Considering Social Distance as an Influence Factor in the Process of Process Modeling

Enterprise repositories comprise numerous business process models either created by in-house domain experts or external business analysts. To enable a widespread use of these process models, high model quality (e.g., soundness) as well as a sufficient level of granularity are crucial. Moreover, they shall reflect the actual business processes properly. Existing modeling guidelines target at creating correct and sound process models, whereas there is only little work dealing with cognitive issues influencing model creation by process designers. This paper addresses this gap and presents a controlled experiment investigating the construal level theory in the context of process modeling. In particular, we investigate the influence the social distance of a process designer to the modeled domain has on the creation of process models. For this purpose, we adopt and apply a gamification approach, which enables us to show significant differences between low and high social distance with respect to the quality, granularity, and structure of the created process models. The results obtained give insights into how enterprises shall compose teams for creating and evolving process models

Short Paper: Digital Twin Framework Survey and Proposal of Implementation

The digital twin (DT) is widely adopted by the manufacturing and maintenance engineering industry to aid in the simulation and prediction of elements before they occur in real customer life. In this paper, authors look to introduce DT metamodel to support process management. This paper aims to expand set of DT frameworks and justify a framework extension by example of process implementation. To aid in the implementation process, a digital twin framework survey is presented that simplifies the digital twin development process into steps and layers that can be analysed independently

ON THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF RESEARCH INTO THE UNDERSTANDABILITY OF BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS

Against the background of the growing significance of Business Process Management (BPM) for Information Systems (IS) research and practice, especially the field of Business Process Modeling gains more and more importance. Business process models support communication about as well as the coordination of processes and have become a widely adopted tool in practice. As the understandability of business process models plays a crucial role in communication processes, more and more studies on process model understandability have been conducted in IS research. This article aims at investigating underlying theories of research into business process model understandability by means of an in-depth analysis of 126 systematically retrieved research articles on the topic. It shows in how far process model understandability research is multi-theoretically founded. Identified theories differ regarding addressed subject matters, their coverage, their focus as well as the underlying notion of model understanding, which is exemplarily demonstrated and discussed in this article. Moreover, implications of the findings are discussed and an outlook on future business process model understandability research and on the integration potential of theories in this field is given

Quality evaluation for Model-Driven Web Engineering methodologies

Context: There are lots of approaches or methodologies in the Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) context to develop Web Applications without reaching a consensus on the use of standards and scarcity of both, practical experience and tool support. Objective: Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) methodologies are constantly evolving. Moreover, Quality is a very important factor to identify within a methodology as it defines processes, techniques and artifacts to develop Web Applications. For this reason, when analyzing a methodology, it is not only necessary to evaluate quality, but also to find out how to improve it. The main goal of this paper is to develop a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics for MDWE approaches based on ISO/ IEC standards. Method: From the software products context, some widely standards proposed, such as ISO/IEC 9126 or ISO/IEC 25000, suggest a Quality Model for software products, although up to now, there are no standard methods to assess quality on MDWE methodologies. Such methodologies can be organized into Properties, thus, a methodology has artifacts, processes and techniques. Then, each item is evaluated through a set of appropriate Quality Characteristics, depending on its nature. This paper proposes to evaluate a methodology as a product itself. Results: This paper recommends a set of Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics based on these standards in order to evaluate MDWE methodologies quality. Additionally, it defines an agile way to relate these Quality Sub-Characteristics to Properties with the sole purpose of not only analyzing, but also assessing and improving MDWE methodologies. Conclusions: The application of these Quality Characteristics and Sub-Characteristics could promote efficiency in methodologies since this kind of assessment enhances both the understanding of strengths and weaknesses of approaches.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2007-67843-C06-03Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TIN2010-20057-C03-0

How Social Distance of Process Designers Affects the Process of Process Modeling: Insights From a Controlled Experiment

The increasing adoption of process-aware information systems (PAISs) by enterprises has resulted in large process model collections. Usually, process models are created either by in-house domain experts or external consultants. Thereby, high model quality is crucial, i.e., process models should be syntactically correct and sound, and also reflect the real business processes properly. While numerous guidelines exist for creating correct and sound process models, there is only little work dealing with cognitive aspects affecting process modeling. This paper addresses this gap and presents a controlled experiment using construal level theory. We investigate the influence the social distance of a process designer to the modeled domain has on the creation of process models. In particular, we are able to show significant differences between high and low social distance in respect to model quality and granularity. The results may help enterprises to compose adequate teams for creating or optimizing business process models

Aggregate metric model for evaluating business processes

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a business process measurement framework for the evaluation of a corpus of business processes modelled in different business process modelling approaches. The results of the application of the proposed measurement framework will serve as a basis for choosing business process modelling approaches. Design/methodology/approach - The approach uses ideas of the Goal Question Metric (GQM) framework to define metrics for measuring a business process where the metrics answer the questions to achieve the goal. The Weighted Sum Method (WSM) is used to aggregate the measure of attributes of a business process to derive an aggregate measure, and business process modelling approaches are compared based on the evaluation of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure. Findings - The proposed measurement framework was applied to a corpus of business process models in different business process modelling approaches and is showed that insight is gained into the effect of business process modelling approach on the maintainability of a business process model. From the results, business process modelling approaches which imbibed the principle of separation of concerns of models, make use of reference or base model for a family of business process variants and promote the reuse of model elements performed highest when their models are evaluated with the proposed measurement framework. The results showed that the applications of the proposed framework proved to be useful for the selection of business process modelling approaches. Originality - The novelty of this work is in the application of WSM to integrate metric of business process models and the evaluation of a corpus of business process models created in different business process modelling approaches using the aggregate measure.This AAM is provided for your own personal use only. It may not be used for resale, reprinting, systematic distribution, emailing, or for any other commercial purpose without the permission of the publishe

How Advanced Change Patterns Impact the Process of Process Modeling

Process model quality has been an area of considerable research efforts. In this context, correctness-by-construction as enabled by change patterns provides promising perspectives. While the process of process modeling (PPM) based on change primitives has been thoroughly investigated, only little is known about the PPM based on change patterns. In particular, it is unclear what set of change patterns should be provided and how the available change pattern set impacts the PPM. To obtain a better understanding of the latter as well as the (subjective) perceptions of process modelers, the arising challenges, and the pros and cons of different change pattern sets we conduct a controlled experiment. Our results indicate that process modelers face similar challenges irrespective of the used change pattern set (core pattern set versus extended pattern set, which adds two advanced change patterns to the core patterns set). An extended change pattern set, however, is perceived as more difficult to use, yielding a higher mental effort. Moreover, our results indicate that more advanced patterns were only used to a limited extent and frequently applied incorrectly, thus, lowering the potential benefits of an extended pattern set

A Systematic Mapping Review of Software Quality Measurement: Research Trends, Model, and Method

Software quality is a key for the success in the business of information and technology. Hence, before be marketed, it needs the software quality measurement to fulfill the user requirements.  Some methods of the software quality analysis have been tested in a different perspective, and we have presented the software method in the point of view of users and experts. This study aims to map the method of software quality measurement in any models of quality. Using the method of Systematic Mapping Study, we did a searching and filtering of papers using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. 42 relevant papers have been obtained then. The result of the mapping showed that though the model of ISO SQuaRE has been widely used since the last five years and experienced the dynamics, the researchers in Indonesia still used ISO9126 until the end of 2016.The most commonly used method of the software quality measurement Method is the empirical method, and some researchers have done an AHP and Fuzzy approach in measuring the software quality

An overview of process model quality literature - The Comprehensive Process Model Quality Framework

The rising interest in the construction and the quality of (business) process models resulted in an abundancy of emerged research studies and different findings about process model quality. The lack of overview and the lack of consensus hinder the development of the research field. The research objective is to collect, analyse, structure, and integrate the existing knowledge in a comprehensive framework that strives to find a balance between completeness and relevance without hindering the overview. The Systematic Literature Review methodology was applied to collect the relevant studies. Because several studies exist that each partially addresses this research objective, the review was performed at a tertiary level. Based on a critical analysis of the collected papers, a comprehensive, but structured overview of the state of the art in the field was composed. The existing academic knowledge about process model quality was carefully integrated and structured into the Comprehensive Process Model Quality Framework (CPMQF). The framework summarizes 39 quality dimensions, 21 quality metrics, 28 quality (sub)drivers, 44 (sub)driver metrics, 64 realization initiatives and 15 concrete process model purposes related to 4 types of organizational benefits, as well as the relations between all of these. This overview is thus considered to form a valuable instrument for both researchers and practitioners that are concerned about process model quality. The framework is the first to address the concept of process model quality in such a comprehensive way