Investigating Process Elicitation Workshops using Action Research

10 Alexander Luebbe, Mathias Weske
reviews and corrections when the process is mapped on the table. In the second
AR study, reviews and corrections were noticed as mental leaps by the workshop
moderator and by both observers independently.
We answer our research questions as follows:
1. Tangible process modeling is not specific to a process notation but to the
people and the process to be discussed. People need to be open for the
technique and see a need to discuss the process.
2. Tangible modeling can be used to produce models competitive to softwaresupported
modeling workshops.
3. Tangible modeling productivity is competitive to software-supported modeling
for models that cannot take advantage of re-use through copy and paste.
We want to draw the attention to some limitations of this research. One
particular aspect to point out are the measurement instruments used to compare
productivity and outcome. They are new instruments which need further
testing. Our testing compared workshops from different departments with different
participants. Nevertheless, all data comes from the same team of process
modeling experts that ran the AR study with us. Therefore we think the data
is valuable to build insights and hypotheses. Further investigations with larger
and more homogeneous data sets are needed to strengthen or disprove our conclusions
with statistical expressiveness. For now, we can only make transparent
the path taken for readers to follow or challenge our conclusions.
The two field studies reported in this paper were the main drivers for insights
into the technique and the basis to answer our research questions. But this paper
can only tell a subset of the overall story. As an example, we discussed our
guidelines with more practitioners and researchers to form a stable opinion on
relevance.
6 Related action research
Action research is quite well adopted in information systems science to guide
researchers working with professionals [14]. As examples, it was used to improve
the process of software development in coordination with the client organization
[15], increase the value of existing information systems [16] or use software
to create social impact [17].
A typical action research publication mentions the research method but focuses
on problem descriptions and findings from multiple iterations. This is complemented
by theoretical papers on the action research cycle [6] or general AR
principles [7]. In this paper, we use these theoretical guidelines and show their
operationalization in two subsequent action research cycles.
In business process management, action research is not mainstream yet. Practitioners
are typically involved in research through surveys and case studies [18].
If solutions are developed together with practitioners, this is framed as or combined
with design science research (DSR) [19]. Indeed both research approaches