DESIGNING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS
FOR REQUIRED UNIFORMITY OF WORK
Kimmo Tarkkanen
Department of Information Technology, University of Turku, Joukahaisenkatu 3-5, Turku, Finland
Turku Centre for Computer Science TUCS, Joukahaisenkatu 3-5, Turku, Finland
Keywords: Business process modelling, modelling practice, work practice, uniformity.
Abstract: Business process and workflow models play important role in developing information system integration
and later training of its usage. New ways of working and information system usage practices are designed
with as-is and to-be process models, which are implemented into system characteristics. However, after the
IS implementation the work practices may become differentiated. Variety of work practices on same
business process can have unexpected and harmful social and economic consequences in IS-mediated work
environment. This paper employs grounded theory methodology and a case study to explore non-uniformity
of work in a Finnish retail business organization. By differentiating two types of non-uniform work tasks,
the paper shows how process models can be designed with less effort, yet maintaining the required amount
of uniformity by the organization and support for employees’ uniform actions. In addition to process model
designers, the findings help organizations struggling with IS use practices’ consistency to separate practices
that may emerge most harmful and practices that are not worth to alter.
1 INTRODUCTION
Common and ever-growing solutions of the last
decades have been ERP systems, which integrate
different business functions under shared application
and database. ERP systems embody expectations of
cost-effectiveness and improved cooperation
(Davenport, 1998), but invoke also hopes of
organizational integration and uniformity, as
systems are based on standardization and
centralization of both work processes and data.
Organizational formalisms, such as rules, guidelines,
and workflow models, are required for designing
these standardized business operations and
integrated information systems.
However, designs and descriptions of work
practices always tend to be more or less incomplete
(see eg. Suchman, 1987). Too vague model may not
act as a guide for a worker or give enough
operational support. On the other hand, very detailed
model may be too ruling for the worker in tasks that
do not need high conformance. Incompleteness of
process models may result also in computer
applications, which have functions and data fields
that are not needed or used in situated work.
Similarly, system functionality can be insufficient
and incomplete for work task accomplishment.
Either way, information system users are able to
work around with the system (Gasser, 1986) and
reconstruct the planned sequence of actions to match
their actual work process (Robinson, 1993). Without
these accommodating employees, computing and
work performance would degrade very rapidly at
significant organizational cost (Gasser, 1986). By
acting irrationally with computer, users actually
make systems more usable locally. Thus, deviations
from planned work actions are not always harmful,
but essential and inherent part of work activity.
Workarounds and unexpectedly acting workers
as well as those who act according to guidelines,
constitute together an occurrence of non-uniformity
- a group of people with minor or major differences
in their work practices. Such non-uniformity of
computer-mediated work practices has been found to
imply unexpected results (Koivisto, 2004, Mark and
Poltrock, 2003, Nurminen, Reijonen and
Vuorenheimo, 2003, Reijonen and Sjöros, 2001,
Prinz, Mark and Pankoke-Babatz, 1998). Significant
and harmful differences in information system use
emerged both between employees and between
communities (Koivisto, 2004). Non-uniformity
implied problems in individual work, in cooperation
21
Tarkkanen K. (2008).
DESIGNING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS FOR REQUIRED UNIFORMITY OF WORK.
In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 21-29
DOI: 10.5220/0001681500210029
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

within work communities, in organizational
coordination activities and in evaluation of state of
affairs (Koivisto, Aaltonen, Nurminen and Reijonen,
2004). Productivity of work and usefulness of
system data can weak considerably because of non-
uniform system usage (Reijonen and Sjöros, 2001).
Disadvantages of non-uniformity show that system
use and system development need to be directed
toward the goal of supporting system usage by group
members so that their actions are congruent with
each other (Prinz, Mark and Pankoke-Babatz, 1998).
Related attempts have evolved continuously
throughout the years of computerization era. A need
of flexible and adaptive systems, system models and
business processes introduce one realisation. For
example, process modelling theory searches
adequate formality, granularity, precision,
prescriptiveness and fitness for the models (Curtis,
Kellner and Over, 1992) with different languages
and approaches. This becomes complicated, because
computer-mediated work is human work, which is
always shaped by freedom, opportunism and
recreation capabilities of rationality and norms
(Garfinkel, 1967, Giddens, 1984). Non-uniform acts
are more a rule than an exception in computer-
mediated cooperative organization environment.
As-is process models represent these non-uniform
acts when properly and truthfully built while to-be
models typically seek to determine organizationally
uniform best practices. Either type of model cannot
erase the occurrences of non-uniformity, but this
paper asks if the models and modelling practice can
be adjusted to consider the non-uniformity of work.
This paper focuses first on identifying different
non-uniform work practices and their causes and
consequences within a case organisation. Before
introducing the case in section 3, the next section
discusses a research methodology and data
collection and analysis methods. Section 4 describes
and models the non-uniform work practices of the
case organisation. Then, on section 5, the paper
answers the question of how process models
represented these non-uniform work practices and
furthermore draws conclusions for the modelling
practice to adapt to non-uniform work activity.
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
AND RESEARCH SITE
The research was conducted as cross-sectional,
although long-standing case study. A case study is a
part of qualitative research tradition, advantage of
which is that, it can increase the validity of the
research as the methodology allows comparisons of
data collected with different methods (Silverman,
1993). The case study was approached with the
grounded theory methodology, in order to reject a
priori theorizing and to use an iterative process of
constant comparison between data incidents,
emerging concepts and conceptual categories
(Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
The research site was chosen in respect to
grounded theory methodology. The research site is
one of the leading retail trade companies in Finland
and Baltic countries. This paper represents the
empirical findings of one sub-unit of the
organization: the unit of agricultural retail trade,
named here as AGRO. Two years ago, the
organization introduced a new organization-wide
information system. The new ERP system was to
cover all of the organization’s business areas and
units. The system was aimed at managing both
processes and data in daily basis. The system was in
go-live phase when the research started. This suited
well with the research setting as the concerns were
targeted on daily and routine work practices and
organizational impacts of non-uniformity. As the
AGRO unit is part of a larger organization, it was
positioned to follow the rules of organizational
standardization and change. With the chosen
methodology, this research aims to find and describe
non-uniform work practices within AGRO’s
information systems use.
2.1 Data Collection
This study views information system use as an
inseparable part of work activity (Nurminen and
Eriksson, 1999). The scope of the study is a work in
its richness and entirety, which may or may not
involve information systems use as a part of the
performance. The implication is that, in order to
relate the study with IS discipline the data collection
must be extended into such organizational
formalisms that determine information system usage
in business processes. It includes information
system’s user instructions, quality systems, business
process models and other guidelines for organizing
and managing work on the shop floor level.
In the first place, this collected material guides
the study to concentrate on work processes, which in
theory, should involve information systems use
actions regardless of the fact that computers may not
be used in situated work actions. Secondly, it gives
an understanding of the organizationally
documented and intended way to accomplish the
work processes and their expected results. Thirdly,
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the material plays a critical role in determining
which practices should be noted as uniform or non-
uniform from the organizational point of view.
Next, the data collection emerged through
observations, recorded interviews and informal
discussions. The total number of recorded interviews
was 26, from which a work of 18 different clerks
was observed. Interviews and observations took
place in 7 different grocery stores of AGRO around
Finland. Certain interview themes were repeated,
which included basic questions of job description,
work duties and responsibilities, as well as
communication patterns related to work processes.
The most important was to document the current
work practice. Employees were allowed and
encouraged to accomplish their routine work tasks
during the interviews. Due to this, interviews turned
to observing situations and contextual inquiry took
then place.
2.2 Data Analysis
Data collection and analysis occurred iteratively.
After an interview, the recorded data was
transcribed. Transcribed data provided insights into
employee’s situated work practices, faced problems,
and opinions about work. Based on the transcribed
data, workflow models of every work process and
process instances discussed in the interviews was
modelled. As regards the work practices, the purpose
of modelling was to reveal a) differences between
employees’ situated work practices and b)
differences between situated and organizationally
documented work practices. Firstly, data analysis
focused on comparing the modelled practices and
revealing non-uniformity in them. Constant
comparison of employees’ work practices directed
subsequent data collection. After identifying a
difference between practices, data collection and
analysis focused on the causes and consequences of
those practices. Evaluations of positive and negative
impacts of non-uniform practices were based on the
experiences of the clerks and other stakeholders of
doing the work. The evaluation proceeded from
individual to group, unit and organizational levels.
That kind of gradual evaluation offers a way for the
analysis of problems encountered in the use situation
of information technology (Kortteinen, Nurminen,
Reijonen and Torvinen, 1996).
As regards the process modelling itself, the focus
of the analysis is to find out how the observed non-
uniform activities emerge from the diagram and
method point of view. After identifying and
modelling non-uniform practices, the occurrences of
different practices were captured into one model.
Modelling technique was adapted from Sharp and
McDermott (2001), because it resembled the one
noted and applied by AGRO themselves during the
ERP implementation. However, the focus of the
paper is on modelling method and practice instead of
symbols and grammars used in specific modelling
languages.
The applied technique has a simple modelling
notation including three main components: roles
(actors), responsibilities (tasks) and routes (flow).
The models were built in three abstraction levels
with Microsoft Visio 2003. First level diagram
shows only hand-off situations, meaning that each
time an actor is involved in the process it is shown
with a single rectangle (Sharp and McDermott, 2001
p. 163). This level focuses on a workflow from one
actor to another. Second level diagrams show
significant milestones and decisions while actor has
the work, but not any details of how the actor should
do the tasks (Sharp and McDermott, 2001 p. 200). In
general, second level diagrams represent tasks that
cannot be excluded in order to achieve intended
result of the process. Third level adds more details
and logic on diagrams and contains individual steps
leading up to a certain milestone (Sharp and
McDermott, 2001 p. 163). A minor modification to
used notation was made: the tasks that were
accomplished with the information system were
drawn with database symbol instead of rectangle.
That was to help a reader to notify the use phases of
the ERP system.
3 MODELLING THE CASE
There were no pre-restrictions of which specific
work processes were to be under the study. Data
collection and analysis led to an identification of
seemingly typical and frequently executed work
processes throughout the AGRO organization. Work
processes related to clerks’ purchasing and selling
activities became central and got the focus of the
study. A business process called ‘direct delivery’
was one of these processes as it combines both
selling and purchasing transactions and it flows
through the different levels of AGRO. Direct
delivery is a special kind of sales process where
AGRO acts as an agency, a retail dealer, between
their end customers and product suppliers. In direct
delivery process, the company delivers the products
from a supplier to an end customer without any
warehousing. Figure 1 represents organizationally
DESIGNING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS FOR REQUIRED UNIFORMITY OF WORK
23

planned and accepted work practices of the direct
delivery process on level 1.
Figure 1: Hand-off diagram of the direct delivery process.
The clerks’ work consist of five milestones
during the process accomplishment: creating sales
order, converting the order type, recording sales
order, recording purchase order and sending order to
the supplier.
The direct delivery process begins when an end
customer expresses a need for a not-at-the-stock
product of the AGRO company. First, a clerk at the
company fills a new sales order in the IS with the
specific product information (i.e. quantity, price etc.)
and the end customer information (i.e. name,
delivery address, terms of payment etc.). After
filling the sales order, the clerk converts it to a direct
delivery type of order by selecting a corresponding
system function. In practice, the conversion itself is
an automatic creation of a new purchase order based
on the information entered on the sales order. The
clerk records the sales order and prints it for a
backup copy of the customer transaction.
The clerk moves to created purchase order and
reviews the purchase information, like purchase
prices and special terms for payment. Usually the
purchase prices are available on an updated price list
of the supplier. The clerk may also agree special
purchase prices with the supplier. Reviewing is
finished when the purchase order is recorded and
printed. The actual purchase transaction to the
supplier takes place through a telephone call, fax, or
filling a form on supplier’s website.
Product transportation is managed either by the
supplier, by external transportation provider or by
the company’s own transportation resources. The
supplier supplies the products to the end customer
and sends the invoice to the company accountant.
The accountant matches the arrived invoice and the
purchase order on the IS using the reference note on
the invoice. Lastly, the accountant sends the sales
invoice to the customer. Figure 2 represents the
workflow of the direct delivery on more detailed
level.
Figure 2: Detailed model of the direct delivery process
(level 3 diagram).
4 NON-UNIFORMITY OF WORK
After data analysis had begun, it became apparent
that direct delivery process embedded also variety of
different work practices during the process
accomplishment. Ten non-uniform work practices in
this workflow were found among the clerks
interviewed (table 1).
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Table 1: Causes and consequences of non-uniform work practices.
Non-uniform work practice Causes Consequences
(1) The clerks do not charge for
billing.
The customers are not willing to
pay the billing charges.
Increased customer satisfaction (+). Billing
charges are lost (-).
(2) Customer-specific special terms
are kept on the paper notes.
Customer-specific discount
percents in the IS are followed
with every product transaction for
this customer.
Given discounts are considered more
carefully based on product type (+). Other
clerks cannot be aware of customer-specific
special terms (-).
(3) Freight rates of the sales orders
are entered separately for different
products.
Need for improved service and
avoidance of misunderstandings
by improved documenting.
Increased customer satisfaction. (+).
(4) Product discounts are subtracted
from the total costs and discount
field is set to zero.
Lack of skills in using discount
field.
Quicken work (+).
(5) Direct delivery type of sales
transaction is performed using the
separate purchasing and selling IS
functions successively.
A common way to perform the
task in the old system.
When using separate functions, the clerks
are more aware and can control more the
movements of the products from one place
to another (+). The clerk must perform
extra work tasks (-).
(6) Confirmations of the sales
orders are not printed.
Printed sales orders are not
needed by the clerks.
Economizing paper costs and minimizing
space requirement (+). Backup of the sales
transaction is not present when needed (-).
(7) Freight rates are entered on the
purchase orders.
Lack of use skills. Freight rate may be invoiced twice.
Additional financial expenses (-).
Decreased supplier satisfaction (-).
(8) Purchase prices are not revised
when fulfilling the purchase order.
The clerk wants to ease his job
and follow the prices of the
invoice.
The clerk does not know the
correct purchase price.
Work process is extended and delayed
(accountant sends the invoice to the clerk,
who enters the order into IS and returns the
number of the order to accountant) (-).
(9) Purchase price is set
unreasonable high.
The clerk wants to be contacted
by the accountant and have extra
information concerning the
purchase transaction.
Erroneous data in the purchase price field
can result financial expenses, if transferred
into real payment transactions (-).
The clerk can produce improved results of
the purchasing process with the extra
information (+).
(10) Purchase orders are entered
into the IS after making the order
by telephone, or after the product is
delivered, or after the purchasing
invoice has arrived.
Employee is busy with other work
and there is a hurry to place the
order to the supplier.
It is easier to fill the purchase
order after the purchase invoice
has arrived, because the clerk can
follow the information on the
invoice (e.g. can set the purchase
prices correctly).
Accountant cannot find the purchase order
from the IS and cannot match the order and
the arrived invoice (-).
Work process is extended and delayed
(accountant sends the invoice to the clerk,
who enters the order into IS and returns the
number of the order to the accountant) (-).
DESIGNING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS FOR REQUIRED UNIFORMITY OF WORK
25

Creating a new sales order embedded four non-
uniform work practices. Since the task is an
interactive situation with customer, the clerk needs
to listen customer demands and follow their
preferences. For example, some of the regular
customers with a long time business relationship
were not delighted if they had to pay billing charges
when ordering products. Hence, sometimes,
depending on customer, the clerk did not enter the
billing charges on the sales order to maintain a good
customer relationship (practice 1). In many cases a
customer makes a short telephone call to order
products. During the call, the clerk must make a
reminder note of the order details on paper book.
The clerks’ make order notes on book also when
they are busy with other work, are not present at the
work place or faced to a computer. Eventually a case
was that the new sales orders were entered
periodically into ERP. Some of the clerks kept also
the customer-specific special terms on the paper
notes instead of the ERP database, even if system
fields were available (practice 2). After specifying a
customer, the clerks continued entering products,
freight rates and price discounts with varied
practices. For example, some of the clerks entered
the freight rates separately for every product instead
of using summarized freight rate (practice 3), which
was intended action. Very alike, but converse action
occurred with product discounts. Instead of using the
discount field of every product, some calculated
total discount and subtracted it from the total costs
and left discount fields empty (practice 4).
It was also possible to perform direct delivery
type of process without using the corresponding
function of IS at all (practice 5). Practically the clerk
used two separate selling and purchasing functions
instead of automated conversion to direct delivery.
Another exclusion of work task happened with sales
order printing task. Some clerks regarded printing
the sales order as useless, more of waste of paper,
than an important backup copy of the transaction
(practice 6). After recording the sales order,
purchase order fulfilling and sending took place with
three more non-uniform practices. First, freight rates
were entered on the purchase order, even if the
system generated the rates automatically from the
filled sales order (practice 7). Another non-uniform
practice was related to price verification when
fulfilling the purchase order. Occasionally the clerks
did not check if the system recommended price was
correct (practice 8). Thus, if the price was not same
on the supplier’s invoice and the purchase order, the
accountant had to contact the clerk for
troubleshooting. Interestingly, some clerks wanted to
be contacted by the accountant and on purpose set
the price incorrectly (practice 9). The most common
and frequently emerging non-uniform practice was
to place the purchase order before filling the sales
order (practice 10). That turned the workflow upside
down and affected also on other later practices of
clerks and accountants.
5 MODELLING FOR REQUIRED
UNIFORMITY OF WORK
The findings of the previous section show that the
models of direct delivery process could not describe
the non-uniform work practices in an appropriate
level of detail. Even if the model of the figure 2 is
detail and operational, it has only slight
correspondence with the situated actions. At best,
the model captures one non-uniform work practice
into one modelled task. However, this modelled task
embeds other work practices as well and therefore is
not at the level of detail of non-uniformity. The
AGRO case findings support the notion by Ellis
(1999) that “[e]xperience has shown that within a
single process, there is a need to model different
parts in different amount of detail, and different
levels of operationality.”
According to Model Domain Space (Nutt, 1996)
and CDO-model (Ellis, 1999), the necessary level of
detail of the model is dependent on the amount of
conformance and operational support required by the
organization. The course of relation between these
dimensions are not totally orthogonal, but rather
vague (Ellis, 1999). For example, more details in a
workflow model do not necessarily provide more
operational support for the worker, nor guarantee
any conformance of the situated work actions. The
AGRO models show that fixing the levels of detail
of the models before determining the needed
conformance and nature of operational support does
not support uniformity of work or designing for it.
Furthermore, the level of detail is, first of all,
defined by the model designer and the modelling
technique. Thus, level of detail is somewhat
artificially created variable for the model, where as
the level of conformance is based on the actual
requirements of a work process and is set by the
work organization.
For the organization, determining the necessary
level of conformance for the work process can have
a basis on the evaluation of the effects of non-
uniformity. In other words, there is no need for high
conformance on a task if less conformity does not
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
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mean harmful consequences for the business and
parties involved in the process. Using this evaluation
criterion to the AGRO case results, we can
determine the necessary level of conformance for the
direct delivery process. Non-uniform practices that
have only positive effects, like practices 3 and 4 (see
table 1), indicate that there is no need for more
uniformity on these tasks. As opposite, the practices
that have only negative impacts (7, 8 and 10) imply
a greater need for conformance. However, the other
practices introduce both positive (+) and negative (-)
effects and more holistic evaluation of consequences
is needed. Reviewing the intents of the actors and
the criticality of possible effects on different
organizational levels, we find that practices 7-10
introduce more harmful effects than practices 1-6.
For example, not charging the customer for billing
(practice 1), was well-intentioned and had positive
influence for customer loyalty where as the lost of
incomes of this practice can be regarded as
insignificant consequence on the large scale. The
practices 1-6 and 7-10 have also another
classification; the latter practices are hand-off
situations whereas first six practices are not. Sharp
and McDermott (2001) define hand-off tasks as
those passing the control of work to another actor
(outgoing flow). Opposite to hand-off tasks, on first
six non-uniform practices, the actors have the work
item and operate it themselves through these phases.
Thus, the AGRO case findings suggest that other
than hand-off tasks introduce variance that is
positive for current process instance whereas hand-
off tasks introduce variance that effects negatively
for the same process instance.
Organizations implementing a new or analysing
current information system face a great need to
minimize the work effort of modelling. The
modelling technique used in the AGRO case has a
simple notation, which makes it rather attractive
option for time-, cost- and resource-limited IS
customer organizations. According to Mackulak,
Lawrence and Colvin (1998), the cost of modelling
is minimized when only necessary amount of details
are embedded into models. The AGRO case findings
suggest that it would be applicable to avoid details
with the tasks that are not hand-off tasks. In other
words, three level abstractions are not used with
tasks that introduced positive variance. The benefit
is that instead of focusing on every step on the
process, the focus is targeted only to minor parts of
the whole process. Aggregated modelling of these
“on-hand” tasks will sustain an adequate level of
conformity, because those do not introduce negative
variance. From the modelling point of view, what
we can do with greater conformance need of
practices 7-10, is try to add more details and
operational nature to the model and hope that it is
also realized in actual work practice. More accurate
model is created either by adding more details on
naming (see Ellis, 1999) or by continuing the
focusing on smaller subtasks. In figure 3, the direct
delivery process of AGRO is re-modelled more
effectively concerning the required amount of
uniformity.
Figure 3: Direct delivery process with necessary level of
details for uniformity in situated work.
As the figure 3 shows, the model mixes different
abstraction levels (between practices 1-6 and others).
In practice, adding details (i.e. abstraction levels)
only to hand-off tasks can be tricky. The focusing
typically entails that not all steps are hand-off steps
anymore. In the AGRO case, after building the
hand-off diagram and identifying two hand-off tasks
record the purchase order and pass the purchase
order to the supplier, the former enlarges on level 3
diagram into three different steps (figure 2) where
only two steps introduce hand-off. One must then
define what steps of this hand-off task to model with
DESIGNING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS FOR REQUIRED UNIFORMITY OF WORK
27

more details, if not all. Without any exact rules and
limitations the focusing may become endless and
certainly not a cost-effective option. In the AGRO
case, the focusing was easy as the non-uniform
practices were identified beforehand. The modelling
procedure applied in re-modelling the direct delivery
process of AGRO is represented on table 2. This
procedure led to a cost-effective process modelling
for required amount and support of uniform work
actions.
Table 2: Process modelling procedure for required
uniformity of work.
Process Modelling Procedure
for Required Uniformity
PHASE 1: Model the hand-off diagram
PHASE 2: Identify the work tasks that lead
into new hand-off situation
PHASE 3: Identify individual steps of every
hand-off task
PHASE 4: Model step(s) found in phase 3 with
more details into the hand-off
diagram
The modelling effort begins with the most
abstract level, in this case, with modelling the hand-
off diagram. At second phase, the work tasks that
lead to a hand-off are identified. Third phase is to
identify individual steps within the hand-off task and
expand the created first level model with these
individual steps. The new AGRO model, created
with this procedure, remains understandable in the
context it is used; the modelled steps are comparable
to units in reality and it is still a representation of a
real world.
6 FUTURE RESEARCH
Non-uniformity of work practices touches
information systems research fields from systems
design to CSCW issues. It is especially interesting
research area in the field of organizational
implementation and process modelling, which affect
later information system use and work practices
turning non-uniform or not. Non-uniformity of work
can have either serious or almost innovative impact
on different levels of organization. Different
business units may also vary in their processes and
data after the enterprise systems-enabled integration
(Volkoff, Strong and Elmes, 2005). The case of
AGRO gave an opportunity to analyse this variation
from process models point of view in one
organizational unit and draw conclusions for
modelling method improvements. First, the findings
are useful for the AGRO in their future modelling
and work standardizing practices within and
between the units. How this developed procedure
would be applicable for harmful non-uniformities in
another organizations’ processes calls for further
research.
Raising questions are also those that investigate
the realisation of benefits of using the procedure in
terms of time and work effort needed. By gathering
data from many organizations and business
processes, it would be possible to define further
these gaps between process models and process
instances and develop efficient methods to
determine necessary level of details and
conformance for the process models while the
organisation is reaching for more standardized
practices. This would require systematic evaluation
of impacts of non-uniform IS practices based on for
example practical business process evaluation
methods. A recently introduced ProM framework
provides a promising technically-oriented and real-
time approach to identify and measure impact of
non-uniform acts based on information system event
logs (Rozinat and van der Aalst 2005, Verbeek, van
Dongen, Mendling and van der Aalst, 2006).
However, in order to reveal tacit and intangible
causes and consequences of non-uniformity we may
still need to exploit methods of qualitative field
research. Business process models and modelling
itself, as highly subjective and designer-dependent
matters, set a challenge for research validity.
Therefore, also validation of findings with different
modelling techniques and by different process
modellers would be needed in the future.
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