Flexible information design for business process visualizations

Profound understanding of business processes is a key success factor for Business Process Management (BPM). As more and more analytical information like runtime data from process execution or statistical data from business intelligence are available, the problem of business process complexity becomes apparent. Process-relevant information needs to be provided as fast as possible while considering easy and fast interpretation and dynamic changes in stakeholders' demands. The static and use-case specific creation or modification of process visualizations shown in current approaches and tools, however, is complex, time consuming, inflexible and thus costly. To address these shortcomings, we introduce a template-based approach that decouples the creation of visualization templates from concrete process visualizations. The binding of customization points of visualization templates to analytical process information is supported by a graphical editor that enables customization of visualizations in a fast and flexible manner. Moreover, due to the separation of concerns, our approach improves the usability of process visualizations because templates may be created by graphic experts independently from specific visualization demands. The feasibility of our concept is demonstrated by a prototypical implementation.