Requirements of Process Modeling Languages – Results from an Empirical Investigation

The majority of large and mid-sized companies are active in BusinessProcess Management (BPM). Documenting business processesis a key task of BPM, but the variety of process modelinglanguages makes it difficult to determine ‘the best’ one. Basically,the suitability of a process modeling language depends on thecompanies’ requirements. In this paper we adopt a bird’s eye viewon the issue: By an empirical investigation of 130 publiccompanies from all over the world and any sector, we gather thecommon requirements of process modeling languages and usethem to assess the most popular ones (i.e., BPMN, UML ActivityDiagrams, Event-driven Process Chains). Our results show thatthese languages are (1) equally expressive and (2) presumablyequally understandable concerning the common core notion of‘business process’; thus, they can be used interchangeably.However, the BPMN is the most complex process modelinglanguage