Process architectures in higher education

We have used the business process modelling method ‘Riva’ to model processes of programme management in two UK universities. The method depends on the identification of ‘essential business entities’ as the basis for defining a process architecture. The author of the method claims that organisations in the same business will have the same process architecture. In two attempts to produce process architectures for our case organisations, we could not produce any convergence in the outcomes. The exercise was however useful, as is the method. We make some suggestions regarding a core architecture for the area of activity under study, and make some observations on the method and the concepts used in it.