ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Assessing Business Process Modeling Languages Using a Generic Quality Framework Anna Gunhild Nysetvold* John Krogstie *, § IDI, NTNU * and SINTEF § Norway

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Overview of presentation Quality of models and modeling languages Objectives of business process models Description of case - Vital Evaluation results Concluding remarks

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Framework for quality of models

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Quality of modeling languages

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Different objectives of business process modeling Human-sense making and communication Computer-assisted analysis/simulation Business Process Management Gives the context for a traditional system development project Model deployment and activation : Through people guided by process 'maps', Automatically, as in most workflow engines. Interactively, where the computer and the users co-operate

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Description of case-study environment Vital: One of Norway’s largest insurance companies Large number of life insurance and pension insurance customers Going from a functionally oriented architecture to a process/service oriented architecture Need to support complete business processes in the architecture Main usage area of process models: Context for system development (but human sense-making and communication is also important)

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Approach to evaluation Identified main criteria based on Vital experiences and the quality framework approx. 70 requirements derived from the general framework, evaluated according to relevance to Vital 32 requirements found sufficiently relevant to use in the evaluation Identify short-list of languages to evaluate Evaluate languages based on identified criteria Analytically Empirically (based on modeling of cases using the same independent modeling tool (METIS)) Getting feedback from Vital on evaluations as we went along Evaluations on a 0-3 scale on each criteria

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Short-list of languages BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notations) UML Activity diagrams EEML (Extended Enterprise Modeling Language)

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ BPMN - BPD

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ UML Activity diagrams

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ EEML

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Overall results No.Requirement descriptionUML ADBPMNEEML 1.1 The language should support the following concepts (a) processes, that must be possible to decompose (b) activities (c) actors/roles (d) decision points (e) flow between activities, tasks and decision points The language should support (a) system resources (b) states Basic control patterns Advanced branching and synchronization patterns00,53 1.5Structural patterns01,5 1.6Patterns involving multiple instances1, State based flow patterns Cancellation patterns Extension mechanisms to fit the domain Elements in the process model must be possible to link to a data/information model Hierarchical models333 22,520,527,5

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ The language must be easy to learn, preferably being based on a language already being used in the organization Appropriate level of abstraction Concepts should be named similarly as it is in the domain Intuitive representation to the stakeholders Good guidelines for the use of the language Easy diff. between different concepts Number of concepts should be reasonable The language should be flexible in precision Easy to differentiate between the different symbols in the language The language must be consistent One should strive for graphical simplicity Grouping of related statements The language should have a formal syntax Formal semantics Generate BPEL –documents from the model Represent web-services in the model Automatic execution and testing The language must be supported by available tools Traceability between the process model and any automated process support system Models that can improvement the quality of the process The language should support the development of models that help in the follow-up of separate cases 112 Sum63,572,563,5 Sum without technical actor appropriateness55.557,555,5 Sum without participant language knowledge appropriateness53,559,553,5

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Concluding remarks The framework found useful after specializing it to specific goals of the organization Overly simplistic valuation ? Weighting of importance (base more on metrics for e.g. complexity) Weighting between expressiveness, learnability, comprehension, technical and organizational appropriateness On later uses use several valuation schemes in parallel Also include evaluation of the meta-model and notation guides as models Useful to first focus on the language, but language quality is only a mean to achieve model quality. Through including organizational appropriateness, tool-support and appropriate techniques to support the development of high-quality models on all levels is partly included also at this level

ICT EMMSAD’05 13/ Assessing Business Process Modeling Languages Using a Generic Quality Framework Anna Gunhild Nysetvold* John Krogstie *, § IDI, NTNU * and SINTEF § Norway