Abstract
Choosing the adequate size of process activities (process granularity) is a problem during process design. Vanderfeesten et al. have proposed a heuristic based on a process granularity metric and postulated a hypothesis concerning error probability about its use. The heuristic prefers process designs with high cohesion and low coupling—a principle originating in software engineering.
In this paper, we present an experimentation system consisting of a small web-based workflow engine for empirically analyzing the error probability hypothesis. Furthermore, the results of a conducted experiment with 165 students using this experimentation system are reported. The experiment does not support the hypothesis. Instead, an alternative error probability model explaining the results is suggested.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Reijers, H.A., Vanderfeesten, I.T.P.: Cohesion and coupling metrics for workflow process design. In: Desel, J., Pernici, B., Weske, M. (eds.) BPM 2004. LNCS, vol. 3080, pp. 290–305. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Vanderfeesten, I., Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Evaluating workflow process designs using cohesion and coupling metrics. Computers in Industry 59(5), 420–437 (2008)
Melcher, J., Seese, D.: Process measurement: Insights from software measurement on measuring process complexity, quality and performance. Research report, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Institut AIFB (2008), http://digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/1000009225
Melcher, J., Seese, D.: Empirical analysis of a proposed process granularity heuristic (experimental details). Research report, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Institut AIFB (2009), http://digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/1000012016
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Reijers, H.A., Limam, S.: Product-driven workflow design. In: Shen, W., Lin, Z., Barthès, J.P., Kamel, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, pp. 397–402 (2001)
Reijers, H.A., Limam, S., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: Product-based workflow design. Journal of Management Information Systems 20(1), 229–262 (2003)
Reijers, H.A. (ed.): Design and Control of Workflow Processes : Business Process Management for the Service Industry. LNCS, vol. 2617. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Kress, M., Melcher, J., Seese, D.: Introducing executable product models for the service industry. In: Sprague, R.H. (ed.) Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2007), p. 46 (2007)
Panik, M.J.: Advanced Statistics from an Elementary Point of View. Elsevier Academic Press, Amsterdam (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Melcher, J., Seese, D. (2010). Empirical Analysis of a Proposed Process Granularity Heuristic. In: Rinderle-Ma, S., Sadiq, S., Leymann, F. (eds) Business Process Management Workshops. BPM 2009. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 43. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12186-9_48
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12186-9_48
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-12185-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-12186-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)