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International Workshop on Business Process Modeling, Development and Support

International Conference on Exploring Modeling Methods for Systems Analysis and Design

BPMDS 2012, EMMSAD 2012: Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling pp 167–181Cite as

Expressiveness and Understandability Considerations of Hierarchy in Declarative Business Process Models

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 113))

Abstract

Hierarchy has widely been recognized as a viable approach to deal with the complexity of conceptual models. For instance, in declarative business process models, hierarchy is realized by sub-processes. While technical implementations of declarative sub-processes exist, their application, semantics, and the resulting impact on understandability are less understood yet—this research gap is addressed in this work. In particular, we discuss the semantics and the application of hierarchy and show how sub-processes enhance the expressiveness of declarative modeling languages. Then, we turn to the impact on the understandability of hierarchy on a declarative process model. To systematically assess this impact, we present a cognitive-psychology based framework that allows to assess the possible impact of hierarchy on the understandability of the process model.

This research is supported by Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P23699-N23 and the BIT fellowship program.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Austria

    Stefan Zugal, Jakob Pinggera & Barbara Weber

  2. University of Haifa, Israel

    Pnina Soffer

Authors
  1. Stefan Zugal
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  2. Pnina Soffer
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  3. Jakob Pinggera
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  4. Barbara Weber
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IbisSoft AB, Stockholm, Box 19567, SE-10432, Stockholm, Sweden

    Ilia Bider

  2. LogicBlox, Australia, and INTI International University, Malaysia

    Terry Halpin

  3. Department of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Sem Sælands Vei 7-9, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    John Krogstie

  4. University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Selmin Nurcan

  5. Erik Proper, PRC Henri Tudor, Luxembourg-Kirchberg, Luxembourg

    Erik Proper

  6. Aalen University, Aalen, Germany

    Rainer Schmidt

  7. University of Haifa, Carmel Mountain, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Pnina Soffer

  8. Department of Business Informatics, University of Gdansk, ul. Piaskowa 9, 81-864, Sopot, Poland

    Stanisław Wrycza

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Zugal, S., Soffer, P., Pinggera, J., Weber, B. (2012). Expressiveness and Understandability Considerations of Hierarchy in Declarative Business Process Models. In: Bider, I., et al. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. BPMDS EMMSAD 2012 2012. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 113. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31072-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31072-0_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31071-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31072-0

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