Supporting the group creation of formal and informal graphics during business process modeling

Since the 1960s, research in systems analysis and design has been performed along two distinct tracts: the automation of software design, implementati on, and verification; and the elicitation of high level systems requirement s. Computer-aided software engineering, rapid prototyping, and more recentl y, visual programming have been the tools developed for the automation of s oftware development. Enterprise Analysis, in the form of process and inform ation modeling, has been a primary area of focus for requirements developme nt research. The application of Electronic Meeting Systems technology to En terprise Analysis is a promising technology for the timely elicitation of r equirements from groups of subject matter experts. However, Electronic Meet ing Systems do not explicitly support the development of graphical models-a requirement for many process modeling techniques. This paper describes a r esearch effort to provide support for the creation of graphical business mo dels by groups. Design decisions were made based on use of the tools by rea l-world groups, as well as a result of laboratory studies. One of the most interesting findings was that users found it particularly efficient to be a ble to enter model definitions through a textual interface and view compute r generated graphical views of the model. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. Al l rights reserved.