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Human-Centered Process Engineering Based on Content
Analysis and Process View Aggregation
Sonja Kabicher and Stefanie Rinderle-Ma
University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science
Vienna, Austria
{sonja.kabicher,stefanie.rinderle-ma}@univie.ac.at
Abstract.
In the context of business process modeling, the transformation of
process information elicited from process participants into process models often
remains a black box. This paper presents a method that supports the designer
to extract a formal business process model from natural language captured in
written form in a transparent and traceable way. To-do's of process participants
are examined by means of the qualitative content analysis in order to identify
essential process elements and to handle different levels of abstraction and la-
bels used for describing operations. Results of the analysis serve as the basis for
shaping process view logs which can be aggregated and merged into entire
process models. The conduction of the method is described in a case study.
Keywords:
Process design,
Process views, Qualitative Content Analysis.
1 Introduction
Business process modeling is a widely used and accepted technique for capturing,
understanding, and analyzing business processes in organizations. One main goal of
business process modeling is to visualize processes (1) how they are actually
performed (lived process), and (2) how they should be performed (intended process
model). To strengthen organizations' effectiveness (doing the right things) and effi-
ciency (doing things right), internal transparency and awareness of the organizations'
business processes is needed. From the workflow perspective, business process
modeling plays a key role in the phases design and diagnosis.
In the design phase, designers usually elicit information about the business process
e.g., during workshops and interviews with selected employees (e.g. employees as-
signed to particular roles, middle and top management) [1]. At this stage, the
processes are known and lived in the organization and often exist, at least process
fragments if at all, simply as mental models in the heads of the member staff. The
process designers face the challenge to transform implicit processes into explicit
process models. In the diagnosis phase, which takes place some time after the enact-
ment of the (new or improved) workflow system, the task of the designers is to find
out how performers of the process work with the new system, as well as where and
why they diverge from the intended process [2]. Common practices are, e.g., inter-
views, observations and process mining of event logs. Results are used to understand
