Tying Process Model Quality to the Modeling Process: The Impact of Structuring, Movement, and Speed

TL;DR

This study explores how modeling behaviors such as structuring, movement frequency, and speed influence the understandability of process models, confirming that these behaviors significantly impact model quality.

Contribution

It empirically links specific modeling behaviors to process model quality, providing insights into how modeling style affects understandability.

Findings

Structured modeling style improves model clarity

Frequent object movement correlates with lower model quality

Higher modeling speed enhances model understandability

Abstract

In an investigation into the process of process modeling, we examined how modeling behavior relates to the quality of the process model that emerges from that. Specifically, we considered whether (i) a modeler's structured modeling style, (ii) the frequency of moving existing objects over the modeling canvas, and (iii) the overall modeling speed is in any way connected to the ease with which the resulting process model can be understood. In this paper, we describe the exploratory study to build these three conjectures, clarify the experimental set-up and infrastructure that was used to collect data, and explain the used metrics for the various concepts to test the conjectures empirically. We discuss various implications for research and practice from the conjectures, all of which were confirmed by the experiment.