Gil Regev

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.

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.

Defining early IT system requirements with regulation principles: the Lightswitch approach

We present the Lightswitch approach, an approach for defining early requirements for enterprise IT systems. Using the approach, engineers can model the way an enterprise regulates its relationships with its environment, identify changing conditions within the enterprise and its environment, and propose options for changing this regulation. The engineers can then define initial IT system goals necessary for the above changes. The use of the approach is shown in the real case of a hospitals sterilization department.

Early Requirements and Business-IT Alignment with SEAM for Business

The early requirements of an IT system should be aligned with the organizations business imperatives. To understand these imperatives it is necessary to understand the organizations position within its environment. SEAM for Business is a method designed for analyzing the competitive environment of an organization, including its relationships with its customers, partners, and market regulators. From this analysis, the main requirements of the IT systems can be inferred. We illustrate the use of SEAM for Business with a real project aimed at redesigning the website of a consulting company.

Requirements Engineering Education in the 21st Century, An Experiential Learning Approach

RE use in industry is hampered by a poor understanding of RE practices and their benefits. Teaching RE at the university level is therefore an important endeavor. This education can ideally be provided at the university level as an integrated part of developing the requisite RE and software engineering technical skills, shortly before students become engineers and enter the workforce. However, much social wisdom is packed into RE methods. It is unrealistic to expect students with little organizational experience to understand this body of knowledge. The course described in this paper uses an active, affective, experiential pedagogy giving students the opportunity of experiencing a simulated work environment that demonstrates the social/design-problem complexities and richness of a development organization in the throws 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 experienced 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 therefore are confronted with the complexity of true social relationships.

Specifying Services for ITIL Service Management

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a collection of best practices for the management of IT services. ITIL helps organizations to become aware of the business value their IT services provide to internal and external stakeholders. Understanding this value is crucial to the definition of service level agreements (SLA) between an IT department and its stakeholders. However, it is not ITILs objective to define how this value is to be elicited from stakeholders. This creates an opportunity for the use of RE methods in businesses. This paper describes the main principles of ITIL service management and illustrates how the SEAM RE method can contribute to the definition of an SLA by modeling the service provided by an IT department, the stakeholders of this service and the value the stakeholders expect from this service. A real industrial example is presented and analyzed.

Modelling the regulative role of business processes with use and misuse cases

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding value‐added and abuse prevention activities in business processes.Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers business processes as a regulation mechanism that an organization uses to survive and flourish in its environment. It proposes a theoretical framework based on the concept of homeostasis, the maintenance of identity in a changing world. In this framework the paper classifies business processes into three levels (strategic, operational, regulative) and analyse the relationships between these three levels. Based on this framework, the paper extends the “Use and Misuse Cases” technique to support modelling of value‐added and abuse prevention activities.Findings – The main finding is the importance of considering business processes as regulation mechanisms. Traditionally, business processes are analysed through the goals they are designed to achieve. This paper analyses what the organization aims at maintaining. This...

Enterprise Modeling Using the Foundation Concepts of the RM-ODP ISO/ITU Standard

Enterprise architecture (EA) projects require analyzing and designing across the whole enterprise and its environment. Enterprise architects, therefore, frequently develop enterprise models that span from the markets in which the organization operates down to the implementation of the IT systems that support its operations. In this paper, we present SEAM for EA: a method for defining an enterprise model in which all the systems are systematically represented with the same modeling ontology. We base our modeling ontology on the foundation modeling concepts defined in Part 2 of ISO/ITU Standard “Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing” (RM-ODP). This work has two contributions to enterprise architecture: the SEAM for EA method itself and the use of Part 2 of the RM-ODP standard as a modeling ontology.