Business Process Model anti-Patterns: a Bibliography and Taxonomy of published Work

Patterns have been proven to be useful for documenting reusable solutions to common problems. A recently published bibliography of business process model patterns shed light into the various types of patterns by providing a systematic categorization of these patterns. In this way, such classification improves the understanding of business process model patterns. Anti-patterns document a counterproductive solution to a commonly occurring problem. While a classification for the large body of literature on business process model patterns is available, a structured bibliography of anti-patterns is missing. Related work on anti-patterns discusses patterns for common modeling errors, problems in business process models as well as in the business processes. Modeling experts should be aware of all these types of anti-patterns. To fill this gap, this paper presents a bibliography of business process model anti-patterns and a taxonomy of anti-patterns that has been developed using an established approach for taxonomy development. Both are based on an literature review and are valuable for people during the design and analysis phases of business processes since knowledge about anti-patterns in business process models helps for increasing their quality. Our overview should also be useful for developers of modeling tools who wish to make the modeler aware of potential modeling problems.