Is BPMN really first choice in joint architecture development? an empirical study on the usability of BPMN and UML activity diagrams for business users

  • Authors:

  • Dominik Birkmeier;Sven Overhage

  • Affiliations:

  • Component and Service Engineering Group, Business Informatics and Systems Engineering Chair, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany;Component and Service Engineering Group, Business Informatics and Systems Engineering Chair, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • QoSA'10 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Quality of Software Architectures: research into Practice - Reality and Gaps
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Joint architecture development plays a key role in service-oriented computing as it facilitates the coordination of business processes with the software architectures of applications. To better support business users in the communication of business process semantics, the Object Management Group advises to adopt the newly standardized Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) instead of the UML Activity Diagram. A main reason for this advice is that BPMN is presumed to be more usable for business users than the technically-oriented Activity Diagram. Adopting a new process modeling language, however, is a significant expense factor for businesses and consolidated findings on whether such presumptions hold true in practice are missing. In this paper, we present results from an empirical study, in which we examined the application of BPMN and the UML Activity Diagram by business users during a model creation task. Results indicate that the UML Activity Diagram is at least as usable as BPMN since neither user effectiveness, efficiency, nor satisfaction differ significantly.