Business process modeling: Vocabulary problem and requirements specification

Abstract

Process models are composed of graphical elements and words. However, words used to name elements during process design have potentially ambiguous meanings, which might result in quality problems. We believe that ontologies might serve as a means to address this problem. This paper discusses aspects related to words used to represent concepts in labels and why ontologies can improve this representation. Also, we analyze how the requirements specifications can influence the terms used during modeling. The discussion regarding ontologies is conceptual. We performed an experiment to analyze empirically the vocabulary problem in the context of process models. In the experiment the selection of terms represented with different levels of explicitness in requirements specifications is evaluated. Our findings suggest that the vocabulary problem occurs in process models. Also, different levels of explicitness affect the labels but are not sufficient to solve the vocabulary problem.