Designing Process Models to Support Communication

Overview

Project status: In progress

When seeking to redesign business processes to improve operational efficiency, revenue and/or compliance, or when seeking to build IT-based systems to support the execution of organisational processes, organisations use graphical documentations of their business processes – so called process models.

These models act as blueprints of organisational processes, and are a key tool for making decisions about where, how and why changes to the processes should be enacted to warrant improved operational efficiency, cost reductions or increased compliance.

http://www.janrecker.com/designing-process-models-to-support-communication/

Grantor

This project was sponsored by an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers.

Research leader
Organisational unit
Lead unit Science and Engineering Faculty
Start date
1st January 2010
End date
31st December 2012
Research area
Information Systems
Keywords
process model, jan recker, business processes

Contact

For further information contact Jan Recker.

 

Details

When seeking to redesign business processes to improve operational efficiency, revenue and/or compliance, or when seeking to build IT-based systems to support the execution of organisational processes, organisations use graphical documentations of their business processes – so called process models. These models act as blueprints of organisational processes, and are a key tool for making decisions about where, how and why changes to the processes should be enacted to warrant improved operational efficiency, cost reductions or increased compliance.

Any design/redesign decision made on the basis of process models is susceptible to the quality of these models. A process model that documents a business process in an incomplete, incorrect, cumbersome or otherwise deficient manner will not convey the information about the business domain to the decision maker such that a good decision can be facilitated. When creating process models, therefore, business analysts require principles that guide them in conceiving graphical representations of business processes that are understandable (useful, intuitive and accurate) to the stakeholders working with these models. This is important because any application of process models, for tasks such as organisational documentation, process redesign, workflow specification, software development or others, requires firstly that the involved stakeholders reach an effective and efficient common understanding about the business domain.

Therefore, this project aims to address the gap of support for developing understandable process models for organisational projects through developing:

  1. a body of knowledge about factors and consequences of process model understandability
  2. practical guidelines based on rigorous empirical insights to guide the creation of useful, intuitive and accurate process models.

Publications and output

The project publications below can be downloaded from QUT’s ePrint archive.

  • Mendling, J., Strembeck, M., Recker, J. (2012): Factors of Process Model Comprehension – Findings from a Series of Experiments. Decision Support Systems, Vol. 53, No.1, pp. 195-206.
  • Recker, J., Dreiling A. (2011): The Effects of Content Presentation Format and User Characteristics on Novice Developers Understanding of Process Models. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 65-84.