Maria Eugenia Iacob

Towards a language for coherent enterprise architecture descriptions

A coherent description of architectures provides insight, enables communication among different stakeholders and guides complicated (business and ICT) change processes. Unfortunately, so far no architecture description language exists that fully enables integrated enterprise modeling. In this paper we focus on the requirements and design of such a language. This language defines generic, organization-independent concepts that can be specialized or composed to obtain more specific concepts to be used within a particular organisation. It is not our intention to re-invent the wheel for each architectural domain: wherever possible we conform to existing languages or standards such as UML. We complement them with missing concepts, focusing on concepts to model the relationships among architectural domains. The concepts should also make it possible to define links between models in other languages. The relationship between architecture descriptions at the business layer and at the application layer (business-IT alignment) plays a central role.

Achieving Business Process Flexibility with Business Rules

Business processes used in networked business are often large and complex, which makes them difficult to manage and change. In this paper we address this lack of flexibility by proposing a solution that uses business rules and workflow patterns to model the variable parts of process flow, thus facilitating dynamic pattern composition in these areas. We argue that the increase in flexibility is justified by the fact that changes in a business process can be confined to the variable isolated parts of the process.

Quantitative Analysis of Enterprise Architectures

Enterprise architecture is concerned with a description of all the relevant elements that make up an enterprise and how these elements inter-relate. It covers aspects ranging from the technical infrastructure, through software applications, to business processes and products. The relations between these layers play a central role. Also from a quantitative analysis perspective, the layers are interrelated: the higher layers impose a workload on the lower layers, while the performance characteristics of the lower layers directly influence the performance of the higher layers. This paper presents an approach for quantitative analysis of layered, service-based enterprise architecture models, which consists of two phases: a ‘top-down’ propagation of workload parameters, and a ‘bottom-up’ propagation of performance or cost measures. By means of an example we demonstrate the application of the approach, and show that a seamless integration with other performance analysis methods (e.g., queueing analysis) can be achieved.

Mapping the business model canvas to ArchiMate

Many IT projects fail to succeed in the market, as they start purely from technology. Much effort is therefore wasted, while the potential benefits are not realized. We argue that the design process should start with creating a business model, which is then translated to an architecture to ensure fitness for market of the future system. Therefore, we propose a mapping from Osterwalders business modeling canvas and ontology to the enterprise architecture modeling standard ArchiMate, which makes the above translation possible and represents a formal basis for business modeling in ArchiMate. A case study illustrates the mapping between the two languages.

Reusable Model Transformation Patterns

This paper is a reflection of our experience with the specification and subsequent execution of model transformations in the QVT core and Relations languages. Since this technology for executing transformations written in high-level, declarative specification languages is of very recent date, we observe that there is little knowledge available on how to write such declarative model transformations. Consequently, there is a need for a body of knowledge on transformation engineering. With this paper we intend to make an initial contribution to this emerging discipline. Based on our experiences we propose a number of useful design patterns for transformation specification. In addition we provide a method for specifying such transformation patterns in QVT, such that others can add their own patterns to a catalogue and the body of knowledge can grow as experience is built up. Finally, we illustrate how these patterns can be used in the specification of complex transformations.

From enterprise architecture to business models and back

In this study, we argue that important IT change processes affecting an organization’s enterprise architecture are also mirrored by a change in the organization’s business model. An analysis of the business model may establish whether the architecture change has value for the business. Therefore, in order to facilitate such analyses, we propose an approach to relate enterprise models specified in ArchiMate to business models, modeled using Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas. Our approach is accompanied by a method that supports business model-driven migration from a baseline architecture to a target architecture and is demonstrated by means of a case study.

Capturing Business Strategy and Value in Enterprise Architecture to Support Portfolio Valuation

This paper investigates and enhances the suitability of the Archi Mate enterprise architecture modeling language to support the modeling of business strategy concepts and architecture-based approaches to IT portfolio valuation. It gives an overview of existing strategy and valuation concepts and methods in the literature and motivates the need for enterprise architecture and business requirements modeling to capture these aspects as well. This overview results in the identification of strategy and value related concepts, such as value, risks, resources, capabilities, competencies and constraints. The paper provides an analysis of the extent to which Archi Mate may support some of the above-mentioned concepts and extends it with the missing concepts. The proposed language extension is formalized in terms of a met model fragment, which is aligned with the Archi Mate metamodel. The approach is also illustrated by means of an application portfolio consolidation case study in which we demonstrate how a constrained optimization valuation method can be applied to architecture models enhanced with the new concepts.

Model-driven development of context-aware services

In this paper, we define a model-driven design trajectory for context-aware services consisting of three levels of models with different degrees of abstraction and platform independence. The models at the highest level of platform independence describe the behaviour of a context-aware service and its environment from an integrated perspective. The models at the intermediate level describe abstract components, which realize the context-aware service in terms of a service-oriented abstract platform. At the lowest level, the realization of a context-aware service is described in terms of specific target technologies, such as Web Services, BPEL and Parlay technologies. Our approach allows service designers to concentrate their efforts on the services they intend to create and offer, by facilitating the handling of context information and auto-mating design steps through model transformation. In addition, our approach enables the reuse of platform-independent models for different target platforms.

Modeling resources and capabilities in enterprise architecture

The importance of capabilities and resources for portfolio management and business strategy has been recognized in the management literature. Despite that, little attention has been given to integrate the notions of capabilities and resources in enterprise architecture descriptions. One notable exception is a recent proposal to extend the ArchiMate framework and language to include capability and resources and thus improve ArchiMates coverage of portfolio management. This paper presents an ontological analysis of the concepts introduced in that proposal, focusing in particular on the resource, capability and competence concepts. We provide an account for these concepts in terms of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). The analysis allows us to identify semantic issues in the proposal and suggests well-founded recommendations for improvements. We revise the proposed metamodel in order to address the identified problems, thereby improving the semantic clarity and usefulness of the proposed language extension. Two real-world cases are modeled with the resulting metamodel to show the applicability of the constructs and relations in an industrial setting. We present an ontological analysis of resource, capability and competence for EA.We found 13 issues on the original proposal with the ontological analysis.We refactor the original metamodel to address the identified problems.We present two use cases using the improved extension.Our recommendations should lead to improved resource and capability oversight.

Integration and analysis of functional and non-functional aspects in model-driven e-service development

In this paper we propose an approach for the integration of functional models with non-functional models in the context of model-driven e-service development. Starting from the observation that current approaches to model-driven development have a strong focus on functionality, we argue the necessity of including non-functional aspects, as early as possible in the service design process, from the architectural (computational independent) level through all MDA layers. Furthermore, we distinguish between two modelling spaces (orthogonal to the MDA view), the design space and the analysis space, which could be integrated by means of model transformations. Thus, relating the analysis results to the original design models can be achieved by following a sequence of steps that entail horizontal model-to-model transformations from the design space to the analysis space, vertical model-to-model transformations (within and between the MDA layers) and proprietary analysis techniques that are used for the derivation of required (quantitative) properties. This provides a framework for incorporating nonfunctional analysis into methodological support for e-service development.