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A Study on the Usage of the BPMN Notation for Designing Process Collaboration, Choreography, and Conversation Models

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Abstract

Being widely accepted by industries and academia, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the de facto standard for business process modeling. However, the large number of notation elements it introduces makes its use quite complex. This work investigates the usage of the BPMN notation by analyzing 54,500 models harvested from seven online collections. The study considers different model types introduced by the standard, such as process collaboration, choreography, and conversation. The analyses focus on the syntactic dimension of BPMN, investigating the usage of BPMN elements and their combinations. Syntactic violations of the standard, and of good modeling practices, are also investigated as well as possible relations with BPMN elements and modeling tools. The results of the study can guide further activities of educators, practitioners, researchers, and standardization bodies.

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Notes

  1. BPMN 2.0.1 version is released as ISO/IEC 19510:2013 standard.

  2. https://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0, accessed 09 March 2023.

  3. More than 70 tools support BPMN (http://www.bpmn.org, accessed 09 March 2023).

  4. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10l6QBXVEs_jZ0vQ6o2oQlWyqesHSJqfL, accessed 9 Mar 2023.

  5. https://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/PDF, accessed 09 March 2023.

  6. The graphical notation for designing collaborations includes also message flows and a message icon that are not present in the notation for designing single processes.

  7. BPMN specification: https://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/2.0/PDF, accessed 09 March 2023.

  8. http://www.zurich.ibm.com/csc/bit, accessed 09 March 2023.

  9. https://github.com/camunda/bpmn-for-research, accessed 9 Mar 2023.

  10. http://www.ech-bpm.ch/de/process-library, accessed 09 March 2023.

  11. https://app.genmymodel.com/explore, accessed 09 March 2023.

  12. https://github.com/ViktorStefanko/BPMN_Crawler, accessed 09 March 2023.

  13. http://www.pros.unicam.it/reprository, accessed 09 March 2023.

  14. https://zenodo.org/record/3758705, accessed 09 March 2023.

  15. https://anonymous.4open.science/r/BPMN-Analytics-Repository/BPMNInspector, accessed 09 March 2023.

  16. https://anonymous.4open.science/r/BPMN-Analytics-Repository/CorrelationbetweenpairsofBPMNelements/BPMNPearsonCorrelation.ipynb, accessed 09 March 2023.

  17. https://wiki.xmldation.com, accessed 09 March 2023.

  18. https://anonymous.4open.science/r/BPMN-Analytics-Repository/BPMNValidator, accessed 09 March 2023.

  19. BEBoP tool: https://pros.unicam.it/bebop, accessed 09 March 2023.

  20. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10l6QBXVEs_jZ0vQ6o2oQlWyqesHSJqfL, accessed 09 March 2023.

  21. Correlation does not refer to BPMN elements that are necessarily connected but that are both present in a model.

  22. A model with over three hundred elements available on RePROSitory: https://pros.unicam.it:4200/guest/modelDetails/24_1552924500764_425164153152522, accessed 09 March 2023.

  23. https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/1024694, accessed 09 March 2023.

  24. The tags \({<extensionElements> <signavio:signavioMetaData metaKey="bgcolor" metaValue="\#ffffff"/> </extensionElements>}\), are used in Signavio to specify the background color of an element.

  25. https://www.drools.org, accessed 09 March 2023.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science and Technology, Department of Computer Science, University of Camerino, Via Madonna delle Carceri 7, 62032, Camerino, Italy

    Ivan Compagnucci, Flavio Corradini, Fabrizio Fornari & Barbara Re

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  1. Ivan Compagnucci
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  2. Flavio Corradini
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  3. Fabrizio Fornari
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  4. Barbara Re
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Correspondence to Fabrizio Fornari.

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Accepted after 3 revisions by Jan Mendling.

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Compagnucci, I., Corradini, F., Fornari, F. et al. A Study on the Usage of the BPMN Notation for Designing Process Collaboration, Choreography, and Conversation Models. Bus Inf Syst Eng 66, 43–66 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-023-00818-7

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