Business Process Management: User Stories Dependencies Analysis Report

This report delves into the application of business process models to enhance the comprehension of user story dependencies within agile software development. It begins by defining user stories and their characteristics, highlighting the significance of understanding dependencies for effective software project management. The report then explores the integration of user stories with business process models, emphasizing how these models provide a framework for understanding business domains and stakeholder value creation. The BuPUS method is introduced as a situational method engineering approach to customize software development methods. The research models and methodologies employed in the literature review are discussed, including empirical evaluations and various experiments. The findings reveal the positive impact of business process models on understanding execution order and integration dependencies among user stories. The report also addresses challenges like managing user stories and limited documentation in agile development, and suggests future work such as developing tools for automating the mapping process of user stories.

Running head: BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Using Business Process Models to Better Understand the Dependencies among User Stories
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Discussion............................................................................................................................2
User Stories Dependencies..............................................................................................2
Integration of User stories and Business Process Models...............................................3
Research Models..............................................................................................................4
Research Methods............................................................................................................4
Findings...........................................................................................................................5
Problems and Issues.........................................................................................................6
Future Works...................................................................................................................6
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................6
References............................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Agile software developments provides set of principles that can be adopted to develop a
software by continuous improvements, adaptive planning and flexible to changes in user
requirements (Leau et al. 2012). The importance of agile methods is becoming more because of
the flaws in the traditional methods of software development. In an agile method, user stories are
considered to be the most used and important requirement model. Good user stories should be
independent, valuable, negotiable, small, estimable as well as testable.
This report discusses about the role that the models of business process play in order to
understand the user stories dependencies in a better manner. This report gives a brief overview of
user story dependencies. It also discusses about how the user stories are integrated with the
business process models. The research model and research methodologies that are used in the
literature reviews are also discussed in this report. This report points out the findings and results
regarding user the role of business process for better understanding of user dependencies. This
report gives details about the issues and future works based on this report.
Discussion
User Stories Dependencies
User story can be defined as a statement describing what the system is required to do for
satisfying the needs of the user (Trkman, Mendling and Krisper 2016). A general template can be
used for developing user story. The goal of this user story is to collect and store short notices
regarding the functions that are desired for a system (Landhäußer and Genaid 2012). Software
project domain can be understood in a correct way only by getting a proper insight into the
dependencies between the user stories. User stories can be speculated when previous domain
knowledge is insufficient. The user stories cannot itself depict the order of execution as well as
integration dependencies due to three characteristics that are mentioned as follows:
The functional names that are given to the user stories can be used for referring various
abstraction levels.
Same artifact can be referred using various synonyms.

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The user stories can participate in various execution orders.
Tacit as well as explicit knowledge sources can be used by the development team in order
to gain information regarding dependencies that exist among various user stories. Product owner
is the tacit knowledge source in Scrum. The product owner in this case has the responsibility for
managing the requirements of the customer. The conceptual models on the other hand have the
capability to capture knowledge that is explicit in nature. This helps in promoting the
understanding regarding application domain as well as requirements. It also helps in promoting
the understanding about the dependencies that exist between those requirements. There are
several solutions that can be used for building a base for explicit knowledge. Use case diagrams
and data flow diagrams can be used for this purpose. Story mapping approach can be used for
understanding the user scenarios. Big stories can be sliced into small stories but the effectiveness
of these techniques and proposals are missing on a large scale.
Integration of User stories and Business Process Models
Business domains can be understood by business processes. Business process models are
conceptual models that are widely used for the purpose of capturing the working of businesses
and to understand how value creation takes place for various business stakeholders. Business
process modeling plays a significant role in the decision making process of design and analysis
of enterprise systems as well as workflow operations. BPMN is a standard notation that can be
used for the purpose of modeling of business processes. According to Trkman, Mendling and
Krisper (2016), one main agile principle states that advantages of the present documentation of
the organization must be taken and therefore they have focused on exploiting the present
business process models that are of higher level.
The methods of software development can be customized as per the needs of projects or
organizations by an approach called method engineering. Existing methods can be adapted for
carrying out a specific project by using an approach called situational method engineering. a
method called process configuration is used where configuration of the new project can be done
by extending base methods. Base methods consist of all instructions regarding handling of
various projects. When a new project consists of specific characteristics that cannot be treated in
a correct manner by the variations that are present in the base method then a new variation is
entered or added. The name of the proposed method is BuPUS. This method has two components

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called base method and a method that is project specific. According to Jaqueira et al. (2013), the
user stories can be viewed by business or i* models in a better, simpler and easier way. When
user stories are mapped then the role in the user story is mapped to the actor in i* model, action
in the user story is mapped to the task in i* model and the goal in the user story is mapped to the
goal in i* model. According to Trkman, Mendling and Krisper (2016), base method is
responsible for creating clauses of user stories. The user roles are also defined here. User story
has two main components called user functionality and roles. A business process has the ability
to integrate information regarding the needs of the project and organization.
Research Models
As stated by Trkman, Mendling and Krisper (2016), there are two factors that have a
strong influence on the understanding of user stories dependencies. These two factors are
association factor and representation factor of the application domain. Two materials are used for
representing the application domain. One of them is BuPUS script and the other one is any of the
three levels of granularity called level 1, 2 or 3 (Liskin et al. 2014). The association factor deals
with the granularity level. There are two proposition presented. The first proposition is focused
on understanding the dependencies of the execution order that exist among the user stories. The
second proposition is focused on integrating the dependencies that exist among the user stories.
There are three granularity levels called H1, H2 and H3 in proposition 1 and there are H4, H5
and H6 in proposition 2. According to Ziauddin and Zia (2012), story size is an estimation of
work scale that depends on the effort of actual development. The user stories are given values
based on the size of the user stories. According to Jaqueira et al. (2013), visual models of
business processes are helpful in understanding the needs of the users. The proposed solutions
can be effectively understood by the stakeholders by using the business process models. The i*
models represents the requirements in a graph so that the user stories can be visualized. This
facilitates access to the requirements and improves the process of visualization thus improving
the process of decision making.
Research Methods
Empirical evaluations of the techniques of conceptual modeling are done by Wand’s
framework. The user stories and BuPUS grammar are compared. The effectiveness of the
products was measured using several tests like comprehension, recall and problem solving tests.

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The efficiency of the products was also assessed by using questions in order to measure the
usefulness that is perceived. Various pilot experiments were conducted for testing the
performance of subject. The pilot phase made use of questionnaire that could be completed
within 50 minutes. Two workbooks had been created. The first workbook consisted of the
business process models that are associated with the stories of the user. The second workbook
consisted of a list of stories of the users that are available. The data that had been collected from
the unguided and guided treatments were treated in an independent manner. Trkman, Mendling
and Krisper (2016) conducted an experiment were they had considered 127 under graduate
students as their subject. These students belonged to one of the seven classes in the Vienna
University. Students who were aware of the business process modeling found it very simple to
understand the concept of user stories (Van Dongen, Dijkman and Mendling 2013). This
experiment did not require experts in agile development or BPMN models. These students were
given knowledge about INVEST qualities. They were also asked questions regarding gender,
age, nationality and knowledge regarding English language. There were 41 females and 85
males. The problem solving test included two questions where one focused on understanding of
execution order and the other on integration dependencies. A topic of account management was
selected that included 24 number of business process models. Two models were selected.
Mahnic (2012) designed a course for teaching Scrum in the real world by augmenting Scrum
methods with the user stories. Comparison between actual and estimated effort is found out by
Mahnic (2012). Cost estimation techniques were used (Ziauddin and Zia 2012). This paper gave
an overview of development of agile software. They determined the effort and agile velocity.
Findings
Trkman, Mendling and Krisper (2016) provided support for the six hypotheses. The first
three hypotheses focused on the dependencies of the execution order. It was found out that the
business process models along with the user stories were able to improve the understanding level
of the dependencies of the execution order. It was also found out that the size of the effect is
large. It was demonstrated that the element of sequence flow that were used in the business
process models had offered valuable or sensitive information. The last three hypotheses were
aimed to understand the dependencies of integration that existed among the user stories. A
statistic report supported that the results had various size of effects. This research helped to
contribute in software engineering. The agile principle suggested reusing the existing documents.

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Problems and Issues
According to Trkman, Mendling and Krisper (2016), one major problem that is addressed
is regarding the management of user stories of the projects. The problem arises when the context
of a user story is missing. This problem could be solved by reusing present business process
model for getting information about dependencies. There can be issues when the role of a Scrum
master is combined with that of a product owner (Mahnic 2012). According to Jaqueira et al.
(2013), the main issues were limitation of software context as well as dependencies of the
stories. One of the major challenges is the limited documentation present in agile development.
Future Works
Advanced tools can be developed for the purpose of transforming the user stories.
Researchers are planning to develop a tool for automating the mapping process of user stories for
the i* model (Jaqueira et al. 2013). Researchers are also trying to identify as well as treat the
connections and relationships between tasks. The guidelines are also being developed for
performing mapping from i* model to the users stories. The future iterations are trying to be
made more realistic by scrum.
Conclusion
This report concluded that business process models can be used for understanding the
user stories in a better manner. This report gave an overview of user stories dependencies. It said
that user story can be defined as a statement describing what the system is required to do for
satisfying the needs of the user. This report explained about the integration between business
process models and user stories. It said that business process models are conceptual models that
are widely used for the purpose of capturing the working of businesses and to understand how
value creation takes place for various business stakeholders. It pointed out that base method is
responsible for creating clauses of user stories. The user roles were also defined here. User story
has two main components called user functionality and roles. This report discussed about the
research methods and said that the user stories and BuPUS grammar were compared. It found out
that the effectiveness of the products was measured using several tests like comprehension, recall
and problem solving tests. This report also provided support for the six hypotheses. The first
three hypotheses focused on the dependencies of the execution order. It was found out that the

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business process models along with the user stories were able to improve the understanding level
of the dependencies of the execution order. The problems and the future related works have also
been discussed in this report.

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References
Jaqueira, A., Lucena, M., Alencar, F.M., Castro, J. and Aranha, E., 2013. Using i* Models to
Enrich User Stories. iStar, 13, pp.55-60.
Mahnic, V., 2012. A capstone course on agile software development using Scrum. IEEE
Transactions on Education, 55(1), pp.99-106.
Trkman, M., Mendling, J. and Krisper, M., 2016. Using business process models to better
understand the dependencies among user stories. Information and Software Technology, 71,
pp.58-76.
Van Dongen, B., Dijkman, R. and Mendling, J., 2013. Measuring similarity between business
process models. In Seminal Contributions to Information Systems Engineering (pp. 405-419).
Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Ziauddin, S.K.T. and Zia, S., 2012. An effort estimation model for agile software
development. Advances in computer science and its applications (ACSA), 314, pp.314-324.
Leau, Y.B., Loo, W.K., Tham, W.Y. and Tan, S.F., 2012. Software development life cycle
AGILE vs traditional approaches. In International Conference on Information and Network
Technology(Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 162-167).
Landhäußer, M. and Genaid, A., 2012, June. Connecting user stories and code for test
development. In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Recommendation
Systems for Software Engineering (pp. 33-37). IEEE Press.
Liskin, O., Pham, R., Kiesling, S. and Schneider, K., 2014, May. Why we need a granularity
concept for user stories. In International Conference on Agile Software Development (pp. 110-
125). Springer, Cham.