Extending Representational Analysis: BPMN User and Developer Perspectives

Over the last years, significant academic progress has been made in the area of representational analyses that use ontology as a benchmark for evaluations and comparisons of modeling techniques. This paper proposes a research model to guide representational analysis projects, which extends existing procedural models by incorporating different stakeholder perspectives. The paper demonstrates the application of this model for the purpose of analyzing the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), a recent and popular candidate for a new process modeling industry standard. A brief overview of the underlying research model characterizes the different steps in such a research project, while the BPMN analysis project emphasizes the importance of validating with users the propositions obtained via the analysis and communicating those to the technique developers in order to increase the impact of evaluation research to Information Systems practice.