TechCrunch is currently reporting that the social network site BeautifulPeople.com has kicked out 5.000 members, because they gained too much weight over Christmas. That got me thinking if we should also kick out ARIS Community members if we notice they make a syntactical mistake while modelling a process model?!
Ok, seriously, we are not going to ever do that, because there is no point in enforcing too strict syntax rules as long as the models you create are meaningful for you and your co-workers. In fact, many say that one of the main success factors of the ARIS Platform tools is that they don’t enforce syntax rules while modelling. On a first glance this might come as a surprise, because how can a model convey any meaning if it isn’t formally correct? Well, modelling is a creative task. You are not just documenting a process. Instead, you are giving a shape to something which was abstract before. There are many ways to model the same process, but finding a good model requires experience and experimenting with different alternatives. While experimenting and restructuring a process model, it is not very handy if you are alerted about syntax violations with every change you do. Therefore, ARIS doesn’t do that. Instead, making a model formally correct is just the last step in process modelling. You perform a syntax check and fix all remaining errors.
Having continuous syntax checks is like focusing on the layout of a document while writing. Everyone, who has done extensive writing knows that it is more effective to first write the text and only format it in a last step. However, some might say that we also have continuous syntax checks in software development environments helping us to be more effective in writing source code. This boils down to the question whether process modelling is similar to programming or writing love letters? What do you think?
