Discovering hidden dependencies in constraint-based declarative process models for improving understandability

Flexible systems and services require a solid approach for modeling and enacting dynamic behavior. Declarative process models gained plenty of traction lately as they have proven to provide a good fit for the problem at hand, i.e. visualizing and executing flexible business processes. These models are based on constraints that impose behavioral restrictions on process behavior. Essentially, a declarative model is a set of constraints defined over the set of activities in a process. While allowing for very flexible process specifications, a major downside is that the combination of constraints can lead to behavioral restrictions not explicitly visible when reading a model. These restrictions, so-called hidden dependencies, make the models much more difficult to understand. This paper presents a technique for discovering hidden dependencies and making them explicit by means of dependency structures. Experiments with novice process modelers demonstrate that the proposed technique lowers the cognitive effort necessary to comprehend a constraint-based process model.status: publishe

Investigating Inconsistency Understanding to Support Interactive Inconsistency Resolution in Declarative Process Models

Handling inconsistencies in business rules is an important part of corporate compliance management. This includes the resolution of inconsistencies, which currently is a fully automated process that might not always be plausible in a real-world scenario. To include human experts and develop interactive resolution approaches, an understanding of inconsistencies is crucial. Thus, we focus on investigating inconsistency understanding in declarative process models by testing the applicability of insights from declarative process model understanding to different inconsistency characteristics. In the future, this will provide the basis for a series of cognitive experiments evaluating the effects of inconsistency characteristics and representation on inconsistency understanding in declarative process models