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

Assessing the effectiveness of sequence diagrams in the comprehension of functional requirements: results from a family of five experiments

Modeling is a fundamental activity within the requirements engineering process and concerns the construction of abstract descriptions of requirements that are amenable to interpretation and validation. The choice of a modeling technique is critical whenever it is necessary to discuss the interpretation and validation of requirements. This is particularly true in the case of functional requirements and stakeholders with divergent goals and different backgrounds and experience. This paper presents the results of a family of experiments conducted with students and professionals to investigate whether the comprehension of functional requirements is influenced by the use of dynamic models that are represented by means of the UML sequence diagrams. The family contains five experiments performed in different locations and with 112 participants of different abilities and levels of experience with UML. The results show that sequence diagrams improve the comprehension of the modeled functional requirements in the case of high ability and more experienced participants.The authors wish to thank all the participants in the experiments. This research was partially supported by the MULTIPLE project (with ref. TIN2009-13838).Abrahao Gonzales, SM.; Gravino, .C.; Insfrán Pelozo, CE.; Scaniello, .G.; Tortora, .G. (2013). Assessing the effectiveness of sequence diagrams in the comprehension of functional requirements: results from a family of five experiments. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. 39(3):327-342. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2012.27S32734239

Building Blocks for Control System Software

Software implementation of control laws for industrial systems seem straightforward, but is not. The computer code stemming from the control laws is mostly not more than 10 to 30% of the total. A building-block approach for embedded control system development is advocated to enable a fast and efficient software design process.\ud We have developed the CTJ library, Communicating Threads for Java¿,\ud resulting in fundamental elements for creating building blocks to implement communication using channels. Due to the simulate-ability, our building block method is suitable for a concurrent engineering design approach. Furthermore, via a stepwise refinement process, using verification by simulation, the implementation trajectory can be done efficiently

Some observations on the application of software metrics to UML models

In this position paper we discuss some of the existing work on applying metrics to UML models, present some of our own work in this area, and specify some topics for future research that we regard as important

Design Time Methodology for the Formal Modeling and Verification of Smart Environments

Smart Environments (SmE) are intelligent and complex due to smart connectivity and interaction of heterogeneous devices achieved by complicated and sophisticated computing algorithms. Based on their domotic and industrial applications, SmE system may be critical in terms of correctness, reliability, safety, security and other such vital factors. To achieve error-free and requirement-compliant implementation of these systems, it is advisable to enforce a design process that may guarantee these factors by adopting formal models and formal verification techniques at design time. The e-Lite research group at Politecnico di Torino is developing solutions for SmE based on integration of commercially available home automation technologies with an intelligent ecosystem based on a central OSGi-based gateway, and distributed collaboration of intelligent applications, with the help of semantic web technologies and applications. The main goal of my research is to study new methodologies which are used for the modeling and verification of SmE. This goal includes the development of a formal methodology which ensures the reliable implementation of the requirements on SmE, by modeling and verifying each component (users, devices, control algorithms and environment/context) and the interaction among them, especially at various stages in design time, so that all the complexities and ambiguities can be reduced

How Novices and Experts Understand Hierarchies in Business Process Modeling

Conceptual models are essential for successful IT implementation, as they concisely represent the system\u27s component structures, behavior, and relationships. However, for conceptual models to fully realize their potential, they must be understood. To this end, hierarchy has been employed in business process modeling to enhance understanding of complex models. Prior research has proposed a two-component framework to explain the effects of hierarchy on understanding. Drawing on empirical data, this work extends this framework by investigating the influence of expertise on the understanding of hierarchical business process models. Our findings indicate that experts and novices benefit from hiding task-irrelevant information in subprocesses, with experts benefiting significantly more than novices. Additionally, experts profit more from recognizing familiar patterns in subprocesses than novices. Based on our results, we propose two principles for designing hierarchy and suggest future research avenues. Keywords: Business Process Modeling, Hierarchy, Expertise, Information Hiding

Scenario-Based Development and Verification of Domain-Specific Languages

The use of domain-specific languages (DSLs) has increased manifold for problem solving in specific domain areas as they allow for a wider variety of expressions within their domain. Modeling using DSLs has shown high increases in productivity after accounting for the time and cost expended in developing them, making them a suitable target for improvement in order to reap higher rewards. The currently used approach for domain modeling involves the creation of an ontology which is then used to describe the domain model. This ontology encapsulates all domain knowledge and can be cumbersome to create, requiring external sources of information and assistance from a domain expert. This dissertation first discusses the use and importance of DSLs for scenario generation for a domain and presents an extension to the Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL). The main contribution of this dissertation is a novel framework for scenario based development of DSLs, called the Domain-Specific Scenario (DoSS) framework. This framework proposes the use of scenarios in natural language, which are currently used in requirements engineering and testing, as the basis for developing the domain model iteratively. An example of the use of this approach is provided by developing a domain model for ASDL and comparing the published model with one obtained using DoSS. This approach is supplemented with a case study to validate the claim that DoSS is easier to use by non-experts in the domain by having a user create a model and comparing it to one obtained by the author. These models were found to be almost identical, showing a promising return for this approach. The time taken and effort required to create this model by the user were recorded and found to be quite low, although no similar results have been published so no comparison could be made. State charts are then used for verification of scenarios to ensure the conformity between scenarios and models. The dissertation also discusses applications of the ideas presented here, specifically, the use of ASDL for Air Traffic Control training scenarios and the use of DoSS for ontology generation