Requirements for Business Process Management Systems Supporting Business Process Agility

Organizational agility (OA) has emerged as a mission critical success factor in order to cope with the fast changing economic environment. Companies are forced to anticipate future developments and react to threats and opportunities in a timely manner. This concept has primarily managerial aspects, though science has evinced that information technology and systems are facilitators of OA. Moreover, Gartner Research Group identifies the business process management systems (BPMS) industry as one of fastest developing and growing markets for the near future. This raises one particular question, addressing the link between BPMS and a sort of OA, namely business process agility (BPA). Consequently, this contribution provides a theoretical base for the examination of BPMS regarding BPA, reviewing the scientific literature on OA and BPA, confronting it with the business process management lifecycle and finally deriving requirements for BPMS facilitating BPA.