Gregor Jošt

Business process model and notation: The current state of affairs

Context: With business process modelling, companies and organizations can gain explicit control over their processes. Currently, there are many notations in the area of business process modelling, where Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is denoted as the de facto standard. Aims: The aim of this research is to provide the state-of-the-art results addressing the acceptance of BPMN, while also examining the purposes of its usage. Furthermore, the advantages, disadvantages and other interests related to BPMN were also investigated. Method: To achieve these objectives, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a semantic examination of articles’ citations was conducted. Results: After completing SLR, out of a total of 852 articles, 31 were deemed relevant. The majority of the articles analyzed the notation and compared it with other modelling techniques. The remainder evaluated general aspects of the notation, e.g. history and versions of the standard, usage of the notation or tools. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that there are empirical insights about the level of BPMN acceptance. They suggest that BPMN is still widely perceived as the de facto standard in the process modelling domain and its usage is everincreasing. However, many studies report that only a limited set of elements are commonly used and to this end, several extensions were proposed. The main purpose of BPMN remains the description of business processes.

An empirical investigation of intuitive understandability of process diagrams

ContextBusiness process modeling is an activity that includes several different roles, e.g. business analysts, technical analysts and software developers. The resulting process diagrams can be either simple or complex. Nonetheless, they must be understandable to everyone, even those without the necessary knowledge of process modeling notations. ObjectiveThe goal of our research was to evaluate intuitive understandability of diagrams, modeled in different process modeling notations, with regard to diagram complexity. MethodAn empirical research was conducted, including 103 students with the goal to empirically validate the intuitiveness of the diagrams, modeled in most commonly used process modeling notations, i.e. Unified Modeling Language 2.0 Activity Diagram (UML AD), Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Event Driven Process Chain (EPC). Results were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test, together with the Mann-Whitney post hoc tests with Bonferroni correction. ResultsIn the case of processes with lesser complexity, participants using BPMN diagrams were significantly outperformed by those using either EPC or UML AD ones. However, when complexity of processes was higher, participants using EPC diagrams performed significantly worse than those using the UML AD and BPMN counterparts. Moreover, participants that used UML AD diagrams were not significantly outperformed by users of diagrams in other process modeling notations, regardless of their complexity. Thus, UML AD was recognized as being the most versatile notation. ConclusionSince the existing studies do not offer a holistic overview of the intuitive understandability of process diagrams with different complexity, modeled in different process modeling notations, our research can help decide which notation to use when representing processes that have to be understandable by all stakeholders. Lower complexity BPMN diagrams were outperformed by EPC or UML AD ones.Higher complexity EPC diagrams were outperformed by BPMN or UML AD ones.UML AD was recognized as being the most versatile notation.Our study can help decide which notation to use when representing processes.

Introduction to Social Business Process Management

Technologies and concepts of Web 2.0 are strongly present in everyday life and also in business environments, where they are increasingly involved into business activities which constitute business processes. Combining the management of Web 2.0 and business processes resulted in social BPM, which is one of the most promising fields in the software industry. Social BPM tries to create knowledge in business environments and manage it efficiently. In this contribution, some key features are presented. We particularly exposed strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of social BPM.

An experimental investigation comparing individual and collaborative work productivity when using desktop and cloud modeling tools

Successful modeling tools need to effectively support individual as well as team-based work (collaboration) within colocated and virtual environments. In the past, achieving this has been challenging, since traditional modeling tools are desktop-based and thus suitable for individual and colocated work only. However, with the rise of web-based architectures and the cloud paradigm, desktop modeling tools now have rivals in their web-based counterparts that are especially suited for online collaboration (e-collaboration). The objective of our research was to probe the question as to ‘which type of modeling tools (desktop or cloud-based) performs better in cases of individual work and e-collaboration’, and to obtain insights into the sources of the strengths and weaknesses regarding both types of modeling tools. A controlled experiment was performed in which we addressed two types of modeling tools—desktop and cloud-based, in respect to two types of work—individual and e-collaboration. Within these treatments, we observed the productivity of 129 undergraduate IT students, who performed different types of modeling activities. The experimental participants reported no statistical significant differences between self-reported expertise with the investigated tools as well as their overall characteristics. However, they did finish individual and e-collaborative activities faster when using cloud modeling tool, where significant differences in favor of the cloud modeling tool were detected during e-collaboration. If we aggregate the results, we can argue that cloud modeling tools are comparable with desktop modeling tools during individual activities and outperform them during e-collaboration. Our findings also correlate with the related research, stating that with the use of state-of-the-art Web technologies, cloud-based applications can achieve the user experience of desktop applications.

Application of Business Process Diagrams’ Complexity Management Technique Based on Highlights

The purpose of business process diagrams is mainly to make the communication between process-related stakeholders more effective. Currently, BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is the leader and de-facto standard for business process modeling. However, the notation and their corresponding diagrams have been perceived as complex by many different researchers. Much work was already done in order to manage such complexity by changing or extending the existing BPMN notation. In this paper, we will propose a solution that aims to decrease the complexity of business process diagrams without changing the notation or existing approaches by introducing opacity-driven graphical highlights.

Towards the Component-Based Approach for Evaluating Process Diagram Complexity

Various authors have defined an extensive set of measures regarding the complexity of process design, which can be objectively measured by using structural complexity metrics. Nevertheless, the research in this area indicates that the percentage of empirically and theoretically validated metrics is relatively small. This suggests that there are still no real examples of the metrics usage within organizations. Despite that we could just validate existing proposals, we feel that a new and enhanced approach to evaluate process diagram complexity is feasible and needed. Thus, in the present paper, we will discuss a possibility of developing a new component-based approach for evaluating process diagram complexity, for which we anticipate that it would be more precise than existing ones, since it will also assess such constituent parts of process diagrams which not only contribute to higher complexity (e.g. complex routing behavior), but also to lower complexity (e.g. decomposition). Moreover, we plan to thoroughly validate our approach both in theory and practice.

Improving cognitive effectiveness of business process diagrams with opacity-driven graphical highlights

Abstract In order to facilitate the communication between the stakeholders, business process diagrams must be easy to understand. This is challenging to achieve, since they can become large and complex. In our previous work, we proposed Opacity-Driven Graphical Highlights, a novel approach for increasing the cognitive effectiveness of business process diagrams by changing the opacity of graphical elements and provided a prototype implementation of the approach. The goal of this study was to empirically validate if our proposed approach positively impacts cognitive effectiveness of business process diagrams and if the users will find the prototype implementation useful. To this end an experimental research was conducted where speed, ease and accuracy of answering questions were observed along with the perceived usefulness of the prototype. Participants that used Opacity-Driven Graphical Highlights significantly outperformed those that used the conventional approach. We can conclude that using Opacity-Driven Graphical Highlights increases the cognitive effectiveness of business process diagrams, while the corresponding prototype is perceived as being useful.

Theoretical foundations and implementation of business process diagrams’ complexity management technique based on highlights

The main purpose of business process diagrams is to make the communication between process-related stakeholders more effective. To this end, they need to be simple to read, which is often challenging to achieve. In this manner, the complexity of business process diagrams can negatively affect their correctness and understandability. The goal of this paper was to investigate an approach that makes business process diagrams appear less complex, without changing the corresponding notation. This was done by manipulating one of the properties of the notation’s elements, namely opacity. Firstly, a literature overview was performed in order to obtain the theoretical foundations. Secondly, an exploratory case study was conducted and the results were applied in practice. Finally, the proposed solution was implemented in the form of a prototype software solution. Our analysis demonstrated that the structural complexity of the diagrams decreases when applying the proposed solution.