A Tangible Modeling Interface for Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Processes are an important part of every organization’s value creation and therefore have to be executed in the most effective and efficient way. Process Analyses are a first step of Business Process Management to identify weak spots and potential improvements within processes. Even a rough documentation of processes in a graphical way, a so-called process model, raises process awareness and transparency for all involved parties. However, it is not as common as one might think that an organization has all processes documented in a complete and up-to-date form or documented at all. In reality even existing process models might not properly reflect the executed processes because the involved process actors are not part of the process survey. And even if they are involved, the complexity of most modeling notations and their respective tools can have a deterrent and overwhelming effect on the user. For executing process surveys we offer a tangible modeling tool that provides a modeling framework and enables even modeling novices to directly model their own part of the process, the S-BPM Buildbook. The method and the notation are based on Subject-oriented Business Process Management and its low complexity of only five symbols. The modeling process itself is completely detached from any kind of software to further lower the complexity and instruction time and to increase intuitiveness. We are aware that for process management steps, like a detailed analysis, documentation or implementation, some kind of software support is required. For this a recognition algorithm was developed that converts the tangible process model into a digital form as a generic XML file. The XML file can then be imported into the software tool in use. Two case studies were executed to examine the S-BPM Buildbook. The first case study evaluates the tool regarding its intuitiveness and usability to describe real-life processes. The second case study compares the time needed for instructions and the actual modeling process while using the S-BPM Buildbook, with a pen and paper approach. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.