Applying a semiotic analysis to business process modeling

Abstract

Business Process Modelling (BPM) has been under considerable attention from business and information technology (IT) communities. It is an important asset in the quest to decrease the gap in communication between these two groups. Intending to contribute to decrease this gap, the dissertation presented here executes a quasi-experiment to verify whether the signs used as Business Process Modelling Notation’s (BPMN) graphical elements represent their semantics. Data was collected in the form of questionnaires with the 104 participants divided in two groups: participants who had previous knowledge of the notation (Phase 1) and those who hadn’t had contact with it (Phase 2). This way it was possible to avoid comparative bias between signs already in use by the notation and graphical elements suggested during Phase 1 of research’s design operation stage. This data went through a descriptive qualitative semiotic analysis, and hypothesis were tested with the Chi-square test. These analyses have shown that the signs used by BPMN are symbolic signs, thus a generalization constructed by humankind, while participants demonstrated preference for iconic signs, those that share a visual relation to the object they are representing. This demonstrates that semiotically analysing graphical elements, signs, that are going to be used in notations is essential for designing comprehensible business process diagrams.