Will Business Process Management still be present in five years time? Many organizations have been disappointed with the results BPM projects have delivered. New concepts are already on the horizon, such as business innovation, business transformation, real-time business and alike. Will these concepts replace BPM? This would be massive loss, considering the 20 to 30 years of research and practice in the field. Are we starting over again learning the foundations of new concepts even though these concepts also strongly relate to processes?

Business process management has established as a matured discipline. It provides well-proven methods that build the core to master contemporary and future challenges in management. However, BPM is still fragmented and there is little agreement on the right scoping of BPM. Both in academia and practice, BPM is often reduced to originating areas such as process modeling and workflow management systems. We believe that BPM failure is largely founded in the fact that the view on BPM is too limited and that essential principles of good process management are not considered.

We therefore set out identifying principles of good BPM. We suggest that following basic principles, BPM is more likely to be successful. Considering these principles, BPM can provide a solid set of capabilities essential to master contemporary and future challenges, including innovation, transformation and real-time business as mentioned above. For academia, these principles are essential to further shape BPM as an academic discipline and to prove its value for economy and society.