Analyzing the Dynamic Cost Factors of Process-Aware Information Systems: A Model-Based Approach

Introducing process-aware information systems (PAIS) in enterprises is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to PAIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these techniques to deal with the dynamic interactions of the many technological, organizational and project-driven cost factors which specifically arise in the context of PAIS. Picking up this problem, this paper presents an approach to investigate the complex cost structures of PAIS engineering projects based on evaluation models. We present a formalism to design such evaluation models, discuss one characteristic evaluation model and its derivation in detail (based on the outcome of an empirical study), and introduce the notion of value-based evaluation patterns to enable the reuse of evaluation models.