Sometimes less is more: Are process modeling languages overly complex?

Michael Zur Muehlen, Jan Recker, Marta Indulska

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Modern business process modeling languages such as BPMN or EPC provide users with more constructs to represent real world situations than their predecessors such as IDEF or Petri Nets. But this apparent increase in expressiveness is accompanied by an increase in language complexity. In practice many organizations choose to only use a subset of the available modeling constructs. Using a well-established ontology-based theory of representation, we analyze how this voluntary restriction affects the expressiveness and complexity of the resulting modeling vocabulary. We compare our empirical findings with two notation sets of the popular language BPMN - the core and full set. Our findings indicate that users are willing to accept ambiguity among modeling constructs and that the full element set of BPMN adds little expressiveness at the expense of considerably decreased ontological clarity. The findings are a first step towards an understanding of an optimal cost-effectiveness ratio for process modeling languages- both in theory and practice.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2007 11th International IEEE EDOC Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshop, EDOCW'07
Pages197-204
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2007
Event2007 11th International IEEE EDOC Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshop, EDOCW'07 - Annapolis, MD, United States
Duration: 15 Oct 200716 Oct 2007

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop, EDOC
ISSN (Print)1541-7719

Conference

Conference2007 11th International IEEE EDOC Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshop, EDOCW'07
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAnnapolis, MD
Period15/10/0716/10/07

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Sometimes less is more: Are process modeling languages overly complex?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this