Business process modeling plays an important role in the management of business processes. As valuable design artifacts, business process models are subject to quality considerations. The absence of formal errors such as deadlocks is of paramount importance for the subsequent implementation of the process.

In his book Jan Mendling develops a framework for the detection of formal errors in business process models and the prediction of error probability based on quality attributes of these models (metrics). He presents a precise description of Event-driven Process Chains (EPCs), their control-flow semantics and a suitable correctness criterion called EPC soundness.