Alain Wegmann

Where do goals come from: the underlying principles of goal-oriented requirements engineering

Goal is a widely used concept in requirements engineering methods. Several kinds of goals, such as achievement, maintenance and soft goals, have been defined in these methods. These methods also define heuristics for the identification of organizational goals that drive the requirements process. In this paper, we propose a set of principles that explain the nature of goal-oriented behavior. These principles are based on regulation mechanisms as defined in general systems thinking and cybernetics. We use these principles to analyze the existing definitions of these different kinds of goals and to propose more precise definitions. We establish the commonalities and differences between these kinds of goals, and propose extension for goal identification heuristics.

Business and IT Alignment with SEAM for Enterprise Architecture

To align an IT system with an organizations needs, it is necessary to understand the organization s position within its environment as well as its internal configuration. In SEAM for enterprise architecture the organization is considered as a hierarchy of systems that span from business down to IT. The alignment process addresses the complete hierarchy. We illustrate the use of SEAM for enterprise architecture with an example in which a new hiring process and an IT system are developed. With this approach it is possible to train new engineers in the design of business and IT alignment. It is also possible to scope projects in a way that integrate both business and IT strategies. This enables the consideration of IT developments in an enterprise-wide context.

Defining business process flexibility with the help of invariants

Enterprise survival is about maintaining an identity that is separate from other enterprises. We define flexibility as the ability to change without losing identity. The identity of an enterprise can be analyzed as a set of norms and beliefs about these norms held by its stakeholders, such as customers, employees, suppliers, and investors. Business processes and their support systems maintain invariants that are the result of compromises between the often conflicting norms and beliefs of these stakeholders. We formalize these invariants as values in a state space. Identifying a minimum set of invariants provides a basis for defining flexible processes and support systems. We illustrate the use of this framework with production business process support (BPS) systems.

Conceptual modeling of complex systems using an RM-ODP based ontology

The development of business and information systems requires a significant amount of modeling. The current modeling languages and tools have difficulties supporting the modeling of systems spanning through multiple organizational levels. The use of inadequate modeling abstractions is one of the important causes for these difficulties. The paper proposes an ontology that defines the concepts needed for object-oriented modeling and gives a graphical example. The ontology is based on RM-ODP and relies on constructivism and system theory. The proposed ontology allows the definition of development methods, modeling languages and tools that are applicable to complex systems. This can lead to significant productivity improvements in the business and software development communities.

Experiential learning approach for requirements engineering education

The use of requirements engineering (RE) in industry is hampered by a poor understanding of its practices and their benefits. Teaching RE at the university level is therefore an important endeavor. Shortly before students become engineers and enter the workforce, this education could ideally be provided as an integrated part of developing the requisite business skills for understanding RE. Because much social wisdom is packed into RE methods, it is unrealistic to expect students with little organizational experience to understand and appreciate this body of knowledge; hence, the necessity of an experiential approach. The course described in this paper uses an active, affective, experiential pedagogy giving students the opportunity to experience a simulated work environment that demonstrates the social/design–problem complexities and richness of a development organization in the throes of creating a new product. Emotional and technical debriefing is conducted after each meaningful experience so that students and faculty, alike can better understand the professional relevancies of what they have just experienced. This includes an examination of the many forces encountered in industrial settings but not normally discussed in academic settings. The course uses a low-tech social simulation, rather than software simulation, so that students learn through interaction with real people, and are therefore confronted with the complexity of true social relationships.

Stakeholder discovery and classification based on systems science principles

It is the goal of the research work presented to elaborate on improvements to software development methods so that quality attributes can be handled more systematically. By quality attributes, we mean the large group of typically systemic properties of a software system, such as availability, security, etc., but also reusability, maintainability and many more. We define quality attributes as stakeholder-centric conditions on the behavior or structure of a system. The importance of the notion of a stakeholder cannot surprise, but the lack of a general theory on how to define and identify the relevant set of stakeholders does. Drawing from systems theory, we claim that four basic, generic types of stakeholders are sufficient to be able to derive a specialized set of stakeholders for any considered system and domain of inquiry. It is only when we understand the generic concepts and principles behind quality properties of systems, that we can properly derive methods and build tools to cope with them.

On quality attribute based software engineering

Software components are an incarnation of architectural means to better cope with the variety of quality aspects of software systems. Unfortunately, architectural artifacts appear somewhat magically sometimes, and so do components. Components are not a major extension to OO in the programming language or functional modeling sense, but a basis to address many of the quality requirements, be they discernable or non-discernable at system runtime. CBSE, being the discipline of engineering with components, is a promising basis to more explicitly and systematically design with and for quality attributes. After defining the context and classifying quality attributes, we first illustrate the important relationship of quality attributes to use case realizations. Second, we argue for components as the fulcrum point for the realization of functional and extra-functional roles. Third we identify ongoing research directions that we consider conducive towards a software engineering process that supports the design for functional and extra-functional requirements.

A foundation for the concept of role in object modelling

Standardization experts in object modelling are having difficulties with defining the concept of role; for example, they are not sure of whether role is a type or an instance concept. This issue is a source of confusion in the UML standard, and prevents ISO experts to reach consensus and finalize a language for ODP enterprise modelling. In this paper, we make an in-depth analysis of the problem, find its likely causes, and come up with a proposal for a new ODP definition of role, as well as with definitions of related concepts. Our findings and our definitions provide a basis for reconciling the positions that people have about the concept of role.

SeamCAD: Object-Oriented Modeling Tool for Hierarchical Systems in Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise Architecture (EA) requires modeling enterprises across multiple levels (from markets down to IT systems). Providing tool support for such models is a challenge (e.g. model containment hierarchy, navigation difficulties, problems to relate elements between different diagrams). In this paper, we identify the requirements that a CAD tool needs to satisfy to manage such hierarchical models. We then propose a solution to meet these requirements: SeamCAD - a tool designed to manage hierarchical models. We present the key features of SeamCAD and an overview of the modeling language it uses. The benefit of the proposed solution is tool support for managing enterprise models.

Definition of an Object-Oriented Modeling Language for Enterprise Architecture

In enterprise architecture, the goal is to integrate business resources and IT resources in order to improve an enterprises competitiveness. In an enterprise architecture project, the development team usually constructs a model that represents the enterprise: the enterprise model. In this paper, we present a modeling language for building such enterprise models. Our enterprise models are hierarchical object-oriented representations of the enterprises. This paper presents the foundations of our language (i.e. the Living System Theory and the RM-ODP standard), the definition of the language and ends by presenting an example of an enterprise model developed with our web-based CAD tool.