Subject-oriented plural method meets BPMN: a case study

Abstract

Subject-oriented approach to business process management focuses on the subjects and their interactions with the aim to capture more accurate process information with increased fidelity. In a common setting, business processes are modeled by process engineers or modeling experts who often create their processes in a top-down fashion. However, this may pose risks to the acceptance and adoption of these models in practice, particularly in knowledge-centric environments. The Plural method follows a subject-oriented approach and allows process participants, rather than a centralized group of process engineers, to model and maintain their processes in a decentralized way. It guides process participants to focus on the roles and their interactions in terms of message exchanges. This study investigates the use of BPMN 2.0 for the Plural method. With the aim to show the applicability of the notation for a subject-oriented approach and report on the benefits and limitations of the new edition of the Plural method in general, we performed a case study in an industry company. Guided by a coordinator, 11 process participants modeled four processes that they participate by following the Plural method. These models were also compared with the classical models developed prior to the application of the Plural method to better understand the influence. Analyses showed that the application of the Plural resulted in more complete process models. However, there are concerns regarding the understandability of these models when compared with their classical counterparts. It has been shown that the Plural method is a powerful tool for process discovery and modeling, but an improvement on its models is needed to obtain full value of the framework.