Carmine Grasso

Measuring the alignment between business processes and software systems: a case study

The alignment degree existing between a business process and the supporting software systems strongly affects the performance of the business process execution. Methods are needed for detecting this kind of alignment and keeping a business process aligned with a supporting software system even when one of the two evolves. Actually, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software systems may impact the process activities and/or software components, in terms of input/output and/or purpose and, therefore, cause misalignment. This paper proposes a framework including a set of metrics codifying the alignment concept with the aim of measuring it and detecting misalignment if it occurs. The application of the framework is explored through a case study.

Managing the alignment between business processes and software systems

Abstract Context The alignment degree existing between a business process and the supporting software systems strongly affects the performance of the business process execution. Methodologies and tools are needed for detecting the alignment level and keeping a business process aligned with the supporting software systems even when they evolve. Objective This paper aims to provide an adequate support for managing such a kind of alignment and suggesting evolution actions if misalignment is detected. It proposes an approach including modeling and measuring activities for evaluating the alignment level and suggesting evolution activities, if needed. Method The proposed approach is composed of three main phases. The first phase regards the modeling of business process and software systems supporting it by applying a modeling notation based on UML and adequately extended for representing business processes. The second phase concerns the evaluation of the alignment degree through the assessment of a set of metrics codifying the alignment concept. Finally, the last phase analyses the evaluation results for suggesting evolution activities if misalignment is detected. Results The paper analyses the application of the proposed approach to a case study regarding a working business process and related software system. The obtained results provided useful suggestion for evolving the supporting software system and improving the alignment level existing between them and the supported business process. Conclusion The approach contributes in all phases of the process and software system evolution, even if its improvement can be needed for identifying the impact of the changes. The proposed approach facilitates the understanding of business processes, software systems and related models. This favors the interaction of the software and business analysts, as it was possible to better formulate the interviews to be conducted with regard to the objectives and, thus, to collect the required data.

A Literature Review of Business/IT Alignment Strategies

The alignment issue was addressed in several researches and numerous methods, techniques and tools were proposed. Choosing the most suitable approach to a specific need is a challenging task. This paper describes a characterization framework that can be applied for evaluating different alignment approaches, with the aim of discovering similarity, maturity, capability to measure, model, asses and evolve the alignment level existing among business and technological assets of an enterprise. A literature review was executed by applying the proposed framework to alignment research approach published in the Information & Management Journal and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. The achieved evaluation results are presented.

A Framework for Measuring the Alignment between Business Processes and Software Systems

The alignment degree existing between a business process and the supporting software systems strongly affect the performance of a business process execution. Methods are needed for messuring the alignment and keeping a business process aligned with a supporting software system even when one of the two evolves. Actually, any modification performed in the business process activities and/or supporting software system, may impact the process activities and/or software system component and, therefore, cause misalignment. This paper proposes a framework including a set of metrics codifying the alignment concept with the aim of measuring it and detecting misalignment if it occurs. The application of the framework is shown through an example.

ALBIS - ALigning Business Processes and Information Systems: A Case Study

The relationships existing between a business process and the supporting software systems is a critical concern for the organizations, as it directly affects their performance. The research described in this paper is concerned with the ALBIS Environment – ALigning Business processes and Information Systems, designed to support software maintenance tasks. In particular, the proposed environment allows the modeling and tracing between business and software entities and the measurement of their alignment degree. An information retrieval approach is embedded in ALBIS based on two processing phases including syntactic and semantic analysis. The usefulness of the environment is discussed through a case study.

Investigating Differences and Commonalities of Software Metric Tools.

The availability of quality models and metrics that permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software product is a relevant aspect for supporting software engineers during their development tasks. In addition, the adoption of software analysis tools that facilitate the measurement of software metrics and application of the quality models can ease the evaluation tasks. This paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the behaviour of existing software metric tools. Specifically, metrics values have been computed by using the different software analysis tools for three software systems of different sizes. Measurements show that, for the same software system and metrics, the software analysis tools provide different values. This could impact on the overall software quality evaluation for the aspect based on the selected metrics.

Assessing the Behavior of Software Analysis Tools

Quality models and metrics permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software product. Moreover, the adoption of software analysis tools that facilitate the measurement of software metrics can ease the evaluation tasks. However, the available tools do not interpret and measure metrics in the same manner. This paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the behavior of existing software metric tools and shows that the evaluation of the metrics of a software system by using different analysis tools provides different values. This aspect could impact on the overall software quality evaluation.

Evolving Enterprise Information System in Small and Medium Enterprise: An Opportunistic Approach and a Case Study

Enterprise Resource Planning -- ERP-software system are considered as tool of strategic relevance for managerial and accounting activity. In the last years, these systems have been considered also by Small and Medium Enterprises SME. However, the literature proposes different framework to aid the company to improve and evolve their Informative System, but they are addressed specifically to large companies. In this paper an analysis of the different approaches is proposed with the aim of defining a new framework designed for small and medium enterprise. Finally, the introduced framework has been applied in a real case study.

Software System Evolution Driven by Business Alignment Measure

The alignment degree existing between a business process and the supporting software systems expresses at which extent the software systems support the business process. This measure can be used for indicating business requirements that the software systems do not implement. Methods are needed for identifying the software changes to be performed for increasing and keeping an adequate alignment level. This paper proposes an approach for managing the alignment, codifying the alignment concept with the aim of measuring it, detecting misalignment, identifying software evolution changes.