A Role-Playing Game for Teaching about Enterprise Process Integration

Abstract

Many contemporary enterprises seek to transform their operations towards a more customer-oriented, value stream-based, end-to-end process orientation. Process integration—the act of working towards a state where information, deliverables, and work products flow smoothly among processes and their activities—is a prerequisite for this and for consistently effective operations. Process integration is especially critical at the enterprise level, where processes cross functional and organizational boundaries, yet sound integration seems to elude many enterprises. Some reasons for this include poor understanding of the motivations and methods for successful integration. This article presents a role-playing game that helps teach some of the motivations and methods for process integration. The participants play the roles of owners of various enterprise processes who must coordinate their input–output relationships. The ensuing discussions and negotiations open players’ eyes to the challenges and potential of proper integration of processes at the enterprise level.

Keywords:

• process modeling
• enterprise processes
• process integration
• business processes
• role-playing game
• educational tool