Process modeling quality : a framework and research agenda

Business process modelling is widely practiced within organizations to achieve a variety of purposes, such as documentation or workflow implementation. Only recently insights have begun to appear into the factors that influence the quality of a business process model, e.g., with respect to its error-proneness or understandability. Still lacking is an understanding of how such insights can be organized in a way to systematically describe the process modelling landscape. This paper suggests a framework that identifies quality factors and their effects. These factors relate to (i) the modelling process, (ii) the process model as an artefact, (iii) the application process, (iv) the modelling infrastructure and (v) project support. In the short run, this framework is thought to be helpful to inform researchers with an interest in this field about existing gaps of knowledge. Ultimately, the framework is to provide specific guidance for process modellers towards creating better models.