Does Cognitive Overload Matter in Understanding Bpmn Models?

Abstract

A business process model is a visual representation of the activities conducted in a business. BPMN is a commonly used technique to model business processes. Based on cognitive overload theory, it is argued that a BPMN model developed without swimlanes requires more cognitive effort to understand its content than a BPMN model with swimlanes. In cognitive psychology literature, it is well established that users performance on learning tasks are affected when they experience high cognitive overload. Accordingly, it is predicted that the performance of novice modelers on model understanding tasks will be affected depending on the type of BPMN model (with or without swimlanes) they refer to. Using two empirical studies, this paper demonstrates that indeed this is the case. This paper thus contributes in identifying the role of swimlanes construct of BPMN for creating cognitive overload. It is found that such overload is detrimental to model understanding.

• Business Process Model
• BPMN
• Swimlanes
• Model understanding