Georges Grosz

MENTOR: A Computer Aided Requirements Engineering Environment

In this paper, we present the Computer Aided Requirements Engineering (CARE) environment named MENTOR. This environment offers various viewers, editors and tools and can be customised by a method engineer to any existing requirements engineering methodology. The core component of the environment is the ”Guidance Engine”. It executes — or enacts- in a flexible manner any process model -that we call way-of-working. A way-of-working is defined as an instance of a process meta-model. We illustrate, through a comprehensive example, how MENTOR provides support and guidance based on the execution of process models to both application engineers (who construct system specifications) and to method engineers (who construct ways-of-working) in a flexible and efficient way.

A Decision Making pattern for Guiding the Enterprise Knowledge Development Process

Abstract During enterprise knowledge development in any organisation, developers and stakeholders are faced with situations that require them to make decisions in order to reach their intentions. To help the decision-making process, guidance is required. Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) is a method offering a guided knowledge development process. The guidance provided by the EKD method is based on a decision-making pattern promoting a situation and intention oriented view of enterprise knowledge development processes. The pattern is iteratively repeated through the EKD process using different types of guiding knowledge. Consequently, the EKD process is systematically guided. The presentation of the decision-making pattern is the purpose of this paper.

Modelling and engineering the requirements engineering process: An overview of the NATURE approach

This paper presents an overview of the process theory developed in the context of the ESPRIT project NATURE.1 This theory proposes means for modelling and engineering the requirements engineering (RE) process. The key element of this theory is a situation-and decision-based process meta-model independent of any RE methodology. The process meta-model acts as a shell for defining process models by instantiation. An enactment mechanism implemented in a tool environment has been defined. It allows execution of process models and provides effective guidance to the requirements engineer. Construction of process models is also supported based on generic method knowledge chunks. The formalization of our approach is based on a free algebra.

Evaluating a Pattern Approach as an Aid for the Development of Organisational Knowledge: An Empirical Study

Patterns are a powerful paradigm that has emerged in recent years as a mechanism that can help towards the consolidation and dissemination of design experiences. In the context of the European research project ELEKTRA we developed a pattern approach for capturing best business practices of change management in the electricity sector. In this paper we briefly present this approach and concentrate on the issue of validating the pattern approach through evaluation of its different features. In particular, we define three constituent features, namely the knowledge contained in patterns, the language used to construct patterns and the method for developing the patterns. For each of these features we define an evaluation hypothesis and then test this hypothesis against a set of criteria and metrics. The experiments conducted and the results are presented in summary.

Enterprise knowledge development: process view

Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) is a method for reasoning on change in organisations. It tackles different aspects of organisations: who does what, how and why. Applying EKD is an iterative, non-linear and guided process. Guidance is based on a decision making pattern that promotes a situation and decision-oriented view. The claim is that EKD engineers are repeatedly faced with situations that need them to make decisions. Thanks to the use of the decision making pattern together with domain specific, EKD specific or generic knowledge, the EKD process systematically provides guidance. Generic guidance is the default option that includes the co-operative aspects of decision making.

Describing Business Processes with a Guided Use Case Approach

Business Process (BP) improvement and alike require accurate descriptions of the BPs. We suggest to describe BPs as use case specifications. A use case specification comprises a description of the context of the BP, the interactions between the agents involved in the BP, the interactions of these agents with an automated system supporting the BP and attached system internal requirements. Constructing such specifications remains a difficult task. Our proposal is to use textual scenarios as inputs, describing fragments of the BP, and to guide, using a set of rules, their incremental production and integration in a use case specification also presented in a textual form. The paper presents the structure of a use case, the linguistic approach adopted for textual scenarios analysis and the guided process for constructing use case specifications from scenarios along with the guidelines and support rules grounding the process. The process is illustrated with a real case study borrowed to an Electricity Company.

A unified framework for modeling cooperative design processes and cooperative business processes

Looks at any cooperative design process as a decision-making process, i.e. as a non-deterministic process. The process is performed by responsible agents having the freedom to decide how to proceed according to their assessment of the situation they are faced to. However, the cooperative design process cannot be an ad-hoc and chaotic process. We look at it as a repeatable process made of steps resulting each of the application of the same pattern for decision making. The pattern views a decision as a choice of the way to proceed in a given situation to achieve an intention. An intention can be fulfilled in different ways depending on the situation being considered. We propose a process meta-model for describing such a pattern of decision making. This meta-model can also be used for modeling cooperative business processes, whether well-structured or ill-structured. In order to deal with a wide range of cooperative processes, we propose a single-process meta-model which provides the structuredness of predefined models and the flexibility of ill-structured processes.

Developing Patterns as a Mechanism for Assisting the Management of Knowledge in the Context of Conducting Organisational Change

In a constantly evolving business environment, knowledge management is becoming increasingly important. The shareability and repeatability of experience gained in change situations can prove an invaluable tool for the evolving enterprise. We advocate the use of the pattern paradigm as a means to capture and disseminate this type of knowledge. We place particular emphasis on representing both the ways in which an enterprise can conduct change (the process of change), and the states to which this change can lead the enterprise (the product of change). Our approach to pattern development is based (a) on the existence of a pattern template and (b) on a co-operative and discussant way of working, so as to ensure that a maximum of domain knowledge is captured. The approach is illustrated with examples from a case study of change management in the electricity sector.

An electronic handbook for accessing domain specific generic patterns

This work addresses the issues of defining (a) the structure of a knowledge repository of good business practices for managing change in organisations and (b) a Web based tool for providing a simple means for accessing this knowledge. Following the proposal made within the ESPRIT project ELEKTRA*, the expression of best business practices is done in terms of generic patterns. The term ‘pattern’ refers to such knowledge that may be repeatable from one situation to another, and shareable by many different users. The knowledge encapsulated in patterns is expressed in terms of the concepts of the EKD methodology (Enterprise Knowledge Development) such as enterprise goals, enterprise processes etc.. This paper presents the framework for representing the patterns and a set of mechanisms for navigating within the repository of patterns in a WWW environment.

Cardinalities in depth: a formal approach to partial validation of conceptual schema

Abstract This paper presents an innovative approach to partially validate E/R specifications. It is based on the automatic deduction of cardinalities for transitive relationship. The major result of this work is a set of deduction rules relying on mathematical function composition. These deduced cardinalities can be effectively used by the designer to validate E/R specifications. He/she can check the accuracy of the deductions made towards the reality. In some cases, automatic deduction is not possible. Then, a careful study of the relationships is proposed. This can lead to reconsider what the relationship really is and how it should be represented using E/R concepts. Major changes in the E/R diagram can be achieved this way and thereby improve significantly the E/R specifications.