Using Glossaries to Enhance the Label Quality in Business Process Models

Conceptual models are mostly used for human to human communication. Besides several other aspects, that is, the chosen modelling notation or the model layout, the labelling has a strong influence on the understandability and, therefore, quality of a process model. Consequently, labels should be reused and aligned across different process models, whereas similar labels such as homonyms should be avoided. In order to support these goals, in this paper, we describe an approach that applies a glossary for process modelling. On the one hand, we show how such a glossary that considers structural as well as control flow aspects is generated from an existing collection of process models. The applicability of our glossary generation and the appropriateness of the chosen structural and behavioural aspects is evaluated with the SAP reference model. On the other hand, we introduce two prototypes, the label checker and the label suggester, that illustrate the application of the glossary in the course of modelling.