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from the model. When asked for feedback, additional effort is needed to explain
the models meaning and to resolve misunderstandings. This paper addresses
this problem by introducing an approach to couple domain experts with process
models using tangible objects.
We have developed the tangible business process modeling (t.BPM) toolkit.
It is a transcribable set of plastic tiles that can be used to model processes on
a table. It reflects the iconography of the Business Process Model and Notation
(BPMN), see Fig. 1. It consists of shapes for activities, gateways, events and
data objects. Control flow and roles are drawn on the table. In our opinion, it
enables domain experts to actively shape their processes and allows the method
expert to act as a facilitator rather than a translator. For the scope of our work,
we consider domain experts to be the stakeholders of the project, i.e. clerks
or managers. The method expert is either an external process consultant or
an internal process expert who is trained in methods and notations to frame
knowledge in process-oriented projects.
Fig. 1.
Same process: modeled with t.BPM (left) and in a software modeling tool
(right)
This paper reports on a controlled experiment in which we analyze one-to-one
interview situations with respect of the effectiveness of process elicitation with
or without t.BPM. It is a condensed version of a extensive technical report [15]
on this experiment. Two hypotheses were cut out and discussed in detail in a
separate publication [8]. Three more hypotheses were dropped for this paper as
they did not hold and don't add value to the discussion here.
We review related research on process modeling in the next section. After-
wards, we explain the hypotheses, the experiment setup, the variables and the
analysis procedures used in Section 3. The experiment execution is discussed in
Section 4 and the data analysis is reported in Section 5. The results from the
analysis are interpreted in Section 6 and the paper is concluded in Section 7.
2 Related Work
Empirical research on process modeling is typically focussed on the models that
are produced with software tools and can be automatically analyzed, e.g. [5].
Only some research is turned towards the modelers in front of the screen and
the process of model creation.
