Jacques Simonin

EA4UP: An Enterprise Architecture-Assisted Telecom Service Development Method

The cost of a telecom service development is correlated to the discontinuity and the complexity of the process. To solve this problem, we propose a method dedicated to telecom service development, called EA4UP method. The first EA4UP characteristic is the use of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) for the design activity. The EA promotes component reusing, and improves development process continuity thanks to a Model Driven Engineering approach. In this new method, EA enforces the transformation of an analysis model into a design model. The second EA4UP characteristic is to place functions in the core of the method (instead of data). The assessments of eleven projects allow to measure profits of this EA4UP method with regard to the previous ones.

Extending enterprise architecture modeling languages for domain specificity and collaboration: application to telecommunication service design

The competitive market forces organizations to be agile and flexible so as to react robustly to complex events. Modeling helps managing this complexity. However, in order to model an enterprise, many stakeholders, with different expertise, must work together and take decisions. These decisions and their rationale are not always captured explicitly, in a standard, formal manner. The main problem is to persuade stakeholders to capture them. This article synthesizes an approach for capturing and using the rationale behind enterprise modeling decisions. The approach is implemented through a domain-specific modeling language, defined as an extension of a standard enterprise architecture modeling language. It promotes coordination, enables presenting different stakeholders’ points of view, facilities participation and collaboration in modeling activities—activities focused here on enterprise architecture viewpoints. To present its benefits, such as rapid prototyping, the approach is applied to large organizations in the context of telecommunication service design. It is exemplified on modeling and capturing decisions on a conference service.

A data warehouse logical design method based on the alignment with business processes

The design of a data warehouse from the databases of the enterprise is a very important feature to specify the strategy of this enterprise. The strategy is indeed deduced from the enterprise results stored in its databases. The business processes of the enterprise have moreover to be consistent with this strategy. We propose then a rule-based data warehouse design method. The rules target first a data model alignment with respect to the business processes model. The other rules are featured by a data pattern proposing a solution for the data warehouse design in relation to the categorization of the data. The pattern is compliant with the life-cycle of a business process instance. This pattern is moreover relevant for the specification of the queries concerning the data warehouse. This data warehouse design method based on rules is experimented from two epidemiological databases building up for medical research.

MDA tool for telecom service functional design

Telecom service development process followed at Orange consists of a sequence of interrelated tasks. We present an MDA tool which describes this process using SPEM 2.0 compatible graphical editor, and then associates a model to each defined task for its execution. These models are validated for conformance to functional rules embedded inside the tool. Task automation is achieved using MDA model transformations, which use Orange knowledge model as the basis to extract the existing reusable functional components and their interdependencies. Graphical editor and model transformations have been integrated together in an ECLIPSE environment. Finally, the validated functional design model is transformed towards a UML2 profile, so as the telecom architect can manipulate it in an environment he is familiar.

Conception fonctionnelle de services d'entreprise fondée sur l'alignement entre coeur de métier et Système d'Information

The enterprise organization must fulfil its strategy. Processes describing enterprise business core and enterprise organizational structure enable enterprise to meet this objective. This paper concerns business process driven design of customer oriented services. The description of business processes from customer instead of the production department allows indeed service set providing to the customer by the enterprise. In order to satisfy enterprise objectives, the service design procedure is so based on the Enterprise Architecture (EA) system point of view, whether services are computerized or not. Our service design procedure benefits from EA according to the enterprise strategy realization gap between the target Information System and the business core. This service design procedure adds an enterprise service automated design thanks to model driven engineering to the alignment so defined.

An approach based on ontology for discovering data impacting the execution of a business process

Organizations have an increasing need to adapt faster their Information Systems to technical, functional and legal changes. One way proposed in the literature is to make a deep process analysis in order to have a better comprehension of the business process (BP) and adapt it to its new context. In this paper, we propose a meta model for a BP contextualization solution. The solution links a BP with business data and contextual data (weather, urban traffic, etc.) using semantics. We apply it to a commodity palletization process from our commodity traceability project and we conclude that it provides business expert with additional contextual data that impacted the BP execution.

Weighted Alignment Measures of Enterprise Architecture Viewpoints

Enterprise Architecture (EA) allows describing how an organization can achieve its objectives and/or develop innovative strategies, through the creation of a set of engineered models that can be understood by the people associated with the organization. To this end, the set of EA models should be developed as any product in any engineering domain. In general, those models are the artifacts on which we reason to understand the alignment between several viewpoints of the organization. Reasoning on those artefacts in an objective and systematic way requires a shared way to represent them and a set of weighted measures based on this way-of-representing. This paper proposes a framework to analyze and to represent multiple viewpoints of an organization and develops a set of measures to qualify the alignment between those models. These measures are experimented from the alignment of Information System functions with respect to business processes for medical research.

Short Paper: A model driven approach for telecommunication service creation environments relying on enterprise architecture

Telecom systems are complex due to their implicit composition of software and hardware elements. Our aim in this research is to support designing new services by providing facilities and tools to detect design flaws and errors at an early stage. Our proposed framework and tools rely on model driven engineering.

Business alignment-based data warehousing physical design driven by models

An assessment of a method that enabled to design a data warehouse logical model in accordance with the business viewpoint of an enterprise showed that not considering the physical viewpoint when designing the data warehouse was the major flaw of the method, and that a tool has to be proposed to generate the data warehouse data instances when business viewpoints or input databases are modified. Our contribution is hence the adaptation of the logical design method of the data warehouse to a physical design method. Moreover, a tooling of this new physical design method and a tooling of the data warehouse physical data instantiation are proposed in this paper. The tools are based on the model driven engineering approach and its associated environment such as a model transformation language.

Une démarche de développement conciliant agilité et urbanisation du système d'information: La plateforme épidémiologique PLASTICO

The development process applied to the PLASTICO epidemiological platform should achieve two goals to conciliate: the sustainability of the platform and reactivity to its evolution in relation to the customer requirements. The first goal has required taking into account the information system architecture, or enterprise architecture, which supports the epidemiological study processes. The second goal has been achieved thanks to an agile approach limited to some development activities considered as relevant by the customer. A positive assessment of the appropriateness of the development approach to a requirements quick evolving and to the sustainability of PLASTlCO has been achieved by the platform customer.