Findings are that both types of investigated factors affect model understanding, while personal factors seem to be the more important of the two.
Abstract:
Business process models are key artifacts in the development of information systems. While one of their main purposes is to facilitate communication among stakeholders, little is known about the factors that influence their comprehension by human agents. On the basis of a sound theoretical foundation, this paper presents a study into these factors. Specifically, the effects of both personal and model factors are investigated. Using a questionnaire, students from three different universities evaluated a set of realistic process models. Our findings are that both types of investigated factors affect model understanding, while personal factors seem to be the more important of the two. The results have been validated in a replication that involves professional modelers.
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Q1. What have the authors contributed in "A study into the factors that influence the understandability of business process models" ?
On the basis of a sound theoretical foundation, this paper presents a study into these factors.
Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "A study into the factors that influence the understandability of business process models" ?
Future research is needed for analyzing the relative importance of model size in comparison to personal expertise, and should explicitly consider potential interaction effects. The authors also plan to investigate the significance of those factors for understanding that they neutralized in this research. Finally, the case of model L points to research opportunities on the difficulty of understanding particular process model components. As certain components can be reduced because they are always correct, it might be interesting to investigate whether certain components can be understood with the same ease, even if they are moved to a different position in the process model.
Q3. What are the main aspects of the formal focus?
In particular, the authors focus on binary relationships between two activities in terms of execution order, exclusiveness, concurrency, and repetition.
Q4. What is the importance of secondary notation in process models?
For models of increasing complexity, secondary notation also gains in importance for making the hidden dependencies better visible.
Q5. What can be easily verified using the reachability graph of the process model?
Statements such as “Executing activity ai implies that aj will be executed later” can be easily verified using the reachability graph of the process model.
Q6. What is the main idea of the paper?
The research conducted by a group including Canfora, Rolón, and Garcı́a analyzes understandability as an aspect of maintainability.
Q7. What is the commonly used notation for process modeling?
This notation essentially covers the commonalities of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs) [17], [18] and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) [19], which are two of the most frequently used notations for process modeling.