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2015 | Book

Creation of Smart-Contracting Collaborations for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Read chapter Read first chapter

Perspectives in Business Informatics Research

14th International Conference, BIR 2015, Tartu, Estonia, August 26-28, 2015, Proceedings

Editors: Raimundas Matulevičius, Marlon Dumas

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Perspectives in Business Informatics Research, BIR 2015, held in Tartu, Estonia, in August 2015. Overall, 49 submissions from 16 countries were rigorously reviewed by 47 members of the Program Committee representing 23 countries. The selected 16 full papers and 4 short papers are included in this volume. The conference theme was "making business information systems interoperable and adaptive in highly interconnected and changing contexts". The papers have been organized in topical sections on business information systems interoperability, business information system requirements and architecture, business process and decision management, business information systems development, and research in progress.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Business Information Systems Interoperability

Frontmatter
Creation of Smart-Contracting Collaborations for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
Abstract
Electronic communities of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) that engage in agile business-network collaborations, are enabled by recent blockchain-technology related innovations using smart contracting. DAOs utilize service-oriented cloud computing in a loosely-coupled collaboration lifecycle that commences with the setup phase. The latter supports the selection of services provided and used by DAOs in combination with smart contract negotiations. Such setup phases for DAO-communities use blueprints of business-network models that DAOs populate with tentative service offers. The negotiation phase may result either in a consensual agreement, a counteroffer, or a disagreement. In the latter case, the smart contract negotiation collapses and the lifecycle returns to the beginning of the selected collaboration blueprints. To the best of our knowledge, such a smart-contracting setup lifecycle has not been formalized so far. The paper fills the gap and evaluates the model with means of model-checking methods.
Alex Norta
Reliable Customers and Credible Fixed-Price Contracts for Software Development Projects: A Study of One Supplier’s Contracts
Abstract
A fundamental tenet of the information systems discipline holds that changing requirements in software development projects (SDP) are the main reason for failure; therefore, in case of such uncertainties, fixed-price contracts (FPC) are not suitable for success. Our empirical research, informed by economic theories, compellingly illustrates that the FPC is an appropriate contractual form. However, we claim that there is a need to optimize its use. With this paper, we show that reliable customers allow credible FPCs enhancing project success, whereas sophisticated contract provisions do not have this effect. Customer reliability reflects whether the customer uses stable methods and regulations for information processing regarding goal definition, belief generation, and decision-making. Our findings offer managers important insights into how they can design and enact FPCs to manage SDPs successfully. Further, we show how economic theories can enhance understanding of SDP success.
Cornelia Gaebert
Life Events: A Crucial Point of e-Government
Abstract
Life events (life situations) are usually understood as a specific view on public administration activities which is close to their clients: citizens. This view usually helps to effectively and client-friendly organize the web platform of the public authority. However, the real meaning of life events is more essential. Such a view allows regarding the public administration activities as consequences of real events in real lives of the public administrations clients. This paper introduces an approach to the analysis of life situations in the context of life cycles of the public administration objects and the use of this approach in a real ongoing project. The relation of life events to the public administration processes as well as their relation to e-government are discussed and illustrated with examples from the project.
Vaclav Repa
A Linked Data Model for Web API-s
Abstract
Web APIs (Application Programming Interface) provide means for rapid enterprise integration. The progress in Web API-s has reached the level of maturity where the impact of new advances can and should be validated in practical setting. Usage of various datasets have been reported in the literature of Web API-s. These datasets could allow systematic validation of methods such as composition, selection and recommendation, just to mention a few. However, we have seen that there are obstacles in using these datasets. More specifically, sometimes the datasets are not publicly available and the authors cannot be easily contacted. Furthermore, although some data is available in unprocessed format, the data processing steps are often not completely revealed to facilitate replication of experimental results. Finally, although there are multiple datasets available, there is no common metamodel, which would allow building a unified view to the data and thereby allow efficient development of Web API evaluation suites. In this paper we extend Linked USDL model to embrace a variety of available Web API datasets using linked data principles. Applicability of the metamodel is validated via encoding two Web service’s datasets, which are made available for community use.
Svetlana Omelkova, Peep Küngas

Business Information System Requirements and Architecture

Frontmatter
Requirement Elicitation Using Business Process Models
Abstract
Oftentimes, when eliciting requirements for system development, the input of domain experts is of great importance. Domain experts are not familiar with artifacts predominantly used by system analysts but rather more attuned to models representing the flow of their work such as business process models. However, these models are rarely used as basis for requirement elicitation. As such, there is a communication barrier, which can cause misunderstandings that translate into imprecise requirements. To address this gap, we propose a systematic approach for eliciting functional requirements using business process models as artifacts in discussion with domain experts. We call this method for Requirement Elicitation from Business Process Models (REB). Based on a mapping of requirement components and elements of business process models, the method guides the discussion between system analysts and domain experts around process models for the purpose of eliciting requirements. The method is validated with a case study and the results show that the REB method was successful in eliciting higher number of relevant requirements with less time required.
Sander Valvas, Fredrik Milani
Elements and Characteristics of Enterprise Architecture Capabilities
Abstract
Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is expected to contribute to strategic planning and systematic development of enterprises by capturing the essential structures and processes of an enterprise on different architectural levels (e.g. business, data, application, technology) and showing inter-dependencies. Capabilities in EAM are among the subjects in research which have received substantial attention during the last years, but still are not thoroughly defined regarding their characteristics, elements and lifecycle processes. Many different definitions of the term capability exist and different views on what the elements of capabilities are have been presented. The main contributions of the paper are (a) an analysis and discussion of the literature on capabilities in EAM, (b) a conceptualization of EAM capability identifying the core elements and characteristics, and (c) the results of expert interviews for validating this conceptualization.
Matthias Wißotzki, Kurt Sandkuhl
Governing IT Services for Quantifying Business Impact
Abstract
This paper presents a method that comprises a metamodel and two processes created for quantifying the business impact associated with the behaviour of IT services. These artifacts define impact analysis models for evaluating the risks, service agreements, quality attributes and criticality associated with IT services. The defined models are integrated with traditional enterprise models to assess how an IT service affectation impacts the business in terms of its objectives, its performance indicators, and financial issues generating costs, penalties or the loss of income due to non-provision of business services. Once IT critical services are identified and governed, strategies can be defined to prevent IT service affectations in order to improve IT-business interoperability.
Oscar González Rojas
On Design Research – Some Questions and Answers
Abstract
Design research is needed in building a new information system or information technology artifact for business informatics and its research. Our literature does not have a common view on design research. In this paper we are interested in a variety of ways how a research problem is stated, which kind of knowledge and innovations does design research produce, and how will a goodness of design research be specified. The variety of solutions to those problems will be found by using a particular method, phenomenography. A successful application of phenomenography is demonstrated. The results found in the information systems literature will be compared and supplemented.
Pertti Järvinen

Business Process and Decision Management

Frontmatter
Selecting the “Right” Notation for Business Process Modeling: Experiences from an Industrial Case
Abstract
During the last 20 years, much research work has been spent on determining which notation is the “best” one for business process modelling in industrial practice. However, most of this work has been performed outside the actual application context, i.e. often in labs, academic environments or experimental settings. We aim at contributing to the field by presenting and discussing a case of selecting the notation for a complete organization. More concrete, the paper covers the process of making a decision which notation is the most appropriate one for a medium-sized organization from utility industries. The steps taken in this decision making process include the analysis of requirements originating from regulation in the domain, a survey among the future users of the notation, and the analysis and evaluation of organizational requirements. The main contributions of this paper are (1) a real-world example illustrating issues and challenges when deciding on the “right” process modeling notation including influences from the application domain, (2) a survey comparing the understandability of notations from the end user perspective and (3) lessons learned from the decision making process and the survey.
Jörn Wiebring, Kurt Sandkuhl
Modeling and Animation of Crisis Management Process with Statecharts
Abstract
Crisis management process has to comply with various norms and regulations; at the same time, it needs to constantly deal with uncertainty and adapt the process scenario to a current situation. These requirements make process design challenging: whereas conventional activity-oriented modeling formalisms ensure process control by design, they provide only limited support for run-time adaptability of a process scenario. State-oriented formalisms can overcome this deficiency and, thus, extend the process designers toolkit. In this paper, we consider the example of a flood management process implemented as a part of the COS Operation Center - a smart city solution developed by COS&HT company in Russia. We examine the existing (BPMN) specification of this process and propose an alternative way to specify the process based on statecharts formalism. We model, animate and test the process scenarios with Yakindu Statecharts tools.
Elena Kushnareva, Irina Rychkova, Bénédicte Le Grand
Change Point Detection and Dealing with Gradual and Multi-order Dynamics in Process Mining
Abstract
In recent years process mining techniques have matured. Provided that the process is stable and enough example traces have been recorded in the event log, it is possible to discover a high-quality process model that can be used for performance analysis, compliance checking, and prediction. Unfortunately, most processes are not in steady-state and process discovery techniques have problems uncovering “second-order dynamics” (i.e., the process itself changes while being analyzed). This paper describes an approach to discover a variety of concept drifts in processes. Unlike earlier approaches, we can discover gradual drifts and multi-order dynamics (e.g., recurring seasonal effects mixed with the effects of an economic crisis). We use a novel adaptive windowing approach to robustly localize changes (gradual or sudden). Our extensive evaluation (based on objective criteria) shows that the new approach is able to efficiently uncover a broad range of drifts in processes.
J. Martjushev, R. P. Jagadeesh Chandra Bose, Wil M. P. van der Aalst
Quick Decide — A Tool to Aid the Analytic Hierarchy Process for Group Decisions
Abstract
To take simple decisions comes naturally and does not require additional considerations but when there are multiple alternatives and criteria to be considered, a decision-making technique is required. The most studied and developed technique is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We focus on the practical implementation of AHP and study the set of features that are necessary when the process involves several experts together with a set of non-functional requirements, such as portability and usability. Since no existing tool satisfy all our requirements, we design and implement a new AHP tool called Quick Decide. We perform a user experiment to evaluate our tool, and find that it fulfils all our requirements. To support our usability requirements, we extend AHP with an external consistency check, which measures the distance between expert opinions to avoid results that are mathematically correct but provide no semantic value (e.g., two opposite extreme opinions).
Igor Kovbasiuk, Welf Löwe, Morgan Ericsson, Anna Wingkvist

Business Information Systems Development

Frontmatter
The Most Prominent Software Development Concepts Cited in IT Professionals’ Blogs
Abstract
Current paper attempts to identify and categorise the most prominent software development concepts at present time. To achieve that, we employed the method of text mining on weblogs written by software development practitioners. Large volume of text extracted from the most popular professional blogs provided basis for frequency analysis of relevant concepts. These concepts were then categorised using a recognised ontology of software development. The results of this study can be used for updating an existing software development ontology, for constructing checklists to be used by both technical specialists and inexperienced clients prior to starting a software project and, finally, for constructing relevant courses and trainings for non-technical clients.
Deniss Ojastu, Tarmo Robal, Ahto Kalja
Towards a Consumer Preference-Based Taxonomy for Information Systems Development
Abstract
A fundamental problem in many disciplines is the classification of objects within a domain of interest. This struggle is willingly undertaken to accrue the benefits of a shared vocabulary, with the concomitant reduction in complexity allowing for easier study of complex domains. Taxonomies are one such type of controlled vocabulary, and their development within information systems has moved from the ad hoc towards more standardized methods. However, the consumer preferences that catalyze and drive the development of many such systems have been little explored within information science research. This study presents a solution for this deficiency: a taxonomy structure of consumer preferences, based on extendible concepts derived from economic theory, marketing and psychology, and developed extending a known/generic taxonomy development method. A use case from the higher education domain—a platform for online education—has been used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed solution.
Eric-Oluf Svee, Jelena Zdravkovic
Code Transformation Pattern Alignments and Induction for ERP Legacy Systems Migration
Abstract
In this paper, we present a system that helps us to analyze legacy system reports and to transform these reports using Report Definition Language (RDL) language. The system is semi-automatic, and transforms legacy system reports using programming language specific patterns. Innovations that help us to solve the problem of semi-automatic report generation include a method of legacy system source code analysis, a semi-automatic source code pattern induction algorithm and the use of natural language processing to refine automatically generated report. The system that we suggest has been tested using different types of reports. This helped us determine the set of patterns required for a particular type of legacy system.
Algirdas Laukaitis
Passive Condition Pre-enforcement for Rights Exporting
Abstract
Condition pre-enforcement is one of the known methods for rights adaptation. Related to the integration of the rights exporting process, we identify issues introduced by condition pre-enforcement and potential risks of granting unexpected rights when exporting rights back and forth. We propose a solution to these problems in a form of a new algorithm called Passive Condition Pre-enforcement (PCP), and discuss the impact of PCP to the existing process of rights exporting.
Wenhui Lu, Jyrki Nummenmaa, Zheying Zhang

Research in Progress

Frontmatter
A Business Process Based Method for Capability Modelling
Abstract
Enterprises are confronted with rapidly changing situations in regulations, globalization, time-to-market pressures and advances in the technology. Management and design of the capabilities is emerging into an important field to tackle these challenges. On the contrary, our findings from a systematic literature analysis reveal the lack of contributions in methodological support for developing capabilities. In this respect we introduce a business process based method for capability design, which is a part of a lately proposed capability driven development (CDD) approach. The main contributions of this paper are (i) a component wise structured capability modelling method based on business processes of an enterprise and (ii) a demonstration of the method application in a use case from the utilities industry.
Hasan Koç, Kurt Sandkuhl
Modeling for Viability
Abstract
One of the attractive features of enterprises is their viability. However, it is not easy to measure and control values of attributes that could indicate the level of enterprise viability. Moreover, an enterprise usually is a system of systems that has to function as an ecosystem both from functional and from structural viewpoints. One of the means for modeling for viability is St. Beer’s Viable Systems Model. However, this model ecosystemically considers viability only from the functional perspective. In reality the organizations still have their structural units that strive for their own viability even they do not directly resemble the functions prescribed by the Viable Systems Model. The paper suggests to not neglect this striving for viability and proposes a novel approach for modeling structural units to move towards a possibility to estimate their viability in the enterprise.
Marite Kirikova
Towards Graphical Query Notation for Semantic Databases
Abstract
We describe a notation and a tool for schema-enabled visual/diagrammatic creation of SPARQL queries over RDF databases. The notation and the tool support both the standard basic query pattern comprising a main query class and possibly linked condition classes and means for aggregate query definition and placing conditions over aggregates including also aggregation of aggregate results. We discuss the applicability of the tool for ad-hoc query formulation in practical use cases.
Kārlis Čerāns, Jūlija Ovčiņņikova, Mārtiņš Zviedris
Conceptualizing a Network Process Model Based Production Platform
Abstract
First tier system suppliers play a key role in every economy. However, in a lot of European regions there is a lack of these kinds of business players even though OEM production is established, mostly due to political reasons. Based on nearly 25 years of experience in supplier network research, this paper proposes a model based platform that can support the establishment of a supplier based system through a network of SMEs. This platform streamlines requirements, orders and tasks and provides the ability to utilize a network’s collective production capabilities more efficiently to comply with complex OEM system product requirements and remain competitive in a global market space. An underlying network process model allows for an efficient and flexible alignment of interfaces between network participants while a competence mapping helps allocating automatically fragmented production tasks to producers based on available production capacity and technological resources.
Thomas Knothe, Adrian Zoch, Malte Meißner
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Perspectives in Business Informatics Research
Editors
Raimundas Matulevičius
Marlon Dumas
Copyright Year
2015
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-21915-8
Print ISBN
978-3-319-21914-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21915-8

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