João Pombinho

Towards Objective Business Modeling in Enterprise Engineering - Defining Function, Value and Purpose

Current Enterprise Engineering state of the art does not fully address concerns such as bootstrapping and reengineering a working organization from the business perspective. It is currently focused on ontology, the constructional vision, rather than the function. We argue that the function design deserves no less modeling effort, as the construction design draws upon it. To this aim, a change of approach is necessary. By combining knowledge from DEMO, Service Science and e3Value, this paper presents conceptual contributions towards modeling the contribution perspective of a system in an integrated way, namely by defining Function, Value and Purpose. These concepts are first defined in the context of a dual party relationship and then applied to chains of two or more elements. By coupling with an innovative application of the Generic System Development Process, an extension of existing Enterprise Engineering theory is proposed, in a way we believe will assist in improve its current state of the art and widen its application scope.

Strengthening the Foundations Underlying the Enterprise Engineering Manifesto

The discipline of Enterprise Engineering aims for enterprises to operate as a unified and integrated whole. This discipline therefore adopts the mission to develop theories, models, methods and other artifacts for the analysis, design, implementation and governance of enterprises in a theoretically rigorous and practically relevant manner. The Enterprise Engineering Manifesto postulates the dualities of concepts function/construction perspective, black-box/white-box models and subjective/objective as being opposed to each other in one-on-one relationships. Illustrated by the Pizzeria case, it becomes clear (a) that functions can be defined objectively, and (b) that a valuation perspective should be added that truly focuses on the relationship between a system and its stakeholders. These insights can support building stronger bridges between management and organization sciences – traditionally stronger in functional approaches – and information systems science, and computer science – traditionally stronger in constructional approaches.

Value-Oriented Solution Development Process: Uncovering the Rationale behind Organization Components

Although significant progresses have been made in recent years regarding the goals of Enterprise Engineering, we find that the rationale behind every component of an organization is still not systematically and clearly specified. Indeed, state of the art approaches to enterprise development processes do not explicitly incorporate an essential dimension of analysis: value. This state of affairs does not warrant a leading role in enterprise alignment.

Business Service Definition in Enterprise Engineering - A Value-oriented Approach

Enterprise Engineering is a means of applying engineering method to Enterprise Architecture, developing and evolving the mapping enterprise strategy to its resources. The potential benefits of service orientation have long been considered a driver for Enterprise Engineering. However, the service development discipline as a whole is still in it early stages. Do-main-specific frameworks and methodologies exist but none effectively deals with the teleological aspects of services, generally dismissed as subjective matter. In this paper, we analyze relevant state of the art in the areas of General Systems Theory, Service Science, Enterprise Engineering, Value Modeling, Enterprise Architecture and Business Modeling. The main shortcomings identified essentially reside in the lack of capability to model the purpose of a given service system in a structured way to guide current and future development efforts, which also implies having flexibly dealing with relativity of enterprise frontier definition. To address these issues, our research is focused on modeling different perspectives of enterprises as service systems, along three perspectives, namely construction, function and contribution. The approach presented in this paper involves 1) distinguishing the three mentioned perspectives and 2) articulating the concepts of each perspective so that an end-to-end, integrated, model is provided. The most distinguishing feature is using the concept of value proposal of a system to express the motivation that drives its development. We propose to follow an engineering approach that is grounded on social actor communication theory, taking into account the social meaning of service provisioning and consumption. Moreover, the mapping of this model to the elements that compose a system should be supported by design. To this end, both e3Value, from Value Modeling, and DEMO, from Enterprise Engineering, are considered and their integration is described.

Representation and analysis of enterprise models with semantic techniques: an application to ArchiMate, e3value and business model canvas

Enterprise models assist the governance and transformation of organizations through the specification, communication and analysis of strategy, goals, processes, information, along with the underlying application and technological infrastructure. Such models cross-cut different concerns and are often conceptualized using domain-specific modelling languages. This paper explores the application of graph-based semantic techniques to specify, integrate and analyse multiple, heterogeneous enterprise models. In particular, the proposal described in this paper (1) specifies enterprise models as ontological schemas, (2) uses transformation mapping functions to integrate the ontological schemas and (3) analyses the integrated schemas with graph querying and logical inference. The proposal is evaluated through a scenario that integrates three distinct enterprise modelling languages: the business model canvas, e3value, and the business layer of the ArchiMate language. The results show, on the one hand, that the graph-based approach is able to handle the specification, integration and analysis of enterprise models represented with different modelling languages and, on the other, that the integration challenge resides in defining appropriate mapping functions between the schemas.

The Role of Value-Oriented IT Demand Management on Business/IT Alignment: The Case of ZON Multimedia

More than ever, enterprises aim at assuring their structure and initiative portfolio are aligned and support value-creation. However, essential, explicit and cross-cutting models that allow keeping bottom-line in sight over the whole initiative lifecycle are generally absent.

Service System Design and Engineering – A Value-Oriented Approach Based on DEMO

Modeling organizations as complex systems in permanent evolution as a response to change dynamics is an increasing challenge nowadays. Innovative approaches that assist in coping with it are called for, which include improving service system design and engineering activities. In this paper, we present a set of concepts that bridge Enterprise Engineering, Value Modeling and Service Science. Following an engineering approach we discuss how to develop a service system, starting by its construction model as a necessary step towards its implementation. Our contribution begins by identifying a relevant problem space regarding current approaches, both in academia and industry, particularly the lack of a sound structure to model a service system’s purpose. We materialize our proposal of rationalizing service system design and engineering in a set of principles and a four-layer framework, which integrates the core concepts and their relative positioning.

Linking Value Chains – Combining e3Value and DEMO for Specifying Value Networks

In this paper we provide a model for the bonding of systems in a value network. Our main contributions are: 1) a structural model of the chains and their viewpoints, and 2) a specification of how to use that structure within a process that supports the formalization of the rationale behind system development decisions. To provide a solution to this challenge we combine System Development and Value Modeling disciplines. From DEMO, we use the Generic System Development Process from the Tao-theory and its Value-oriented System Development Process implementation. We formalize basic concepts from e3Value, namely start stimulus, end stimulus, gates and scenario paths in an integrated way with system construction models. We provide a methodology for constructing e3Value models systematically and improve DEMO modeling by devising individual value networks in an adequate way and how different system components combine to form them.

Validating Value Network Business Models by Ontologies

Different meta-models allow modeling the business of an organization from different perspectives. The Business Model Canvas focus is close to the strategy of the organization. E3value allows modeling of value networks and ArchiMate allows alignment from business models to IT infrastructure. When models of these three meta-models coexist for a certain value network, they must be consistent. Currently, there is no way to validate such consistency automatically. We propose a solution, using ontologies and ontology mapping techniques (OWL, OWL.DL, SPARQL) that helps to validate instantiated models automatically, based on a set of mapping rules between the three meta-models. In this work, the mappings between Business Model Canvas, e3value and ArchiMate are identified and formalized through ontologies. The formalized mapping is then applied to a case study and exploited, together with reasoning techniques.

Organizational Self-Awareness: A Matter of Value

This chapter aims at clarifying the notion of organization se If-awareness (OSA) as the state of a collective awareness of the enterprise system. We examine how such awareness arises from the collective action of the enterprise’s agents, while applying principles and methods of enterprise engineering and enterprise architecture. We find that value modeling is a vital enabler of OSA while bridging the gap between the teleological and ontological views of an enterprise.