TEC-MAP: a taxonomy of evaluation criteria and its application to the multi-modelling of data and processes

Abstract

The domain of Enterprise Information Systems Engineering uses many different conceptual modelling languages and methods to specify the requirements of a system under development. The complexity of the systems under development may require addressing different perspectives with different models, such as the data and process perspectives. The modeller will thus have to choose the appropriate (set of) modelling languages according to their specific modelling goal. Given that the different aspects relate to a single system, ideally, the models that capture the different perspectives should be aligned and consistent to ensure their integration. Each candidate (set of) modelling languages comes with advantages and disadvantages. To make an informed choice in this matter, the modeller should select a number of criteria relevant to their problem domain and compare candidate modelling languages based on these criteria. A comprehensive evaluation framework for integrated modelling approaches, that considers more general aspects such as understandability, ease of use, model quality, etc. besides the ability to model the desired aspects, does not yet exist and is therefore the focus of this paper. In recent years, several combinations of modelling languages have been investigated. Amongst these combinations, data + process modelling has attracted a lot of interest, and, interestingly, evaluation frameworks for this combination have been proposed as well. Therefore, this paper will primarily focus on the integrated multi-modelling of data and processes, including the process-related viewpoints of users and authorisations. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: on a theoretical level, the paper provides an overview of existing evaluation frameworks in the literature, builds a more complete set of evaluation criteria and proposes a unified taxonomy for the classification of these evaluation criteria (TEC-MAP); on a practical level, the paper provides guidance and support to the modeller for selecting the appropriate evaluation criteria for their problem domain and presents three examples of the application of TEC-MAP.