A family of experiments to validate metrics for software process models

On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2007: CoopIS, DOA, ODBASE, GADA, and IS

Neumann

Aalst

2007

107

142

Abstract. Business process models play an important role for the management, design, and improvement of process organizations and processaware information systems. Despite the extensive application of process modeling in practice, there are hardly empirical results available on quality aspects of process models. This paper aims to advance the understanding of this matter by analyzing the connection between formal errors (such as deadlocks) and a set of metrics that capture various structural and behavioral aspects of a process model. In particular, we discuss the theoretical connection between errors and metrics, and provide a comprehensive validation based on an extensive sample of EPC process models from practice. Furthermore, we investigate the capability of the metrics to predict errors in a second independent sample of models. The high explanatory power of the metrics has considerable consequences for the design of future modeling guidelines and modeling tools.

Section: Related Worksupporting

confidence: 63%

“…Much work has been done related to bottom-up metrics that relate to quality aspects of process models, stemming from different research and partially isolated from each other (see [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]10] or for an overview [16]). Several of these contributions are theoretic without empirical validation.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Occurrence of Errors in Process Models Based on Metrics

On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2007: CoopIS, DOA, ODBASE, GADA, and IS

Neumann

Aalst

2007

107

142

“…Metrics Refactorings PMS1 1-7 [41,43,46,77,78] verb-object style RF1, RF2, RF7 PMS2 1-7 [1,8,9,42,48,88,90,91] In a large healthcare project we analyzed five core processes of a women's clinic as documented in its organizational manual: birth and postnatal care, inpatient chemotherapy treatment, outpatient chemotherapy treatment, ovarian carcinoma surgery, and keyhole surgery [59]. In total, these five core processes consist of 70 process models, which are expressed either in terms of Event Process Chains or UML Activity Diagrams.…”

Section: Smell Sources Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, [9] is centered around an adaptation of the cyclomatic number (one of the most widely used SE metrics) for business processes. Other research has analyzed process model understandability as aspect of maintainability, and has identified several correlations [8,1]. Further metrics take their motivation from cognitive research [91] or are based on concepts of modularity [93,88].…”

Section: Pms2: Contrived Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Refactoring large process model repositories

Weber

Reichert

et al. 2011

Computers in Industry

187

120

With the increasing adoption of process-aware information systems, large process model repositories have emerged. Typically, the models in such repositories are re-aligned to real-world events and demands through adaptation on a day-to-day basis. This bears the risk of introducing model redundancies and of unnecessarily increasing model complexity. If no continuous investment is made in keeping process models simple, changes will become more difficult and error-prone over time. Although refactoring techniques are widely used in software engineering to address similar problems, so far, no comparable state-of-the-art has evolved in the business process management domain. Process designers either have to refactor process models by hand or are simply unable to apply respective techniques at all. This paper proposes a catalogue of process model "smells" for identifying refactoring opportunities. In addition, it introduces a set of behavior-preserving techniques for refactoring large process repositories. The proposed refactorings enable process designers to effectively deal with model complexity by making process models better understandable and easier to maintain. The refactorings have been evaluated using large process repositories from the healthcare and automotive domain. To demonstrate the feasibility of the refactoring techniques, a proof-of-concept prototype has been implemented.

“…For instance, the control-flow complexity (CFC) [29] is validated with respect to its correlation with perceived complexity of models [30]. Metrics including size, complexity and coupling are validated for their correlation with understanding and maintainability [31,32]. Further metrics aim to quantify cognitive complexity and modularity [33,34,35,36].…”

Section: Structural Factors Of Process Model Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Structural and Textual Quality of Business Process Models

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

2013

Abstract. Business process models are increasingly used for capturing business operations of companies. Such models play an important role in the requirements elicitation phase of to-be-created information systems and in as-is analysis of business efficiency. Many process modeling initiatives have grown considerably big in size involving dozens of modelers with varying expertise creating and maintaining hundreds, sometimes thousands of models. One of the roadblocks towards a more effective usage of these process models is the often insufficient provision of quality assurance. The aim of this paper is to give an overview on how empirical research informs structural and textual quality assurance of process models. We present selected findings and show how they can be utilized as a foundation for novel automatic analysis techniques.