The influence of business process representation on performance of different task types

Abstract

The analysis of business processes is an integral part of risk assessment procedures and audit methodology. In both auditing research and process modeling research, there is an ongoing debate on which representation format might be best suited to support the analysis task. Most important in this context is the question whether business process models as visual representation might be superior to textual narratives. This paper investigates the affinity of different tasks with two process representational formats: textual narratives and visual diagrams (BPMN process models). Our findings demonstrate that the representation format has an impact on task performance and that the direction of this impact depends upon the affinity of the tasks type with the representation format. This implies that auditors are best provided with different process representations, depending on the task they are performing at that moment. These findings have important implications for research on auditing tasks, and more broadly also for software engineering and information systems research.