Top-Down Versus Operational-Only Business Process Modeling: An Experimental Evaluation of the Approach Leading to Higher Quality Representations

Business process modeling (BPMo) is of primary importance for assessing the current state of an organizations' practices to discover inefficiencies, redesign business processes, and build software solutions. High-quality representations best capture the true nature of the organization. This paper investigates the hypothesis of whether Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Business Process Diagrams (BPDs) created through a Top-Down Modeling Approach (TDMA) are of higher quality than those made from an operational perspective only. An experiment was conducted where novice modelers were to model a case based on a textual description. The test group used the TDMA by first modeling strategic, tactical aspects using a Business Use-Case Model (BUCM) before the operational realization with BPMN BPDs. In contrast, the control group did not use the BUCM. Representations were then evaluated for overall semantic and syntactic quality by extracting metrics from known literature. Both groups have similar syntactic quality at a granular level. Nevertheless, BPMN BPDs created using TDMA are more complete: required tasks in process execution are significantly more present. An increase in completeness can be beneficial in understanding complex organizations and facilitate modular software development. Alternatively, the diagrams were significantly more complex with more linearly independent paths within workflows than needed.