T. Halpin et al. (Eds.): BPMDS 2011 and EMMSAD 2011, LNBIP 81, pp. 46–60, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 BPM Governance: An Exploratory Study in Public Organizations André Felipe Lemos Santana, Carina Frota Alves, Higor Ricardo Monteiro Santos, and Adelnei de Lima Cavalcanti Felix Center of Informatics – Federal University of Pernambuco {afls2,cfa,hrms,alcf}@cin.ufpe.br Abstract. Business Process Management is a widely known approach focused on aligning processes of an organization in order to achieve improved effi- ciency and client satisfaction. Governance is an important requirement to enable successful BPM initiatives. This paper provides a qualitative empirical study to investigate what BPM governance elements are adopted by teams conducting early BPM initiatives in public organizations. The results suggest that early BPM adopters in public sector face several barriers due to difficulties in acquir- ing professionals with BPM expertise, bureaucracy and legislation rigidity, among others. In particular, committed sponsorship and monitoring were ap- pointed as important BPM governance facilitators by participants of the study. Findings also show that further empirical studies are needed to increase the body of evidence in this field. Keywords: BPM governance, early BPM initiatives, public organizations, empirical qualitative study. 1 Introduction Business Process Management (BPM) is a managerial approach that has been receiv- ing growing interest from academy and industry in the last decade. According to Kor- honen [1], BPM is a key paradigm of enterprise computing to increase agility in organizations. It has been considered a top priority for organizations trying to survive in highly competitive markets [2]. BPM refers to the management of the entire busi- ness process lifecycle, which includes: design, analysis, implementation, execution and continuous improvement of an organization's processes. It is a multidisciplinary field that integrates knowledge and practices coming from management and information systems disciplines. Organizations willing to start a new BPM initiative must build on a culture of change, continuous improvement and cross-functional team work [3]. Business Process Governance is frequently cited as a critical factor for the success of BPM initiatives [1],[2],[4],[5],[6],[7]. Loosely speaking, business process govern- ance "governs" BPM, and its main purpose is to ensure that BPM delivers efficient results [8]. The resulting governance processes provide a reference framework to guide organizational units of an enterprise to ensure responsibility and accountability for adhering to the BPM approach. BPM governance can be considered the "defini- tion" layer of BPM. According to Bandara [2], governance provides principles that