A Framework for Coping with Process Evolution.

To survive, companies must rationally, rapidly and incrementally evolve their processes in response to changes in customer desires, market pressures, personnel availability and capability, business goals, and available technology as well as many other business-context factors. A Process Evolution Dynamics Framework allows process change agents to address this critical need by rationally describing, understanding, learning from, planning and managing process evolution efforts in a manner that addresses rapid, unpredictable changes to their company’s business context. The framework may be based on an experience-based categorization of process evolution-related activities highlighting their collaborative maturation of a company’s process knowledge base. In addition to clarifying and facilitating a company’s process evolution efforts, the framework suggests several topics which should be addressed by the process research and empirical-study communities.