Pnina Soffer

Andrea Burattin, Vered Bernstein, Manuel Neurauter et al.

Business process models abstract complex business processes by representing them as graphical models. Their layout, solely determined by the modeler, affects their understandability. To support the construction of understandable models it would be beneficial to systematically study this effect. However, this requires a basic set of measurable key visual features, depicting the layout properties that are meaningful to the human user. The aim of this research is thus twofold. First, to empirically identify key visual features of business process models which are perceived as meaningful to the user. Second, to show how such features can be quantified into computational metrics, which are applicable to business process models. We focus on one particular feature, consistency of flow direction, and show the challenges that arise when transforming it into a precise metric. We propose three different metrics addressing these challenges, each following a different view of flow consistency. We then report the results of an empirical evaluation, which indicates which metric is more effective in predicting the human perception of this feature. Moreover, two other automatic evaluations describing the performance and the computational capabilities of our metrics are reported as well.

Jakob Pinggera, Pnina Soffer, Stefan Zugal et al.

Research on quality issues of business process models has recently begun to explore the process of creating process models. As a consequence, the question arises whether different ways of creating process models exist. In this vein, we observed 115 students engaged in the act of modeling, recording all their interactions with the modeling environment using a specialized tool. The recordings of process modeling were subsequently clustered. Results presented in this paper suggest the existence of three distinct modeling styles, exhibiting significantly different characteristics. We believe that this finding constitutes another building block toward a more comprehensive understanding of the process of process modeling that will ultimately enable us to support modelers in creating better business process models.

Stefan Zugal, Pnina Soffer, Jakob Pinggera et al.

Hierarchy has widely been recognized as a viable approach to deal with the complexity of conceptual models. For instance, in declarative business process models, hierarchy is realized by sub-processes. While technical implementations of declarative sub-processes exist, their application, semantics, and the resulting impact on understandability are less understood yet-this research gap is addressed in this work. In particular, we discuss the semantics and the application of hierarchy and show how sub-processes enhance the expressiveness of declarative modeling languages. Then, we turn to the impact on the understandability of hierarchy on a declarative process model. To systematically assess this impact, we present a cognitive-psychology based framework that allows to assess the possible impact of hierarchy on the understandability of the process model.

Cornelia Haisjackl, Stefan Zugal, Pnina Soffer et al.

Declarative approaches to process modeling are regarded as well suited for highly volatile environments as they provide a high degree of flexibility. However, problems in understanding and maintaining declarative business process models impede often their usage. In particular, how declarative models are understood has not been investigated yet. This paper takes a first step toward addressing this question and reports on an exploratory study investigating how analysts make sense of declarative process models. We have handed out real-world declarative process models to subjects and asked them to describe the illustrated process. Our qualitative analysis shows that subjects tried to describe the processes in a sequential way although the models represent circumstantial information, namely, conditions that produce an outcome, rather than a sequence of activities. Finally, we observed difficulties with single building blocks and combinations of relations between activities.