On the Importance of Flow Direction in Business Process Models

Kathrin Figl, Mark Strembeck

2014

Abstract

In today’s modeling practice we can observe a convention to model business processes from left-to-right or from top-to-bottom. Even though the choice of flow direction changes the visual appearance of a process model significantly, this convention is barely discussed by standard documents and modeling guidelines. In addition, most recommendations related to the flow direction are neither based on scientific claims nor on empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness in terms of readability. In this position paper, we discuss the importance of process model flow direction from a scientific viewpoint. In particular, we give a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives which offer explanations why a left-to-right flow direction for process models should be superior to other directions.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Figl K. and Strembeck M. (2014). On the Importance of Flow Direction in Business Process Models . In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2014) ISBN 978-989-758-036-9, pages 132-136. DOI: 10.5220/0005090401320136


in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft-ea14,
author={Kathrin Figl and Mark Strembeck},
title={On the Importance of Flow Direction in Business Process Models},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2014)},
year={2014},
pages={132-136},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005090401320136},
isbn={978-989-758-036-9},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications - Volume 1: ICSOFT-EA, (ICSOFT 2014)
TI - On the Importance of Flow Direction in Business Process Models
SN - 978-989-758-036-9
AU - Figl K.
AU - Strembeck M.
PY - 2014
SP - 132
EP - 136
DO - 10.5220/0005090401320136