Promoting Collaboration and Creativity in Process Improvement: A Proposal based on Design Thinking and Gamification

Business Process Management (BPM) enables companies to track their end-to-end activities, establish objectives and drive their business processes to achieve better results, reduce errors, cut costs, and deliver customer value. On the other hand, for a BPM initiative to be successful, it is necessary to align the continuous improvement of business processes, available technologies, and, above all, the involvement of key stakeholders. Commonly associated with users, managers, process owners, and analysts, business process stakeholders are key players in effecting organizational change. However, they are not always involved in improving business processes, and when they are, not always contribute. In this context, the following question motivates this study: "How to promote collaboration and creativity among stakeholders in improving business processes?". To answer this question, we propose a method based on the Design Thinking process, called Boomerang, including a creative game to involve people while generating insights and ideas. To evaluate this approach, we carried out a case study, collecting the perceptions of professionals engaged in improving a business process in a public education institution. From the results, it was possible to conclude that Boomerang contributes to the business processes improvement in BPM, maximizing the empathy, interaction, and creativity of its stakeholders.