Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2 Challenges and Overall Methodology
The elaboration of business process models is usually performed according to a com-
mon practice. In general, interviews and workshops are conducted in order to ascer-
tain process information which is than interpreted by the designer by means of, e.g.
visual and textual illustrations of the process [4]. So far, the step between information
gathering and the presentation of the process models is handled like a black box. In
this step, the designer's task is to transform mainly textual descriptions into natural
language of process participants (humans) into a formal process model.
Our work concentrated on the analytical and designing step between data collection
and the visualization of the process model. Our main research question was how to
translate various process elements captured in To-do lists of individuals into a process
model in a structured and traceable way. The following challenges are:
•
How to extract process elements, like activities, tasks, roles, agents, time, data,
tools, and decisions, from To-do lists of single organizational members in a struc-
tured and traceable way?
•
How to handle different labeling of To-do's?
•
How to deal with different granularity of To-do's?
•
How to find reference points between the process views (connection, participation
and delegation)?
•
How to deal with special cases identified in To-do's?
Our approach included the following research instruments and techniques:
•
Personal face-to-face interviews to elicit To-do lists from process participants.
•
Qualitative content analysis to examine gathered To-do lists in order to identify key
process elements and terms, and to transform the To-do's into process view logs.
•
Mining of process view logs and the process model.
We propose a reusable semi-structured method that supports the designer to extract
process models from text material (e.g. interviews, workshop protocols) in a traceable
way. Traceability is supported by the use of the qualitative content analysis to code
and categorize the gathered textual information and thus to identify and tag essential
process elements. Results of the qualitative content analysis serve as the basis for the
development of the process model which can be created by modeling or by transform-
ing the data into process view logs.
Log Preparation
(Path A Step 3)
Mining
(Path A Step 4)
Elicitation
(Step 1)
Analysis
(Step 2)
Process
View
Logs
Process
Model
To - D o
Lists
Process
Elements
& Terms
Log
Preparation
Process
Mining
Collection
of To-Do's
Content
Analysis
Modeling (Path B Step 3)
Process
Modeling
Fig. 1.
Business Process Model Extraction (BPME) Method
