Verifying BPMN understandability with novice business managers

Engineers¹, artists and craftsmen have long-established models to try out projects before running them. This makes the ideas and solutions proposed in the models clear enough to be perceived or understood. Similarly, the use of business process models can contribute to the specification of software requirements, facilitating the understanding and communication of the business from the point of view of software designers, as well as the managers. However, there is little research that examines whether BPMN business process models are more effective in their understanding than other representations, such as textual descriptions. This paper presents a research carried out with people from the management field, some who are familiar with and some who do not know BPMN, to verify if there are significant differences in terms of understanding the BPMN models in comparison to a textual representation. The results show that the lack of understanding of the BPMN models can reflect in a loss of communication between the managers, the ones who understand the business, and the developers, professionals of the area of computer science who consolidate the processes in software requirements.