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Selecting the “Right” Notation for Business Process Modeling: Experiences from an Industrial Case

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Perspectives in Business Informatics Research (BIR 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 229))

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Abstract

During the last 20 years, much research work has been spent on determining which notation is the “best” one for business process modelling in industrial practice. However, most of this work has been performed outside the actual application context, i.e. often in labs, academic environments or experimental settings. We aim at contributing to the field by presenting and discussing a case of selecting the notation for a complete organization. More concrete, the paper covers the process of making a decision which notation is the most appropriate one for a medium-sized organization from utility industries. The steps taken in this decision making process include the analysis of requirements originating from regulation in the domain, a survey among the future users of the notation, and the analysis and evaluation of organizational requirements. The main contributions of this paper are (1) a real-world example illustrating issues and challenges when deciding on the “right” process modeling notation including influences from the application domain, (2) a survey comparing the understandability of notations from the end user perspective and (3) lessons learned from the decision making process and the survey.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly financed by the German State of Mecklenburg – Western Pomerania with funds of the European Fund for Regional Development in the research project ECLORA. Furthermore, it was partially financially supported by Government of Russian Federation, Grant 074-U01.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany

    Kurt Sandkuhl

  2. Stadtwerke Rostock AG, Rostock, Germany

    Jörn Wiebring

  3. ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Kurt Sandkuhl

Authors
  1. Jörn Wiebring
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  2. Kurt Sandkuhl
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Correspondence to Kurt Sandkuhl .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Raimundas Matulevičius

  2. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

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Wiebring, J., Sandkuhl, K. (2015). Selecting the “Right” Notation for Business Process Modeling: Experiences from an Industrial Case. In: Matulevičius, R., Dumas, M. (eds) Perspectives in Business Informatics Research. BIR 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 229. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21915-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21915-8_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21914-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21915-8

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