What Does it Mean to Own a Process: Defining Process Owner's Competencies

As organizations adopt process orientation, a new managerial role of process owner appears. Process ownership is one of the main pillars and distinguishing features of process oriented organization. To successfully implement business process management and substitute traditional functional hierarchies, process owners should possess certain competencies for process management. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to introduce a competency model of a process owner. A Delphi study was used to identify individual activities and subsequent competencies of a process owner. Three rounds of questioning an expert panel provided consensus for development of competency model. The paper presents results of the Delphi study synthesized into structured competency model of a process owner. The model structures competencies to knowledge, skills and social competencies derived from process owner's responsibilities. Two variations of process owner's competencies which take into account different scope of responsibility were defined.