M. Bajec and J. Eder (Eds.): CAiSE 2012 Workshops, LNBIP 112, pp. 366–382, 2012. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 An Empirical Assessment of the Effect of Context-Based Semantic Annotation on Process Model Discovery Mturi Elias and Paul Johannesson Department of Computer and Systems Science (DSV), Stockholm University (SU) Stockholm, Sweden {mturi,pajo}@dsv.su.se Abstract. CPSAM is a context-based process semantic annotation model for annotating business processes in a process model repository. The purpose of the annotation model is to facilitate searching process models, navigating a process model repository and enhance users’ understanding of process models. The annotation model has partly been evaluated through an empirical study to test the annotation consistency and correctness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the process annotation (based on CPSAM) through a controlled experiment, where a prototype of the repository is used, to annotate and store process models based on the CPSAM. The evaluation is supposed to test whether process annotation based on the CPSAM can facilitate searching, navigation and understanding of process models stored in a repository. The results show that annotating business processes using the annotation model positively affects searching process models, navigating the repository and understanding process models. 1 Introduction Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most important instruments that help modern organizations meet their business goals and achieve competitive advantage. Business process modeling plays a vital role in BPM. Motivations for modeling business processes include documenting current business processes, redesigning and improving processes, aligning business and IT, etc. Modeling of business processes is a complex, costly and time consuming task [1, 2], however, the efforts made to model business processes are seldom reused beyond their original purpose. An attractive alternative to modeling business processes from scratch is deriving them by redesigning existing models. Such an approach requires the use of business process model repositories that provide a location for storing and managing process knowledge for future reuse. There exists a number of efforts to build process model repositories, e.g. the MIT Process Handbook [3], SCOR [4], SAP’s Business Map [5], and IBM’s Patterns for E-Business [6]. However, the use of such repositories is still limited and fragmented [7]. In order to investigate the reasons for this limited use, a number of requirements on business process repositories were elicited in our previous study [8]. These