On IT-Modelling in a Cross-Competence World

The deep penetration of computers in all realms of society makes technological change the key driver for changing our lives. This will result in a change in approach, from viewing the role of IT as mainly supporting other disciplines, to the integration of IT concepts, tools and theory into modelling theories of the supported disciplines. This chapter discusses some aspects of the relationship between the IT as a modelling discipline, and the modelling disciplines of the domains where IT is applied. IT deals with data and data processes, while application domain models deal with entities of the domain and how they interact. Cross-competence models must deal with both, and with how models of the information technology discipline relate to the various models of the domain disciplines.

Refining the Concept Syndicate Data

This chapter introduces the concepts of external data and syndicate data. It contributes with a conceptual discussion regarding different categories of syndicate data, as well as definitions and applications thereof. In addition, the chapter also gives a view ahead for syndicate data, with respect to organizational, as well as technological challenges and trends. Thereby, it increases the understanding for syndicate data as a vital component in business intelligence initiatives and explains why external data in general and syndicate data in particular has become prerequisites in modern information systems. Furthermore, the author hopes that the categorization and view ahead will not only contribute to researchers through the conceptual discussion and the definitions of concepts, but also to practitioners spending resources on data originating from outside the own organization, by increasing the understanding of the concepts and the actors within the industry.

How to Support Agile Development Projects with Enterprise Modelling

This paper analyses the potential of using Enterprise Modelling (EM) in agile information system development projects on the basis of a number of empirical findings. We outline the current issues and challenges that projects using agile development approaches are facing. To address these challenges we analyse what are the objectives of using EM in agile development projects and give recommendations concerning the modelling process and tool support.

Pragmatic-Driven Approach for Service-Oriented Analysis and Design

This chapter presents a pragmatic-driven approach for service-oriented information system analysis and design. Its uniqueness is in exploiting a design foundation for graphical description of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of business processes that is based on the service-oriented principles. Services are viewed as dynamic subsystems. Their outputs depend not only on inputs, but on a service state as well. Intentions of business process experts are represented in terms of a set of pragmatic dependencies, which are driving the overall system engineering process. It is demonstrated how pragmatic aspects are mapped to conceptual representations, which define the semantics of business design. In contrast to the traditional system development methodologies, the main difference of the service-oriented approach is that it integrates the static and dynamic aspects into one type of diagram. Semantics of computation independent models are expressed by graphical specifications of interactions between service providers and service consumers. Semantic integrity control between static and dynamic dependencies of business processes is a one of the major benefits of service-oriented analysis and design process. It is driven by pragmatic descriptions, which are defined in terms of goals, problems and opportunities.

Experiences from Technology Transfer Initiatives at SISU

The institute SISU (Swedish Institute for Systems Development) was formed by the Swedish govermnet in 1984 based on the support of more than 20 organisations in business, industry and in the civic sector. SISU operated during 1985 to 2000. In this chapter we reflect on our experiences from this initiative to technology transfer in Sweden in the field of information systems development tools and methods. We are concerned with transfer of knowledge as well as of technical prototypes from academic research to product development, exploitation, and practical use in organisations. We reflect over a number of collaborative projects, national as well as EU-supported, initiated by SISU. We describe, firstly, which were the main ‘‘products’’ of technology transfer, and, secondly, which are the main factors that influence (or hinder) the success of a technology transfer initiative of this kind. The purpose of writing this chapter is to contribute to the experiences of the European Commission of successful technology transfer activities in Europe.

New Software Methodologies and Techniques for Business Models with Evolutionary Aspects

This chapter outlines a number of issues on enterprise design architectures suitable for applications that need flexibility and change in their design. Better understanding of user requirements is needed to reflect the best performance of the system towards its users. Verifying the requirements elicited for best system performance is an essential task for enterprise systems design. The requirements elicited should reflect the user intention, as he/she has demanded. This chapter presents some of the international Lyee project’ results led by Fujita (Fujita 2001) and is structured into two parts: one part reflects the collaborative intention outcome and the other part is related to legacy software outcome. The 1st part shows the impact of correct requirements on enterprise design architectures; it also enlists some of the results achieved by our project. The 2nd part shows the impact of Legacy software using new techniques extracted from an intention-oriented tool, namely Lyee builder. This second part also contributes in showing new techniques for handling legacy software, an issue that is important for handling essential problems related to old generation software, which is our current interest. We have succeeded to build a software diagnosis tool based on the Lyee framework, which is currently used in business practices to diagnose programs written in imperative languages.

Integrated Goal, Data and Process Modeling

In organizations, goals and rules on different levels ranging from visions, to strategies, tactics, and operational goals have been expressed for a long time. In the IS-field, the interest on goals and rules has come from two directions. A) Business goals for use in requirements specification. B) Rule-based (expert) systems, focusing on automation of rule-execution. We were already 15 years ago involved in an EU-project Tempora together with Benkt Wangler and others where we tried to combine these worlds. Although able to produce interesting prototypes, the approaches we used then proved to be difficult to scale to an industrial setting. 15 years later we are involved in taking these approaches to a new level. We will in this paper present our approach to combining goal, data, resource and process modeling, in the support of the development and user-led evolution of what we term Model-generated Workplaces (MGWP), with an emphasis on the use of goal and rule-modeling in combination with process modeling. A case study extending an ongoing industrial trial of production rule systems is provided to illustrate some of the benefits of the approach.

Intention Driven Conceptual Modelling

Conceptual modelling aims to capture the relevant aspects of the world on which it is necessary to provide information. Whereas conceptual models succeeded in telling us how to represent some excerpt of the world in informational terms, they failed to guide system analysts in conceptualising purposeful systems, i.e. systems that meet the expectations of their users. This chapter aims to investigate the issue of conceptualising purposeful systems and to discuss the role that goal driven approaches can play to resolve it. It considers the challenge of new systems having a multifaceted purpose and shows how intention/strategy maps help facing this challenge.

Interconnecting E-Business Model Components

This chapter is about electronic business (e-business) models that have emerged and altered the traditional ways in which to do business. An e-business model is a specialisation of a business model, and is an organisational plan for how to work with the products or services intended to bring profit and revenue, and using ICT and the Internet in doing so. E-business models consist of components. Components constitute a business concept, i.e. an idea that an organisation wants to bring into reality. Our research has focused on the interconnections between e-business model components. The analysis of the ebusiness model components and their interconnections results in a framework in the form of a model displaying the connections between the clustered components. The purpose of the chapter is to explain an overview of e-business model components and show how value is created and added at each component level.

Determining Requirements for Management Support Systems

The nature of managerial work makes the design, development, and implementation of Management Support Systems (MSS) a major challenge. The MSS literature suggests that determining MSS requirements and specification of MSS are the most critical phases in MSS design and development. We present a methodology that can be used as a guide for MSS design, with a primary focus on MSS requirements determination and how requirements can be fulfilled using information and communication technologies (ICT). The methodology builds on Quinn and associates’ competing values model (CVM) of organizational effectiveness and current MSS knowledge. The methodology can guide MSS designers in designing MSS that support different managerial roles, i.e. the development of MSS that support managerial cognition and behavior.