Abstract
Modeling landscapes in organizations suffer from the problem of information silos, where a number of process models, business rule repositories and other information artefacts may exist concurrently for the same business activity. In this paper, we investigate integrating business process models and business rules. Prior literature presents three such approaches, namely text annotation, diagrammatic, and link integration. We evaluate these approaches from a cognitive load perspective and measure the value of integration from three perspectives: understanding accuracy, mental effort and time efficiency. Our results indicate that diagrammatic integration is associated with better understanding accuracy than text annotation and link integration, but may require more mental effort and time under certain conditions. We also found that the integration approach partially influences mental effort and time efficiency. Further insights from our empirical analysis reveal relationships between process model constructs, integration approaches and cognitive load, especially how approaches applied to models with specific characteristics, impact on process understanding and cognitive load.