Business Modeling and Software Design

To obtain value from the graphical representations that are used by different stakeholders during the system development process, they must be integrated. This is important for achieving a holistic understanding about system specification. Integration can be reached via modelling process. Currently, most of information system modelling methods present different modelling aspects in disparate modelling dimensions and therefore it is difficult to achieve semantic integrity of various diagrams. In this paper, we present the principles of semantically integrated conceptual modelling method for information system analysis and design. The foundation of this modelling method is based on interaction flows. This way of modelling is critical for the identification of discontinuity and inconsistency in information systems specifications. It also provides possibility to integrate business processes and business data, which is necessary for the integration of various architectural domains and to reach the holistic view of enterprise architecture. We have explained in object-oriented terms how interactive, structural and transitional aspects are merged. We also demonstrated the interpretation of various patterns, in terms of semantically integrated conceptual modelling method. It was shown that the method has sufficient expressive power to cover some special cases, which do not match the standard pattern of transaction. The inference rules of interactions help in reasoning about system decomposition. In this method, decomposition is graphically described as classification, inheritance or composition of concepts. SICM method is based on a single type of diagram, which enables reasoning about integration with the help of a special set of inference rules. The ultimate goal of this paper is to present the generic principles for computation- neutral modeling of service interactions.

In this paper, we will provide an overview of NOMIS and we will describe NOMIS modelling elements and notation. A case study of a course system is used to show a practical example of modelling with NOMIS that includes a real system created using the NOMIS approach.

Finished product planning is a key business process for companies. It is about finding the balance between service levels and cost, and is therefore critical for the success of the company. In this paper the structure of the problem will be analysed and compared with literature about sales & operations planning as well as ERP solutions. In the analysis general process logic will be contrasted with idiosyncratic characteristics of the individual company. The use of different kinds of information will be discussed, in combination with the formal sign system of the computer and the social sign system of human communication.

Business processes can be assessed by checking transaction documents for inconsistency risks and can be classified into two categories. Inconsistency refers to a mismatch between items (product name, quantity, unit price, amount price, etc.) among transaction documents. For any process in the first category, the consistency of any pair of transaction documents in the process is checked, and there is no risk of inconsistency. For any process in the second category, the consistency of some pairs of transaction documents in the process cannot be checked, and there is a risk of inconsistency. This paper proposes a method and a tool for the assessment of risk inconsistencies. The assessment can be used to design and evaluate business processes for a company’s internal control over financial reporting. A business process diagram and inconsistency risk detection algorithm for classifying business processes is provided. A BPA-tool (Business Process Assessment tool) is also presented.

This paper presents a multi-perspective evaluation framework for assessing the expressiveness of current widely used business process modeling formalisms, in order to select the most suitable for representing sensitive business processes (SBPs) to improve the identification of crucial knowledge that is mobilized by these processes. Aiming at SBPs, a specific framework that helped previously to build a business process meta-model for knowledge identification is applied in a systematic manner in order to evaluate a number of currently available BPM formalisms under six perspectives, namely functional, organizational, behavioral, informational, intentional and knowledge perspectives. Furthermore, the result of the evaluation led us to justify the choice of the better one positioned nowadays, the standard BPMN 2.0. Besides, we have illustrated the practical applicability of this notation on a medical process in the context of the organization of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia.

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) deals with the assessment and development of business processes and IT components. Through the analysis of as-is and to-be states the information flow in organizations is optimized. Thus EAM analyses are an essential part in the EAM cycle. To cover the needs of an architect the analyses pursue different goals and utilize different techniques. In this work we examine the different EA analysis approaches according to their characteristics and requirements. For that purpose we design a generic analysis language which can be used for their description. In order to manage the numerous approaches from literature we develop a categorization. The categories are created based on the goals, constructs and kind of results. We propose a two-dimensional classification into functional and technical categories. The goal is to provide a common description for EA analyses for an easy access to their goals and execution requirements.

An innovation that is substantial enough to change the enterprise architecture poses a problem for a system architect. Enterprise architecture modeling methods and tools do not support the distinction between the As-Is architecture and the To-Be architecture in one view model. Recognizing the changes becomes similar to a game of “finding changes in two drawings”. As the size of architectures and number of architectural view pairs grows, the changes can be overlooked. In order to support the recognizing of changes by the implementation teams, the changes need specific visualization means.

In this paper, we use the modern cases of transformation of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems to the Best of Breed solutions and an architecture modeling language ArchiMate to propose a framework for visualization of changes. The framework includes a new abstraction called “Gap of Changes”, artifacts, principles and means for visualization. The new abstraction is defined on a metamodel that makes it reusable in different enterprise and software architecture description languages. The framework is tested with real cases of changes of ERP using the Best of Breed strategy.

Although Business process modelling is an increasingly popular research area for both organisations and enterprises due to its usefulness in optimizing resources management, business reengineering and business performance, it is not yet widely accepted in Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs), which are vital for sustainable economy development. The understanding of Business Process is an essential approach for an Organization to achieve set objectives and improve its operations. It has been able to show Business Analysts, and Managers where bottleneck exists in the system, how to optimize the Business Process to reduce cost of running the Organization, and the required resources needed for an Organization. This is clear for large scale organizations and enterprises but under research investigation for SMEs. Business Process Modelling (BPM) is a representation of the processes of the Organization. Several modelling techniques have been proposed and used to capture the characteristics of business processes. However, limited guidelines exist for selecting appropriate modelling techniques based on the characteristics of the problem and its requirements. This is even more accurate in the case of selecting proper BPM software tools to achieve those BPM modelling and simulation goals. This paper aims at presenting a comparative analysis of some relatively popular business process modelling techniques focusing on the associated software tools. The comparative framework proposed is based on the following major criteria: data flow capability, logical reasoning and understandability, specification of roles, and capability of simulation, flexibility and ease of use, simulation support and scope. However, the emphasis of this investigation is put on SME applicability of these tools and techniques. Therefore, the first goal is to define proper selection criteria for the application of BPM tools to SMEs. The proposed framework can serve as the basis for evaluating further modelling techniques and generating selection procedures focusing on a comparison of existing tools to implement these techniques properly for SMEs. This is to enable a potential user/modeller choose the right technique and tool in modelling critical SME Business Processes in order to analyse and optimize its operations.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to quickly and flexibly adapt their business processes to external and internal software and other changes. Furthermore, to address the rapid change and deployment of software functionality, microservices have emerged as a popular architectural style for partitioning business logic into small services accessible with lightweight mechanisms, resulting in a higher degree of dynamic integration of information services with processes. Current process-aware information systems tend to rely on manually pre-configured static process models and during process enactment exhibit challenges in reacting to unforeseen dynamic changes. This paper presents Microflows, an automatic lightweight declarative approach for the workflow-centric orchestration of semantically-annotated microservices using agent-based clients, graph-based methods, and the lightweight semantic vocabularies JSON-LD and Hydra. A case study shows approach’s advantages for automating workflow modeling and enactment in a dynamic microservice environment.

Business processes have proven to be essential for organisations to be highly flexible and competitive in today’s markets. However, good process management is not enough to survive in a market if the according IT landscape is not aligned to the business processes. Especially industries focused on software products are facing big problems if the according processes are not aligned to the overall software system architecture. Often, a lot of development resources are spent for features which are never addressed by any business goals, leading to unnecessary development costs. In this paper, we will present a framework for an automatic, order process driven, software configuration. For this, modern software product line engineering techniques are used to provide a systematic way to align the variability of the order processes with the software architecture.

E-Marketplaces for services are governed by similar, but not the same business and technology principles as e-marketplaces for products. Additionally, in the particular case of e-marketplaces for senior citizens, service innovation must be requestor-focused. Immobile (residential, fixed) and mobile ambient (sensors, actuators) intelligence devices cover the spectrum of people monitoring (daily living, health status). On the society side, the aim is to enable elderly people, nearing or in retirements, healthy or unhealthy, to live socially-included and economically-active lives. On the IT side, the aim is to provide innovative systems and solutions embracing contemporary shifts of computing paradigm to service science, cloud computing, mobile connectivity, business processes, and societal participation. In this paper the Authors present the service e-marketplace as an ecosystem that is able to utilize the capital of elderly people with the whole added value they can contribute. The special attention is put on integration of elementary e-marketplace systems which provide senior citizens with the specific kinds of services. The importance of the integrator entity is explained and the concept of information system that plays such a role is presented. Selected business and technological implications of embarking on the development of a service e-marketplace platform for independent and assisted living are reported. The Authors discuss also plausible business models, identify major success factors, and present software engineering challenges underpinning development of such platforms.