Managing Process Model Complexity via Concrete Syntax Modifications

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial informatics Vol. 7; no. 2; pp. 255 - 265
• Main Authors: La Rosa, M, ter Hofstede, Arthur H M, Wohed, P, Reijers, H A, Mendling, J, van der Aalst, W M P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.05.2011; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Business; Business process management; Categories; Collection; Complexity; Complexity theory; Computer and systems science; Computer and Systems Sciences; Concrete; Data- och systemvetenskap; Dealing; Informatics, computer and systems science; Informatik, data- och systemvetenskap; Layout; pattern; Process model; Representations; SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP; secondary notation; SOCIAL SCIENCES; Statistics, computer and systems science; Statistik, data- och systemvetenskap; Studies; Syntactics; Unified modeling language; Visual; Visualization
• ISSN: 1551-3203; 1941-0050; 1941-0050
• DOI: 10.1109/TII.2011.2124467

While Business Process Management (BPM) is an established discipline, the increased adoption of BPM technology in recent years has introduced new challenges. One challenge concerns dealing with the ever-growing complexity of business process models. Mechanisms for dealing with this complexity can be classified into two categories: 1) those that are solely concerned with the visual representation of the model and 2) those that change its inner structure. While significant attention is paid to the latter category in the BPM literature, this paper focuses on the former category. It presents a collection of patterns that generalize and conceptualize various existing mechanisms to change the visual representation of a process model. Next, it provides a detailed analysis of the degree of support for these patterns in a number of state-of-the-art languages and tools. This paper concludes with the results of a usability evaluation of the patterns conducted with BPM practitioners.