Slides of my presentation at BPMS2 workshop at BPM conference, 19 September 2016, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

1. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
21 September, 2016
FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Towards a structured process modeling method
Building the prescriptive modeling theory
Jan Claes, Irene Vanderfeesten, Frederik Gailly, Paul Grefen and Geert Poels

2. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
2/14
Problem description
process model
modeler
process

3. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
3/14
Problem description
Assumption: modelers create process models
Observation: models often contain errors
 Why?
 How to avoid them?
process model

4. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
4/14
Problem description
Assumption: modelers create process models
Observation: models often contain errors
 Why?
 How to avoid them? TYPE II
EXPLANATORY THEORY
TYPE V
THEORY FOR DESIGN AND ACTION

5. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
5/14
TYPE V
THEORY FOR DESIGN AND ACTION
TYPE IV
EP THEORY
TYPE I
DESCRIPTIVE THEORY
Shirley Gregor, The nature of theory in information systems, MIS Quarterly, Vol 30 (3), p. 611–642, 2006.
Types of theory in IS
TYPE II
EXPLANATORY THEORY
TYPE III
PREDICTIVE THEORY

6. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
6/14
The Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT)
Jan Claes, Irene Vanderfeesten, Frederik Gailly, Paul Grefen, Geert Poels, The Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT) - A
cognitive view on why and how modelers benefit from structuring the process of process modeling, Information Systems Frontiers,
Vol 17 (6), p. 1401-1425, 2015

7. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
7/14
The Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT)
Jan Claes, Irene Vanderfeesten, Frederik Gailly, Paul Grefen, Geert Poels, The Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT) - A
cognitive view on why and how modelers benefit from structuring the process of process modeling, Information Systems Frontiers,
Vol 17 (6), p. 1401-1425, 2015
data
collection
data
visualization
observations
impressions
theory
building

8. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
8/14
The Structured Process Modeling Theory (SPMT)
You make less mistakes if you..You make less mistakes if you..
.. serialize modeling
You make less mistakes if you..
.. serialize modeling
.. in a structured way
You make less mistakes if you..
.. serialize modeling
.. in a structured way
.. that fits with your cognitive profile
RESEARCH QUESTION. Given a certain cognitive profile..
.. how should one approach process modeling
in order to make less mistakes?

9. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
9/14
Cognitive profile
QUESTION. How do you read an
article in a news paper?
BITS AND PIECES
GLOBAL
LEARNER
FROM START TO END
SEQUENTIAL
LEARNER

10. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
10/14
Cognitive profile
QUESTION.
How do you tell a story?
FOCUS ON ESSENCE
FIELD
INDEPENDENT
WITH MANY DETAILS
FIELD
DEPENDENT

11. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
11/14
Cognitive profile
QUESTION. How do you cook
in your kitchen?
MESSY & CHAOTIC
LOW DESIRE
FOR STRUCTURE
CLEAN&STRUCTURED
HIGH DESIRE
FOR STRUCTURE

12. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
12/14
Literature review

13. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
13/14
Future research
Sneak peek..
 Experiment with about 150 master students
 Benchmark case – treatment – experiment case
 Treatment = interactive one-hour digital tutorial
 Treatment adoption was rather good!
 Beneficial effect on effort (±65%), time (±35%)
 Minimal effect on syntactic/semantic quality (±5%)
 Hypothesis: mistakes were corrected at the end?

14. Ghent university, Economics and Business Administration
jan.claes@ugent.be - www.janclaes.info
BPMS2@BPM 2016
14/14
Contact information
Jan Claes
jan.claes@ugent.be
http://www.janclaes.info
Twitter: @janclaesbelgium
Thanks for your attention!
Do you know expert modeling practitioners that
would be interested to participate in these
experiments in order to test external
validity of the results?