Kestutis Kapocius

An Approach for Extracting Business Vocabularies from Business Process Models

Being a part of business process management (BPM) life cycle, business process modeling has found its place in information systems development (ISD) practices as well. At the same time, concepts of business vocabularies and rules are also the hot topics among BPM and ISD practitioners and academics. Nevertheless, in ISD, the integration of business process models with business vocabularies and rules is still not standardized and remains quite empiric. In this paper, basic aspects of the approach for business vocabularies’ extraction from business process models are presented. The approach is based on novel business level OMG standards “Business Process Model and Notation” (BPMN) and “Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules” (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG’s vision about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.42.2.2310

An Approach for Prioritizing Agile Practices for Adaptation

Agile software development approaches offer a strong alternative to the traditional plan-driven methodologies that have not been able to warrant successfulness of the software projects. However, the move toward Agile is often hampered by the wealth of alternative practices that are accompanied by numerous success or failure stories. Clearly, the formal methods for choosing most suitable practices are lacking. In this chapter, we present an overview of this problem and propose an approach for prioritization of available practices in accordance to the particular circumstances. The proposal combines ideas from Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) decision-making technique, cost-value analysis, and Rule-Description-Practice (RDP) technique. Assumption that such approach could facilitate the Agile adaptation process was supported by the case study of the approach illustrating the process of choosing most suitable Agile practices within a real-life project.

A Framework for Decomposition and Analysis of Agile Methodologies During Their Adaptation

In recent years there has been a steady increase of interest in Agile software development methodologies and techniques, which are often positioned as proven alternatives to the traditional plan-driven approaches. However, although there is no shortage of Agile methodologies to choose from, the formal methods for actually choosing or adapting the right one are lacking. The aim of the presented research was to define the formal way of preparing Agile methodologies for adaptation and creating an adaptation process framework. We argue that Agile methodologies can be successfully broken down into individual parts that can be specified on three different levels and later analyzed with regard to problem/concern areas. Results of such decomposition can form the foundation for the decisions on the adaptation of the specific Agile methodology. A case study is included in this chapter to further clarify the proposed approach.

Pedagogy sharing in the PROMIS project

The PROMIS Project is an ongoing EU Tempus Project for setting up ISC (Informatics as a Second Competence) Masters degrees in Central Asia. We are more specifically concerned with ensuring the vocational aspect of studies and tightening the relationships between companies and universities in this project. To meet these goals we mainly propose to base the curricula organization on both reverse teaching and apprenticeship. As we also want the degrees to be part of an international network many tasks of the project are dedicated to sharing and discussing pedagogical materials and methods between European and Central Asia partners. This paper contains a general presentation of the PROMIS Project and a focus on the organization of pedagogical workshops that are its most important pedagogy sharing task.

The Need for Business Vocabularies in BPM or ISD Related Activities: Survey Based Study

Inclusion of business vocabularies (BVs), also referred to as glossaries, into information systems development (ISD) activities is a growing trend, yet this process is often lacking objective feedback and consolidated opinion from the industry and experts. In an effort to fill this gap, the two-stage research study with people working in the fields of information systems development or business process management (BPM) has been carried out. In this paper, key results of the questionnaire-based exploratory survey have been presented. Results make it relatively safe to presume that the BPM/ISD community generally supports the developments in the field of business vocabulary integration and standardization. On the other hand, results reveal that existing standards like SBVR are not widely known, and the BVs themselves are rarely considered a necessary element of the project. These findings could serve as a solid proof that research in this area, as well as development of working solutions, especially CASE tool integrations, should be intensified.