Software Engineering Inspired Cost Estimation for Process Modelling
Up to this point business process management projects
in general and business process modelling projects in particular
could not rely on a practical and scientifically validated method to
estimate cost and effort. Especially the model development phase
is not covered by a cost estimation method or model. Further
phases of business process modelling starting with implementation
are covered by initial solutions which are discussed in the literature.
This article proposes a method of filling this gap by deriving a cost
estimation method from available methods in similar domains namely
software development or software engineering. Software development
is regarded as closely similar to process modelling as we show. After
the proposition of this method different ideas for further analysis and
validation of the method are proposed. We derive this method from
COCOMO II and Function Point which are established methods of
effort estimation in the domain of software development. For this
we lay out similarities of the software development process and the
process of process modelling which is a phase of the Business Process
Management life-cycle.
[1] J. Freund and B. Rücker, Praxishandbuch BPMN 2.0, 3rd ed. München:
Hanser, 2012.
[2] J. Horan, Ed., Schlüsselrolle CIO, ser. CIO Studienreihe. IBM Institute
for Business Value, 2011.
[3] S. Müller, “Studienarbeit 2451- situationsanalyse: Bpm in deutschland,”
Master’s thesis, Universität Stuttgart, 2014.
[4] P. Posluschny, Prozessmanagement. Konstanz: UVK
Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2012.
[5] V. Gruhn and R. Laue, “Komplexitätsmetriken für
geschäftsprozessmodelle,” in Proceedings of the Modellierung 2006,
H. C. e. a. Mayr, Ed. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2006, pp.
289–292.
[6] K. Kluza and G. J. Nalepa, “Proposal of square metrics for
measuring business process model complexity,” in Computer Science
and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2012 Federated Conference on.
IEEE, 2012, pp. 919–922.
[7] F. Leymann, “Managing business processes via workflow technology,”
in Tutorial at VLDB Conference, Seattle, September 2011.
[8] B. Mutschler and M. Reichert, Understanding the Costs of Business
Process Management Technology. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013,
pp. 157–194.
[9] A. Gadatsch, Grundkurs Geschäftsprozess-Management, 7th ed.
Springer Vieweg, 2013.
[10] H. J. Schmelzer and W. Sesselmann, Geschäftsprozessmanagement in
der Praxis, 6th ed. München: Hanser, 2008.
[11] M. Weske, Business Process Management - Concepts, Languages,
Architectures, 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.
[12] T. Allweyer, BPMS: Einführung in Business Process
Management-Systeme. BoD–Books on Demand, 2014.
[13] M. Baklizky, M. Fantinato, L. H. Thom, V. Sun, E. P. V. Prado,
and P. Hung, “Business process points - a proposal to measure
bpm projects,” in Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on
Information Systems. ECIS 2013 Completed Research. Paper 2., 2013.
(Online). Available: http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2013_cr/2
[14] B. Marin and J. Quinteros, “A cosmic measurment procedure for bpmn
diagrams,” The 26th International Conference on Software Engineering
and Knowledge Engineering, 2014.
[15] S. Mishra and C. Kumar, “Estimating development size and effort of
business process service-oriented architecture applications,” in Systems
and Informatics (ICSAI), 2014 2nd International Conference on. IEEE,
2014, pp. 1006–1011.
[16] E. Rolon, L. Sanchez, F. Garcia, F. Ruiz, M. Piattini, D. Caivano, and
G. Visaggio, “Prediction models for bpmn usability and maintainability,”
in Commerce and Enterprise Computing, 2009. CEC’09. IEEE
Conference on. IEEE, 2009, pp. 383–390.
[17] V. Nissen, M. Petsch, F. Termer, and M. Möhring, “A cost calculation
model for determining the cost of business process modelling projects,”
Ilmenauer Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsinformatik, vol. 2013-01, April 2013.
[18] D. Çulha and A. Do˘gru, “Towards an agile methodology for business
process development,” in S-BPM ONE-Scientific Research. Springer,
2014, pp. 133–142.
[19] C. Thiemich and F. Puhlmann, An Agile BPM Project Methodology.
Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013, vol. 8094, pp. 291–306. (Online).
Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40176-3_25
[20] T. Allweyer, “Das business process maturity model (bpmm) der omg,”
November 2007. (Online). Available: http://www.kurze-prozesse.de/
2007/11/08/das-business-process-maturity-model-bpmm-der-omg/
[21] D. M. Fisher, “The business process maturity model. a practical approach
for identifying opportunities for optimization,” Business Process Trends,
vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 11–15, 2004.
[22] J. Cardoso, “Evaluating the process control-flow complexity measure,” in
Web Services, 2005. ICWS 2005. Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International
Conference on. IEEE, 2005.
[23] S. Jakoubi and S. Tjoa, “A reference model for risk-aware business
process management,” in Risks and Security of Internet and Systems
(CRiSIS), 2009 Fourth International Conference on. IEEE, 2009, pp.
82–89.
[24] H. Lhannaoui, M. I. Kabbaj, and Z. Bakkoury, “Towards an approach to
improve business process models using risk management techniques,”
in Intelligent Systems: Theories and Applications (SITA), 2013 8th
International Conference on. IEEE, 2013, pp. 1–8.
[25] R. Meziani and I. Saleh, “Towards a collaborative business process
management methodology,” in Multimedia Computing and Systems
(ICMCS), 2011 International Conference on. IEEE, 2011, pp. 1–6.
[26] W. M. Van Der Aalst, A. H. Ter Hofstede, and M. Weske, “Business
process management: A survey,” in Business Process Management.
Springer, 2003, pp. 1019–1019.
[27] A. Komus, BPM Best Practice - Wie führende Unternehmen ihre
Geschäftsprozesse managen, 2011th ed. Berlin Heidelberg New York:
Springer-Verlag, 2011.
[28] J. Mendling, H. A. Reijers, and W. M. van der Aalst, “Seven process
modeling guidelines (7pmg),” Information and Software Technology,
vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 127–136, 2010.
[29] M. Hinsch, Die neue ISO 9001:2015 - Status, Neuerungen und
Perspektiven -, 1st ed. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer-Verlag,
2014.
[30] T. van Lessen, D. Lübke, and J. Nitzsche, Geschäftsprozesse
automatisieren mit BPEL. Heidelberg: dpunkt Verlag, 2011. (Online).
Available: http://taval.de/publications/BOOK-2011-01
[31] C. Jones, Estimating Software Costs : Bringing Realism to Estimating
- Bringing Realism to Estimating, 2nd ed. Madison: McGraw Hill
Professional, 2007.
[32] T. Noth and M. Kretzschmar, Aufwandschätzung von DV-Projekten:
Darstellung u. Praxisvergleich d. wichtigsten Verfahren, 2nd ed. Berlin:
Springer, 1986.
[33] G. Karner, “Resource estimation for objectory projects,” Objective
Systems SF AB, vol. 17, 1993.
[34] S. Frohnhoff, “Use case points 3.0 : Implementierung einer use case
bezogenen schätzmethode für das software-engineering betrieblicher
informationssysteme,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Paderborn, 2009.
[35] B. W. Boehm, Software Engineering Economics. New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1981.
[36] B. Boehm and E. Harrowitz, Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II.
London: Prentice Hall, 2000.
[37] OMG, “Bpmn 2.0 specification.” (Online). Available: http://www.omg.
org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
[38] B. W. Boehm, “Cocomo ii model definition manual,” 2000.
[Online]. Available: http://sunset.usc.edu/research/COCOMOII/Docs/
modelman.pdf
[39] V. Khatibi, D. N. A. Jawawi, S. Z. M. Hashim, and E. Khatibi,
“Neural networks for accurate estimation of software metrics,” IJACT:
International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, vol. 3,
no. 10, pp. 54 – 66, 2011.
[40] C. Symons, “Function point analysis: difficulties and improvements,”
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 2–11,
Jan 1988.
[41] H. W. Wieczorrek and P. Mertens, Eds., Aufwandsschätzung in
IT-Projekten. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2007, pp. 205–223.
(Online). Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-48472-1_8
[42] IBM, Die Function Point Methode: eine Schätzmethode für
IS-Anwendungs-Projekte, ser. IBM Form. IBM Deutschland GmbH, 1985. (Online). Available: https://books.google.de/books?id=
dxzWPgAACAAJ
[43] V. Khatibi and D. N. A. Jawawi, “Software cost estimation methods:
A review,” Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information
Sciences, vol. 4, no. 12, pp. 21–29, December 2011.
[44] M. Wieschollek, “Aufwandsschätzung für die prozessmodellierung.”
(Online). Available: http://www.bpm-plus.de/2013/03/
aufwandsschatzung-fur-die-prozessmodellierung/
[45] B. Boehm and W. Royce, “Ada cocomo and the ada process model,” in
Proceedings. Third COCOMO Users Group Meeting, SEI, 1987.
[46] B. W. Boehm, B. Clark, E. Horowitz, C. Westland, R. Madachy, and
R. Selby, “Cost models for future software life cycle processes: Cocomo
2.0,” in ANNALS OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, 1995, pp. 57–94.
[1] J. Freund and B. Rücker, Praxishandbuch BPMN 2.0, 3rd ed. München:
Hanser, 2012.
[2] J. Horan, Ed., Schlüsselrolle CIO, ser. CIO Studienreihe. IBM Institute
for Business Value, 2011.
[3] S. Müller, “Studienarbeit 2451- situationsanalyse: Bpm in deutschland,”
Master’s thesis, Universität Stuttgart, 2014.
[4] P. Posluschny, Prozessmanagement. Konstanz: UVK
Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 2012.
[5] V. Gruhn and R. Laue, “Komplexitätsmetriken für
geschäftsprozessmodelle,” in Proceedings of the Modellierung 2006,
H. C. e. a. Mayr, Ed. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik, 2006, pp.
289–292.
[6] K. Kluza and G. J. Nalepa, “Proposal of square metrics for
measuring business process model complexity,” in Computer Science
and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2012 Federated Conference on.
IEEE, 2012, pp. 919–922.
[7] F. Leymann, “Managing business processes via workflow technology,”
in Tutorial at VLDB Conference, Seattle, September 2011.
[8] B. Mutschler and M. Reichert, Understanding the Costs of Business
Process Management Technology. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013,
pp. 157–194.
[9] A. Gadatsch, Grundkurs Geschäftsprozess-Management, 7th ed.
Springer Vieweg, 2013.
[10] H. J. Schmelzer and W. Sesselmann, Geschäftsprozessmanagement in
der Praxis, 6th ed. München: Hanser, 2008.
[11] M. Weske, Business Process Management - Concepts, Languages,
Architectures, 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.
[12] T. Allweyer, BPMS: Einführung in Business Process
Management-Systeme. BoD–Books on Demand, 2014.
[13] M. Baklizky, M. Fantinato, L. H. Thom, V. Sun, E. P. V. Prado,
and P. Hung, “Business process points - a proposal to measure
bpm projects,” in Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on
Information Systems. ECIS 2013 Completed Research. Paper 2., 2013.
(Online). Available: http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2013_cr/2
[14] B. Marin and J. Quinteros, “A cosmic measurment procedure for bpmn
diagrams,” The 26th International Conference on Software Engineering
and Knowledge Engineering, 2014.
[15] S. Mishra and C. Kumar, “Estimating development size and effort of
business process service-oriented architecture applications,” in Systems
and Informatics (ICSAI), 2014 2nd International Conference on. IEEE,
2014, pp. 1006–1011.
[16] E. Rolon, L. Sanchez, F. Garcia, F. Ruiz, M. Piattini, D. Caivano, and
G. Visaggio, “Prediction models for bpmn usability and maintainability,”
in Commerce and Enterprise Computing, 2009. CEC’09. IEEE
Conference on. IEEE, 2009, pp. 383–390.
[17] V. Nissen, M. Petsch, F. Termer, and M. Möhring, “A cost calculation
model for determining the cost of business process modelling projects,”
Ilmenauer Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsinformatik, vol. 2013-01, April 2013.
[18] D. Çulha and A. Do˘gru, “Towards an agile methodology for business
process development,” in S-BPM ONE-Scientific Research. Springer,
2014, pp. 133–142.
[19] C. Thiemich and F. Puhlmann, An Agile BPM Project Methodology.
Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013, vol. 8094, pp. 291–306. (Online).
Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40176-3_25
[20] T. Allweyer, “Das business process maturity model (bpmm) der omg,”
November 2007. (Online). Available: http://www.kurze-prozesse.de/
2007/11/08/das-business-process-maturity-model-bpmm-der-omg/
[21] D. M. Fisher, “The business process maturity model. a practical approach
for identifying opportunities for optimization,” Business Process Trends,
vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 11–15, 2004.
[22] J. Cardoso, “Evaluating the process control-flow complexity measure,” in
Web Services, 2005. ICWS 2005. Proceedings. 2005 IEEE International
Conference on. IEEE, 2005.
[23] S. Jakoubi and S. Tjoa, “A reference model for risk-aware business
process management,” in Risks and Security of Internet and Systems
(CRiSIS), 2009 Fourth International Conference on. IEEE, 2009, pp.
82–89.
[24] H. Lhannaoui, M. I. Kabbaj, and Z. Bakkoury, “Towards an approach to
improve business process models using risk management techniques,”
in Intelligent Systems: Theories and Applications (SITA), 2013 8th
International Conference on. IEEE, 2013, pp. 1–8.
[25] R. Meziani and I. Saleh, “Towards a collaborative business process
management methodology,” in Multimedia Computing and Systems
(ICMCS), 2011 International Conference on. IEEE, 2011, pp. 1–6.
[26] W. M. Van Der Aalst, A. H. Ter Hofstede, and M. Weske, “Business
process management: A survey,” in Business Process Management.
Springer, 2003, pp. 1019–1019.
[27] A. Komus, BPM Best Practice - Wie führende Unternehmen ihre
Geschäftsprozesse managen, 2011th ed. Berlin Heidelberg New York:
Springer-Verlag, 2011.
[28] J. Mendling, H. A. Reijers, and W. M. van der Aalst, “Seven process
modeling guidelines (7pmg),” Information and Software Technology,
vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 127–136, 2010.
[29] M. Hinsch, Die neue ISO 9001:2015 - Status, Neuerungen und
Perspektiven -, 1st ed. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer-Verlag,
2014.
[30] T. van Lessen, D. Lübke, and J. Nitzsche, Geschäftsprozesse
automatisieren mit BPEL. Heidelberg: dpunkt Verlag, 2011. (Online).
Available: http://taval.de/publications/BOOK-2011-01
[31] C. Jones, Estimating Software Costs : Bringing Realism to Estimating
- Bringing Realism to Estimating, 2nd ed. Madison: McGraw Hill
Professional, 2007.
[32] T. Noth and M. Kretzschmar, Aufwandschätzung von DV-Projekten:
Darstellung u. Praxisvergleich d. wichtigsten Verfahren, 2nd ed. Berlin:
Springer, 1986.
[33] G. Karner, “Resource estimation for objectory projects,” Objective
Systems SF AB, vol. 17, 1993.
[34] S. Frohnhoff, “Use case points 3.0 : Implementierung einer use case
bezogenen schätzmethode für das software-engineering betrieblicher
informationssysteme,” Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Paderborn, 2009.
[35] B. W. Boehm, Software Engineering Economics. New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1981.
[36] B. Boehm and E. Harrowitz, Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II.
London: Prentice Hall, 2000.
[37] OMG, “Bpmn 2.0 specification.” (Online). Available: http://www.omg.
org/spec/BPMN/2.0/
[38] B. W. Boehm, “Cocomo ii model definition manual,” 2000.
[Online]. Available: http://sunset.usc.edu/research/COCOMOII/Docs/
modelman.pdf
[39] V. Khatibi, D. N. A. Jawawi, S. Z. M. Hashim, and E. Khatibi,
“Neural networks for accurate estimation of software metrics,” IJACT:
International Journal of Advancements in Computing Technology, vol. 3,
no. 10, pp. 54 – 66, 2011.
[40] C. Symons, “Function point analysis: difficulties and improvements,”
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 2–11,
Jan 1988.
[41] H. W. Wieczorrek and P. Mertens, Eds., Aufwandsschätzung in
IT-Projekten. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2007, pp. 205–223.
(Online). Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-48472-1_8
[42] IBM, Die Function Point Methode: eine Schätzmethode für
IS-Anwendungs-Projekte, ser. IBM Form. IBM Deutschland GmbH, 1985. (Online). Available: https://books.google.de/books?id=
dxzWPgAACAAJ
[43] V. Khatibi and D. N. A. Jawawi, “Software cost estimation methods:
A review,” Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information
Sciences, vol. 4, no. 12, pp. 21–29, December 2011.
[44] M. Wieschollek, “Aufwandsschätzung für die prozessmodellierung.”
(Online). Available: http://www.bpm-plus.de/2013/03/
aufwandsschatzung-fur-die-prozessmodellierung/
[45] B. Boehm and W. Royce, “Ada cocomo and the ada process model,” in
Proceedings. Third COCOMO Users Group Meeting, SEI, 1987.
[46] B. W. Boehm, B. Clark, E. Horowitz, C. Westland, R. Madachy, and
R. Selby, “Cost models for future software life cycle processes: Cocomo
2.0,” in ANNALS OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, 1995, pp. 57–94.
@article{"International Journal of Business, Human and Social Sciences:72255", author = "Felix Baumann and Aleksandar Milutinovic and Dieter Roller", title = "Software Engineering Inspired Cost Estimation for Process Modelling", abstract = "Up to this point business process management projects
in general and business process modelling projects in particular
could not rely on a practical and scientifically validated method to
estimate cost and effort. Especially the model development phase
is not covered by a cost estimation method or model. Further
phases of business process modelling starting with implementation
are covered by initial solutions which are discussed in the literature.
This article proposes a method of filling this gap by deriving a cost
estimation method from available methods in similar domains namely
software development or software engineering. Software development
is regarded as closely similar to process modelling as we show. After
the proposition of this method different ideas for further analysis and
validation of the method are proposed. We derive this method from
COCOMO II and Function Point which are established methods of
effort estimation in the domain of software development. For this
we lay out similarities of the software development process and the
process of process modelling which is a phase of the Business Process
Management life-cycle.", keywords = "Cost Estimation, Effort Estimation, Process Modelling,
Business Process Management, COCOMO.", volume = "10", number = "2", pages = "576-11", }
