My research colleagues and I have launched a new website where people can test their comprehension of BPMN models at http://www.bpmn-selftest.org/. The website is part of a research project of HU Berlin and TU Eindhoven.
We would be very happy if you participate and advertise the selftest among your colleagues. Its unique feature is that you get BPMN models shown along with questions. In the end you get immediate and individual feedback on what you did right and wrong. There is also a draw for some prizes.
Hi,
I performed the test. First of all, it is important that you really have time to work on it, because your final score is computed based on how much time you need. So no good idea to do it during work, because here I have a lot of distractions :-(
Second, I hope that we don't see such complex models in reality ;-) I think the point of the research is somehow to figure out how to layout models for better comprehensibility. I must say, that I would refuse to look at such models in reality.
Third, make sure that you take a very detailed look at the models. Some of the mistakes I did were just based on the fact that I missed a small detail such as a looped subprocess.
It will be interesting to see how comprehensibility of BPMN changes if we go for the full set of BPMN 2 elements. In the examples, you don't use catching and throwing events. Also, you only use gateways to model the control flow, but you don't use multiple outgoing connections originating from one activity. I would expect that this will heavily increase the error rate.
Anyway, everyone join this small test and challenge me. I think I answered 75% of all questions correctly and I ended up in the middle of all participants (yes, I know, I'm too slow).
There's also Bruce Silver's BPMN self-test:
http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2009/12/29/two-bpmn-self-tests/
Jon.
