@inproceedings{25efe5d6643347e89a725d0842411854,
title = "Understanding business process models: the costs and benefits of structuredness",
abstract = "Previous research has put forward various metrics of business process models that are correlated with understandability. Two such metrics are size and degree of (block-)structuredness. What has not been sufficiently appreciated at this point is that these desirable properties may be at odds with one another. This paper presents the results of a two-pronged study aimed at exploring the trade-off between size and structuredness of process models. The first prong of the study is a comparative analysis of the complexity of a set of unstructured process models from industrial practice and of their corresponding structured versions. The second prong is an experiment wherein a cohort of students was exposed to semantically equivalent unstructured and structured process models. The key finding is that structuredness is not an absolute desideratum vis-a-vis for process model understandability. Instead, subtle trade-offs between structuredness and other model properties are at play.",
keywords = "process model complexity, process model understandability, structured process model",
author = "Marlon Dumas and {La Rosa}, Marcello and Jan Mendling and Raul M{\"a}esalu and Reijers, {Hajo A.} and Nataliia Semenenko",
year = "2012",
month = oct,
day = "29",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-642-31095-9_3",
language = "English",
isbn = "978-3-642-31094-2",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer",
pages = "31--46",
editor = "{Ralyt{\'e} }, J. and X. Franch and S. Brinkkemper and S. Wrycza",
booktitle = "Advanced Information Systems Engineering - 24th International Conference, CAiSE 2012, Proceedings",
address = "Germany",
note = "24th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2012 ; Conference date: 25-06-2012 Through 29-06-2012",
}