Investigating expressiveness and understandability of hierarchy in declarative business process models

• DOI: 10.1007/s10270-013-0356-2
• Publication Date: 2013-06-19T06:42:33Z
• Authors: Stefan Zugal; Pnina Soffer; Cornelia Haisjackl; Jakob Pinggera; Manfred Reichert; Barbara Weber
• Keywords: 330; Modelling and Simulation; Publications; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; Software

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 sub-processes exist, their application, semantics, and resulting impact on understandability are less understood yet—this research gap addressed this work. More specifically, we discuss semantics application show how enhance expressiveness modeling languages. Then, turn influence In particular, present cognitive-psychology-based framework that allows assess model. To empirically test proposed framework, combination quantitative qualitative methods followed. statistical tests provide numerical evidence, think-aloud protocols give insights into reasoning processes taking place when reading