I found some time to test the EPK validation features of ARIS Express.
Please take a look at the two flows below.
The left side flow forks with an Exclusive OR (XOR). Consequently exactly one of the two alternative paths is performed. The AND join waits for both paths to be finished. This flow cannot end. ARIS Express gives no warning or error message. Nothing!
As far as I understand EPKs a state cannot fork. Please correct me if I am wrong. Here again ARIS Express gives no warning or error message. Nothing!
Further more, I drawed both flows in the same single diagram. No warning about duplicate names. Nothing!
I consider this as an absolute show stopper. Visio or Dia -- to name a free of charge OSS tool -- provide me the same functionality.
What is the aim of ARIS Express?
Frank Weyand on
Hi,
you are right, Express does not make any validation checks. I'd like to answer your questions in another way: the aim of ARIS Express is not to replace professional tools. Contrarily, it is an entry point for beginners, occasional users, newbies to process modeling, maybe students etc.
In ARIS Architect, you can define your own rules, thus, after placing an object or creating a connection, a check according to your individual needs can be executed. But I think you understand that we cannot offer all this for with a cost free tool.
For (real) professional business process modeling, you need a suite of functionalities, based on a database multiuser platform providing semantic checks, reporting etc.
Express does not provide all that. But if offers you a way to start with business modeling and to learn more. If you miss information about how to model business processes, Express does not check your models, but it gives you a bit of learning material (the example models) and furthermore, the ARIS community provides additional information (as example here or here).
Bye,
Frank
Bye,
Frank