The Impact of Testcases on the Maintainability of Declarative Process Models

Declarative approaches to process modeling are regarded well suited for highly volatile environments as they provide a high degree of flexibility. However, problems in understanding and maintaining declarative process models impede their usage. To compensate for these shortcomings Test Driven Modeling has been proposed. This paper reports from a controlled experiment evaluating the impact of Test Driven Modeling, in particular the adoption of testcases, on process model maintenance. Thereby, students modified declarative process models, one model with the support of testcases and one model without the support of testcases. Data gathered in this experiment shows that the adoption of testcases significantly lowers cognitive load and increases perceived quality of changes. In addition, modelers who had testcases at hand performed significantly more change operations, while at the same time the quality of process models did not decrease.

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