An Approach to Assessing the Quality of Business Process Models Expressed in BPMN

Introduction: The quality of business process models is important in the area of model-based software development. To the best knowledge of the author there is no working practical model for quality assessment of BPMN 2.0 Process Diagrams, which measures the actual models and automatically interprets the measured values. Objectives: Propose a metamodel for assessing the quality of BPMN 2.0 process models and a working solution – a model for quality assessment of process models in BPMN (called MAQ) and a tool that implements MAQ. Methods: The metamodel was built upon the information presented in ISO/IEC 25010 (2011) standard. The methodology of MAQ was driven by its essential elements. Quality characteristics were selected through a systematic literature review. Quality metrics were identified through a literature review restricted by questions that every relevant literature had to affirmatively answer. Quality metrics were implemented in the tool and quality criteria were proposed based on the interpretation of the results of measuring a repository of BPMN models. Finally, quality functions were proposed and the complete MAQ was implemented in the tool. Conclusions: MAQ was preliminary evaluated for usefulness through a survey-based experiment. The results showed that the model works in most cases and is needed in general.