Understanding process structure diagrams

摘要

This paper is an attempt to sketch a framework for understanding process structure diagrams, as used for business process analysis, being one phase of information system design. Proper understanding of any description method can only be achieved by specifying all the concepts (objects, predicates) and axioms of this method in a precise, formal way. On this basis, different description methods can be properly compared, translated, and thus their similarities and/or differences better understood. In our paper, this approach is applied to two description methods for process structuring, dataflow diagrams and activity graphs.