BPM2Text: A language independent framework for Business Process Models to Natural Language Text

Abstract

The proper representation of a Business process is important for its execution and understanding. BPMN has been used as the standard notation for business process models, however domain specialists, which are experts in the business, do not have necessarily the modeling skills to easily read a business process model. It is easier for them to read in natural language. In this work, we propose a language-independent framework, instantiated using Java standard technology, for generating automatically natural language texts from business process models. A case study was conducted to evaluate the quality of the generated text. We found empirical support that the textual work instructions can be considered equivalent, in terms of knowledge representation, to process models represented in BPMN. Regarding the framework output quality (textual descriptions) 86% of the subjects claims that it vary from excellent to good.