---
title: "How to Make Reengineering Really Work"
type: source
tags: [bpr, reengineering, implementation, critique, hbr]
authors: [Hall, Gene; Rosenthal, Jim; Wade, Judy]
year: 1993
venue: "Harvard Business Review 71(6), November-December 1993, pp. 119–131"
kind: article
raw_path: ""
external_url: "https://hbr.org/1993/11/how-to-make-reengineering-really-work"
status: referenced-not-ingested
sources: []
key_claims:
  - "McKinsey-based empirical analysis of 20 BPR projects — finds that successful projects share specific implementation characteristics the Hammer literature had underspecified."
  - "Identifies scope-width (whole value-chain vs. single function) and depth (cost/time/quality/organisation change) as the critical design dimensions; most failed projects were shallow-depth, wide-scope."
  - "Argues the Hammer-era 'radical redesign' rhetoric is compatible with methodical implementation — the two are not in conflict, but most practitioners heard only the rhetoric."
  - "Early insider critique from within HBR during the BPR peak."
created: 2026-04-22
updated: 2026-04-22
---

# Hall, Rosenthal & Wade 1993 — How to Make Reengineering Really Work

**Stub — referenced-not-ingested.** Early HBR-internal correction to BPR practice, published the same year as Hammer & Champy's book.

## Why ingest

- Grounds the "over-ambitious scope" failure mode in [[syntheses/bpm-phases-and-bpr-legacy|RQ2.2]] with empirical evidence from 20 real BPR projects.
- Provides a scope × depth framework that could still apply to agentic-BPM adoption (cf. [[sources/2025-vu-practitioner-perspectives-agent-governance|Vu 2025]] on risk-proportional / configurable autonomy).
- Shows that insider critique of BPR practice existed from the start — the failure modes were not invisible at the time.

## Cited from

- [[syntheses/bpm-phases-and-bpr-legacy]] — flagged as gap-to-fill in the Gaps section (90s BPR critics).

## How to obtain

HBR archive: https://hbr.org/1993/11/how-to-make-reengineering-really-work · University library access.

## Upgrade when available

Full ingest: capture the scope × depth framework, the 20-project evidence, and compare the scope-width / depth dimensions to Vu 2025's risk-proportional autonomy finding.