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The Impact of Structuredness on Error Probability of Process Models

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Information Systems and e-Business Technologies (UNISCON 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 5))

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Abstract

Recent research has shown that business process models from practice suffer from several quality problems. In particular, the correctness of control flow has been analyzed for industry-scale collections of process models revealing high error rates. In the past, structuredness has been discussed as a guideline to avoid errors, first in research on programming, and later also in business process modeling. In this paper we investigate the importance of structuredness for process model correctness from an empirical perspective. We introduce definitions of two metrics that capture the degree of (un)structuredness of a process model. Then, we use the Event-driven Process Chain models of the SAP Reference Model for validating the capability of these metrics to predict error probability. Our findings support the importance of structuredness as a design principle for achieving correctness in process models.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair of Applied Telematics, University of Leipzig, Klostergasse 3, 04109, Leipzig, Germany

    Ralf Laue

  2. BPM Cluster, Faculty of IT, Queensland University of Technology, Level 5, 126 Margaret Street, Brisbane, QLD, 4000, Australia

    Jan Mendling

Authors
  1. Ralf Laue
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  2. Jan Mendling
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Private Bag 756, Wellington, New Zealand

    Roland Kaschek

  2. Institute of Applied Informatics Research Group Application Engineering, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Universitätsstraße 65-67, 9020, Klagenfurt, Austria

    Christian Kop , Claudia Steinberger  & Günther Fliedl ,  & 

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Laue, R., Mendling, J. (2008). The Impact of Structuredness on Error Probability of Process Models. In: Kaschek, R., Kop, C., Steinberger, C., Fliedl, G. (eds) Information Systems and e-Business Technologies. UNISCON 2008. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 5. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78942-0_56

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78942-0_56

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-78941-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-78942-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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