and communities of practice in the enterprise are considered and subject to modelling. The motivation for this approach is the following. Enterprise application integration and service-oriented architectures promise to support structured business processes in enterprises and help to assist and to implement them with orchestrated web services landscapes. The Business Process Modelling Notation BPMN is the modeling language of choice for this purpose. However, BPMN is lacking of knowledge related constructs and is not considering the human role in business processes, be it as individuals or as groups or teams. Understanding the growing importance of knowledge and human involvements for many business processes, a modeling notation for knowledge-intensive business processes including human involvements is needed. Instantiated from a very general meta-model for knowledge management, our new model will fulfil this need. In addition it helps to identify several patterns in knowledge-intensive business processes, for example those indicating monopolized knowledge by single persons, (complementary) the high relevance of a person for a specific business process, or the importance of knowledge communities in the enterprise. As a modelling notation for this approach, an expressional extension of BPMN is proposed. This not only allows for modelling of knowledge-intensive business processes but also for modelling of dependencies of and contributions by single persons and knowledge communities in the enterprise. An example is given which proves the modelling power of this notation. A renewal planning process for a complex product is described, which requires substantial competences and knowledge for its design and implementation. This business process comprises activities of directly involved employees and of relevant knowledge communities in the company as well as various kinds of knowledge to be utilized.