A Taxonomy of Business Process Modelling and Information Systems Modelling Techniques

Modelling has always been at the core of both organisational design and Information Systems (IS) development. Models enable decision-makers to filter out the irrelevant complexities of the real world, so that efforts can be directed towards the most important parts of the system under study. However, both business analysts and IS professionals may find it difficult to navigate through a maze of theoretical paradigms, methodological approaches, and representational formalisms that have been proposed for both Business Process Modelling (BPM) and Information Systems Modelling (ISM). This paper sets out to put an order to this chaos by proposing an evaluation framework and a novel taxonomy of BPM and ISM techniques. These findings, coupled with a detailed review of BPM/ISM techniques, can assist decision-makers in comparatively evaluating and selecting suitable modelling techniques depending on the characteristics and requirements of individual projects.