Collaborative Modeling: Roles, Activities and Team Organization

In the area of business processes, modeling is usually a collaborative activity. In it, stakeholders analyze or design business processes; however, one of the challenges is that the group members typically have diverse backgrounds and conflicting interests, which make it difficult to arrive at a model that represents a consensus. Therefore, it is important to study the way in which modeling teams are organized to overcome these problems. To approach this issue, this paper investigates the modeling behavior of such groups with the help of a tool that supports collaborative modeling while allowing for the effective collection of data on modeling activities. This author identifies the roles that the participants play in that process and derive patterns of team organization. Structured observation yields a detailed process model concerning basic modeling activities.