Hybrid process modelling languages

Abstract

Within a business context, it is essential to communicate a process effectively and efficiently. A process can be visualised by a process model that represents the relations between the activities, executed by non-human or human resources. The literature provides a multitude of process modelling languages that can be divided into two categories (i.e. procedural and declarative languages). These polar categories either focus on the structured relations or unstructured relations within a process. Although the use of an individual modelling language is not sufficient to provide a comprehensible process model. To overcome this limitation, various hybrid languages are proposed. Most of the hybrid languages only focus on the control perspective of a process and neglect the resource-related relations. Within this context, the paper outlines the development of a resource-aware hybrid process modelling language. The research follows the principles of the Design Science approach to build and evaluate the artefact that solves a general problem. An empirical study is conducted to evaluate the artefact. The designed artefact, BPMND+R, is based on an existing hybrid modelling language which is extended to support the resource perspective of a process. BPMND+R is evaluated on its comprehensibility compared to BPMN and Declare, in a theoretical and empirical study.