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Requirements Comprehension Using BPMN: An Empirical Study

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Empirical Studies on the Development of Executable Business Processes

Abstract

The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) has become the de facto standard for process modeling. Currently, BPMN models can be (a) analyzed or simulated using specialized tools, (b) executed using business process management systems (BPMSs), or (c) used for requirements elicitation. Although there are many studies comparing BPMN to other modeling techniques for analyzing and executing processes, there are few showing the suitability of BPMN models as a source for requirements comprehension in projects where process-aware software is built without using BPMSs. This chapter presents a study aimed at comparing the comprehension of software requirements regarding a business process using either BPMN or traditional techniques, such as use cases. In our study, we analyzed responses of 120 undergraduate and graduate students regarding the requirements comprehension achieved when using only BPMN models, only use cases, or both. The results do not show significant impact of the artifacts on the comprehension level. However, when the understanding of the requirement involves sequence of activities, using the BPMN shows better results on the comprehension time.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Lili Johana Rozo, Hawer Forero, Óscar Agudelo, and Carlos Andrés López from Universidad de los Llanos, Helga Duarte from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Andrea Herrera and Óscar González from Universidad de los Andes, for their collaboration reviewing and commenting on the case studies used in our experiments and for their help collecting data in their courses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

    Olga Lucero Vega-Márquez, Jaime Chavarriaga, Mario Linares-Vásquez & Mario Sánchez

  2. Universidad de los Llanos, Villavicencio, Colombia

    Olga Lucero Vega-Márquez

Authors
  1. Olga Lucero Vega-Márquez
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  2. Jaime Chavarriaga
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  3. Mario Linares-Vásquez
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  4. Mario Sánchez
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Correspondence to Olga Lucero Vega-Márquez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fachgebiet Software Engineering, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Daniel Lübke

  2. Faculty of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, Switzerland

    Cesare Pautasso

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Vega-Márquez, O.L., Chavarriaga, J., Linares-Vásquez, M., Sánchez, M. (2019). Requirements Comprehension Using BPMN: An Empirical Study. In: Lübke, D., Pautasso, C. (eds) Empirical Studies on the Development of Executable Business Processes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17666-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17666-2_5

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