Quality of Business Process Models
In this chapter, we describe the concept of quality and give a high-level overview of the area of quality of models and other IT-artifacts. As illustrated there is quite a bit of overlap in the quality-notions used in different subfields of IT. We start w
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Quality of Business Process Models
Figure 2.1 illustrates main frameworks for discussing quality of IT-relevant artifacts described in this chapter. As we will see, there is quite a bit of overlap in the notions used in quite different fields. In Sect. 2.1, we start with a brief description of general system quality notions, exemplified with ISO9000 and ISO9126 and related material. We then discuss data quality (Sect. 2.1.1) and model quality for different types of models (requirements models in Sect. 2.1.2, data models in Sect. 2.1.3, and enterprise models in Sect. 2.1.4). Section 2.2 describes more generic, comprehensive frameworks, such as SEQUAL (Sect. 2.2.1) and the work of Nelson et al. (Sect. 2.2.2). Aspects of quality of business process are described in detail in Sect. 2.3.1, whereas in other parts of Sect. 2.3, we describe particular work on quality of business process model, such as GoM (Sect. 2.3.2) and 7PMG (Sect. 2.3.3). A specialization of the SEQUAL framework for discussing and assessing the quality of business process models taking all this into account is presented in Chap. 3.
2.1
Quality in Information Systems Development and Evolution
“Quality” is a difficult notion, and within the field of information systems, many approaches to quality have been proposed. Whereas some take a very subjective approach to the quality of models (e.g., (Rumbaugh et al. 1991) states: “A good model feels right and does not appear to have extraneous detail”), a standard approach to quality among engineers claims that a product has high quality if it is according to its specification. For example, the ISO 9000 quality standard was
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J. Krogstie, Quality in Business Process Modeling, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42512-2_2
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2 Quality of Business Process Models Quality frameworks ISO9126
System quality
Business process quality
Model quality
Data quality
ISO9000
Quality of process model
Quality of Req. model
Quality of BPMNstyle models
GoM
7PMG
Quality of enterprise models
SEQUAL
Quality of data model
Nelson et al
Fig. 2.1 Frameworks for discussing quality
originally developed according to this philosophy. ISO (2005) states that quality is the “degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements.” ISO-9000:2005 defines the requirement as the needs or expectations of a customer (and no longer as the necessarily explicit specifications of such needs). In ISO-9000, one defines a number of quality characteristics, with subcharacteristics, and metrics to be able to measure the different subcharacteristics. The following quality characteristics are listed for software products in ISO/IEC 9126: • Functionality: A set of attributes that bear on the existence of a set of functions and their specified properties. The functions are those that satisfy stated or implied needs. • Reliability: A set of attributes that bear on the capability of software to maintain its level of performance under stated conditions for a stated period of time. • Efficiency: A
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