Ben Roelens

Investigating Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering for Business Processes

Business processes are designed to execute strategies that aim at achieving organisational goals. During the last decade, several methods have been proposed that prescribe the use of goal-oriented requirements engineering techniques for supporting different business process management activities, in particular business process modelling. The integration of goal modelling and business process modelling aims at increasing the alignment between business strategies and the processes with their supporting IT systems. This new research area, which the authors call Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering for Business Processes GORE-for-BP, is developing rapidly, but without a clear conceptualization of the focus and scope of the proposed GORE-for-BP methods. Furthermore, an overview is lacking of which methods exist and what their level of maturity is. This paper therefore presents a research review of the GORE-for-BP area, with the aim of identifying relevant methods and assessing their focus, scope, and maturity. This study used Systematic Literature Review and Method Meta-Modelling as research methods to identify and evaluate the state of the GORE-for-BP research area and to propose a research agenda for directing future research in the area. Nineteen methods were identified, which is an indication of an active research area. Although some similarities were found with respect to how goal models are transformed into business process models or vice-versa, there is also considerable divergence in modelling languages used and the extent of coverage of typical requirements engineering and business process management lifecycle phases. Furthermore, the exploitation of requirements engineering techniques in the full business process management lifecycle is currently under researched. Also, the maturity of the methods found in terms of the formalisation of the transformation activity, the elaboration of method guidelines, and the extent to which methods are validated, can be further improved.

The Design of a Core Value Ontology Using Ontology Patterns

The creation of value is an important concern in organizations. However, current Enterprise Modeling languages all interprete value differently, which has a negative impact on the semantic quality of the model instantiations. This issue need to be solved to increase the relevance of these instantiations for business stakeholders. Therefore, the goal of this paper is the development of a sound Core Value Ontology. In order to do that, we employ a pattern-based ontology engineering approach, which employs the Unified Foundational Ontology.

The Development and Experimental Evaluation of a Focused Business Model Representation

Business models (BM) are the central concept to understand the business logic of an organization. Enterprise modeling contributes to the conceptualization of BMs by providing explicit representations. A proper BM representation helps to increase the understanding and communication about the underlying knowledge for the stakeholders within a company. However, the existing enterprise modeling languages have a different and partial focus on the BM concept due to their various backgrounds. This prevents the large-scale adoption of these representations in practice. Therefore a focused BM viewpoint is developed, which explicitly facilitates the understanding about the underlying BM components. To this end, existing diagrams of the value delivery modeling language were adapted to prescriptions of the physics of notations, which is a normative theory for cognitive effectiveness of diagrammatic representations. The effect on the understanding was evaluated by an experiment with 93 master students. The results confirm the research hypothesis that the new BM viewpoint increases the understanding of the modeled BM components.

Realizing strategic fit within the business architecture : the design of a Process-Goal Alignment modeling and analysis technique

The realization of strategic fit within the business architecture is an important challenge for organizations. Research in the field of enterprise modeling has resulted in the development of a wide range of modeling techniques that provide visual representations to improve the understanding and communication about the business architecture. As these techniques only provide partial solutions for the issue of realizing strategic fit, the Process-Goal Alignment technique is presented in this paper. This technique combines the visual expressiveness of heat mapping techniques with the analytical capabilities of performance measurement and Strategic Management frameworks to provide a comprehensible and well-informed modeling language for the realization of strategic fit within an organization’s business architecture. The paper reports on the design of the proposed technique by means of Action Design Research, which included iterative cycles of building, intervention, and evaluation through case studies. To support the application of the technique, a software tool was developed using the ADOxx meta-modeling platform.

Evaluating and Improving the Visualisation of CHOOSE, an Enterprise Architecture Approach for SMEs

Enterprise architecture (EA) serves as a means to improve business-IT and strategy-operations alignment in an organisation. While it is a fairly mature domain in large enterprises, the need for EA in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has only been recently addressed. As SMEs have different characteristics and cope with specific problems, a different approach is essential to enable a successful adoption of EA. In order to meet these particular requirements of SMEs, the EA approach CHOOSE has been developed. In previous research, emphasis has been put on refining the method and metamodel of CHOOSE and on the development of supporting software tools. However, the visual notation of CHOOSE has not been investigated yet, while the form of representation has a great impact on the cognitive effectiveness of a diagram. This paper assesses the current visualisation of CHOOSE, describes alternatives and conducts an experimental comparison.

Designing Value Co-creation with the Value Management Platform

The Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for the analysis and design of value creation and value capture in enterprise operations. Although the VDML 1.0 specification was published in October 2015, little is known about the application of value modeling with VDML. We report in this paper (an earlier, unpublished version of this paper was presented at the 12th International Workshop on Value Modeling and Business Ontologies, which was held in Amsterdam on 26–27 February 2018) on the practice of applying VDML for value co-creation design using the Value Management Platform (VMP) tool of the Dutch company VDMbee. Neither the VMP user guide nor the VDML specification prescribe how to perform value modeling. Therefore, we analyze value co-creation design with the VMP in a case-study of a low-cost carrier. By identifying, extracting, and making explicit the applied method of value co-creating design, we contribute to a better understanding of the practice of value modeling with VDML.

A Domain-specific Modeling Technique for Value-driven Strategic Sourcing

Strategic sourcing recognizes that procurement should support a firm’s effort to achieve its long-term objectives. In particular, procurement needs to be a cross-functional end-to-end process inside the organization that is oriented towards value creation within the company and between the company and its partners in the value chain. The main challenge to the implementation of value-driven strategic sourcing is the lack of instruments that are characterized by analytical rigor and robustness in the identification of strategic sourcing options to achieve strategic goals. Therefore, this research aims to develop a domain-specific modeling technique founded on the Service-Dominant Logic which focuses on the systemic exploration of sourcing alternatives and emphasizes the delivery of value to achieve desired outcomes. This paper reports on a first cycle of Design Science Research which includes the demonstration and the evaluation of the value and utility of the modeling artefacts by means of a case study about IT outsourcing in the healthcare industry.

The Design of a Modeling Technique to Analyze the Impact of Process Simulation Throughout the Business Architecture

Simulation techniques offer a cost-effective solution to support the experimental analysis of possible business process improvements. However, the performance indicators that are used for this analysis exclusively focus on operational aspects. Consequently, the impact of process changes on the overall business performance is not taken into account. This problem can be solved by the development of a modeling technique that combines the provision of a coherent view on both the organizational strategy and business processes with a mechanism to analyze the impact of the simulated operational performance on indicators that reflect the overall business performance. This paper presents the proof-of-concept design of such a technique, which is the result of a first cycle of Design Science Research. This also includes the demonstration of the modeling technique by the bakery case example.

Simplicity is not Simple: How Business Architecture in One of Belgium’s Biggest Companies Can Be Simple and Easy-to-Use

As organizations are becoming more complex, Enterprise Architecture (EA) serves as an important means to align the strategy with the operations and to achieve business/IT (i.e., Information Technology) alignment. Although numerous approaches have been designed for large enterprises, little EA research was oriented towards small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, both organizational types are fundamentally different and require a tailored approach. Therefore, CHOOSE was designed as an EA approach that is in accordance with the needs of SMEs. By performing a case study in the department of a large enterprise, this paper aims to investigate how CHOOSE can be used outside its original context. More specifically, it will be examined how the metamodel and modeling method could be extended to deliver an overview and valuable insights about a complex business reality. To realize this, potential solutions for the encountered issues are formulated and evaluated by the involved business stakeholders.