Some Future Directions for Business Process Modeling

AbstractBusiness process modeling is an important activity for developing software systems—especially within digitization projects and when realizing digital business models. Specifying requirements and building executable workflows is often done by using BPMN 2.0 process models. Although there are several style guides available for BPMN, e.g., by Silver and Richard (BPMN method and style, vol 2, Cody-Cassidy Press, Aptos, 2009), there has not been much empirical research done into the consequences of the diagram layout. In particular, layouts that require scrolling have not been investigated yet. The aim of this research is to establish layout guidelines for business process modeling that help business process modelers to create more understandable business process diagrams. For establishing benefits and penalties of different layouts, a controlled eye tracking experiment was conducted, in which data of 21 professional software developers was used. Our results show that horizontal layouts are less demanding and that as many diagram elements as possible should be put on the initially visible screen area because such diagram elements are viewed more often and longer. Additionally, diagram elements related to the reader’s task are read more often than those not relevant to the task. BPMN modelers should favor a horizontal layout and use a more complex snake or multi-line layout whenever the diagrams are too large to fit on one page in order to support BPMN model comprehension.

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A theoretical evaluation for assessing the relevance of modeling techniques in business process modeling

Fourth international workshop on Software quality assurance in conjunction with the 6th ESEC/FSE joint meeting - SOQUA '07 ◽

10.1145/1295074.1295094 ◽

2007 ◽

Author(s):

Javier Ortiz-Hernández ◽

Erika M. Nieto-Ariza ◽

Hugo Estrada-Esquivel ◽

Guillermo Rodríguez-Ortiz ◽

Azucena Montes-Rendon

Keyword(s):

Business Process ◽

Process Modeling ◽

Business Process Modeling ◽

Theoretical Evaluation ◽

Modeling Techniques

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BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS MODELS AND WORKFLOW SPECIFICATIONS

International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems ◽

10.1142/s0218843004000973 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 13 (03) ◽

pp. 289-332 ◽

Cited By ~ 94

Author(s):

JULIANE DEHNERT ◽

WIL M. P. VAN DER AALST

Keyword(s):

Information System ◽

Business Process ◽

Process Modeling ◽

Business Models ◽

Formal Semantics ◽

Business Process Modeling ◽

Modeling Language ◽

Correctness Criterion ◽

Process Chains ◽

Selection Of

This paper presents a methodology to bridge the gap between business process modeling and workflow specification. While the first is concerned with intuitive descriptions that are mainly used for communication, the second is concerned with configuring a process-aware information system, thus requiring a more rigorous language less suitable for communication. Unlike existing approaches the gap is not bridged by providing formal semantics for an informal language. Instead it is assumed that the desired behavior is just a subset of the full behavior obtained using a liberal interpretation of the informal business process modeling language. Using a new correctness criterion (relaxed soundness), it is verified whether a selection of suitable behavior is possible. The methodology consists of five steps and is illustrated using event-driven process chains as a business process modeling language and Petri nets as the workflow specification language.

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