Towards a business-IT alignment maturity model for collaborative networked organizations

Aligning business and IT in networked organizations is a complex endeavor because in such settings, business-IT alignment is driven by economic processes instead of by centralized decision-making processes. In order to facilitate managing business-IT alignment in networked organizations, we need a maturity model that allows collaborating organizations to assess the current state of alignment and take appropriate action to improve it where needed. In this paper we propose the first version of such a model, which we derive from various alignment models and theories

Research in Business Process Management: A bibliometric analysis

It contains several growing subtopics such as process mining, process flexibility and process compliance. BPM is also highly relevant for numerous related fields, such as Business Intelligence, ERP systems or Knowledge Management. The growing number of publications and the variety of topics in BPM make it useful to apply bibliometric methods on this scientific field. With bibliometric methods, topical clusters, essential authors and the relationships between them can be discovered. In this work, the BibTechMon software from the Austrian Institute of Technology is utilized to perform the bibliometric analyses. As a novelty for the work with BibTechMon, data from Google Scholar is used as the basis of the analyses. The nature of Google Scholar data differs significantly from the data of other scientific databases. These differences lead to changes on how the bibliometric analyses can be performed. After these changes have been assessed, several bibliometric analyses in the BPM field and related fields are performed. As a result of these analyses, diverse topical clusters in BPM and its related fields could be discovered. Additionally, important authors for each cluster and for the BPM field as a whole were determined. In order to evaluate the results of the bibliometric analyses, I conducted an interview on BPM with Professor Reichert, who is an active researcher in the field. Subsequently, his statements are compared with the results of the bibliometric analyses and the match between the bibliometric analyses and his statements is assessed

A research roadmap towards achieving scalability in model driven engineering

International audienceAs Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is increasingly applied to larger and more complex systems, the current generation of modelling and model management technologies are being pushed to their limits in terms of capacity and eciency. Additional research and development is imperative in order to enable MDE to remain relevant with industrial practice and to continue delivering its widely recognised productivity , quality, and maintainability benefits. Achieving scalabil-ity in modelling and MDE involves being able to construct large models and domain-specific languages in a systematic manner, enabling teams of modellers to construct and refine large models in a collaborative manner, advancing the state of the art in model querying and transformations tools so that they can cope with large models (of the scale of millions of model elements), and providing an infrastructure for ecient storage, indexing and retrieval of large models. This paper attempts to provide a research roadmap for these aspects of scalability in MDE and outline directions for work in this emerging research area

An Approach for Evolution-Driven Method Engineering

International audienceThis work considers the evolutionary perspective of method engineering. It presents an approach for method engineering based on the evolution of an existing method, model or meta-model into a new one satisfying a different engineering objective. This approach proposes several different strategies to evolve from the initial paradigm to a new one and provides guidelines supporting these strategies. The approach has been evaluated in the Franco-Japanese research project around the Lyee methodology. A new model called Lyee User Requirements Model has been obtained as an abstraction of the Lyee Software Requirements Model. The paper illustrates this evolution case

The impacts of non-functional requirements in web system projects

In web system development, the Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) are typically considered only briefly during the requirements elicitation stage and not rigorously articulated by either web developers or the client. This paper reports on an investigation into this issue involving interviews with web developers who were engaged in commercial web development projects. The results from this qualitative research highlight that web developers commonly do not pay sufficient attention to NFRs. This arises due to uncertainty, lack of time, lack of knowledge in the importance of NFRs and partly because NFRs are not readily available and documented from previous similar projects. Web developers also do not elicit NFR at the same time and at the same level of details as Functional Requirements (FRs). This study highlights that exploring the domain at an early stage of development will help developers to better understand NFR. A lack of rigour in articulating NFRs may significantly impact on the development effectiveness and the quality of the resulting web system. An evaluation of NFRs may also lead to discovering new FRs. © Copyright 2008, Inderscience Publishers

An i*-based Reengineering Framework for Requirements Engineering

Avui en dia, els sistemes d'informació són un actiu clau en les organitzacions i sovint els proporcionen un avantatges competitiu. Per a que això segueixi així, han de ser mantinguts i evolucionats d'acord amb els objectius estratègics de la organització. Aquesta evolució inclou els requeriments del sistema d'informació, la tecnologia emprada i els processos suportats. L'impacte dels canvis pot anar des de petites modificacions al desenvolupament d'un nou sistema d'informació i, per aquest motiu, l'evolució dels sistemes d'informació s'analitza durant la fase de requeriments, on es possible avaluar-ne la magnitud utilitzant menys recursos. Des d'aquest punt de vista, els mètodes de l'enginyeria de requeriments i els de la reenginyeria de processos sovint comparteixen els mateixos objectius i es pot considerar que la reenginyeria de processos es adequada tant per al desenvolupament com per al manteniment dels sistemes d'informació. El llenguatge i* està orientat a objectius i permet modelar els sistemes d'informació en termes d'actors i dependencies entre ells. El llenguatge i* s'utilitza en l'enginyeria de requeriments i en la reenginyeria de processos de negoci, però no existeixen gaires propostes comunes a ambdues disciplines. Amb l'objectiu d'utilitzar el llenguatge i* en la reenginyeria de processos, s'ha definit PRiM, un mètode basat en i* per a la reenginyeria de processos (Proces Reenginieering i*-based Method). PRiM assumeix que ja existeix un procés que s'utilitzarà com a punt de partida per l'especificació o l'evolució del nou sistema d'informació. El mètode PRiM consta de sis fases: 1) l'anàlisi dels processos i dels sistemes d'informació actuals, 2) la construcció del model i*, 3) la reenginyeria dels processos actuals, 4) la generació de models i* representant les diferents alternatives, 5) l'avaluació de les alternatives utilitzant mètriques estructurals i 6) l'especificació del nou sistema d'informació a partir del model i* escollit. En les sis fases de PRiM, s'utilitzen diferents mètodes i tècniques algunes creades expressament pel mètode i d'altres provinents de l'enginyeria de requeriments i la reenginyeria de processos. Tot i això, hi ha altres mètodes i tècniques que poden ser utilitzades enlloc d'aquestes i que poden ser mes convenients quan les condicions d'aplicació del mètode canvien. Per tal de permetre la selecció i inclusió d'altres tècniques, es proposa l'aplicació de l'enginyeria de mètodes (Method Engineering). Aquesta disciplina permet construir nous mètodes a partir de parts de mètodes ja existents, i s'ha utilitzat per definir un mètode marc per a la reenginyeria anomenat ReeF (Reengineering Framework). A ReeF, les sis fases de PRiM es presenten de forma genèrica per tal de permetre la selecció de la tècnica més apropiada per cada una de les fases, a partir de l'experiència de l'usuari com dels seus coneixements de l'aplicació. Com a exemple d'aplicació de ReeF, s'ha definit el mètode SARiM.Les contribucions principals de la tesis son dues. En primer lloc, els dos mètodes basats en i* definits (PRiM per a la reenginyeria de processos, i SARiM, per a la reenginyeria d'arquitectures software). En segon lloc, les diferents tècniques i* definides en PRiM i que poden ser utilitzades per construir models i*, generar alternatives i avaluar-les amb mètriques estructurals. Aquestes tècniques i mètodes s'han obtingut a partir de l'estudi de l'estat de l'art i s'han validat en diferents casos d'estudi formatius i en un cas d'estudi industrial. Com a suport, s'han desenvolupat dues eines: 1) REDEPEND-REACT, que permet la modelització gràfica de models i*, la generació d'alternatives i la definició de mètriques estructurals, i 2) J-PRiM, que dóna suport a les fases de PRiM mitjançant el tractament textual dels models i*.Information Systems are a crucial asset of the organizations and can provide competitive advantages to them. However, once the Information System is built, it has to be maintained and evolved, which includes changes on the requirements, the technology used, or the business processes supported. All these changes are diverse in nature and may require different treatments according to their impact, ranging from small improvements to the deployment of a new Information System. In both situations, changes are addressed at the requirements level, where decisions are analysed involving less resources. Because Requirements Engineering and Business Process Reengineering methods share common activities, and the design of the Information System with the business strategy has to be maintained during its evolution, a Business Process Reengineering approach is adequate for addressing Information Systems Development when there is an existing Information System to be used as starting point. The i* framework is a well-consolidated goal-oriented approach that allows to model Information Systems in a graphical way, in terms of actors and dependencies among them. The i* framework addresses Requirements Engineering and Business Process Reengineering but none of the i*-based existing approaches provides a complete framework for reengineering. In order to explore the applicability of i* for a reengineering framework, we have defined PRiM: a Process Reengineering i* Method, which assumes that there is an existing process that is the basis for the specification of the new Information System. PRiM is a six-phase method that combines techniques from the fields of Business Process Reengineering and Requirements Engineering and defines new techniques when needed. As a result PRiM addresses: 1) the analysis of the current process using socio-technical analysis techniques; 2) the construction of the i* model by differentiating the operationalization of the process form the strategic intentionality behind it; 3) the reengineering of the current process based on its analysis for improvements using goal acquisition techniques; 4) the generation of alternatives based on heuristics and patterns; 5) the evaluation of alternatives by defining structural metrics; and, 6) the specification of the new Information System from the selected i* model.There are several techniques from the Requirements Engineering and Business Process Reengineering fields, that can be used instead the ones selected in PRiM. Therefore, in order to not enforce the application of a certain technique we propose a more generic framework where to use and combine them. Method Engineering is the discipline that constructs new methods from parts of existing ones and, so, it is the approach adopted to define ReeF: a Reengineering Framework. In ReeF the six phases of PRiM are abstracted and generalized in order to allow selecting the most appropriate techniques for each of the phases, depending on the user expertise and the domain of application. As an example of the applicability of ReeF, the new method SARiM is defined. The main contributions of this work are twofold. On the one hand, two i*-based methods are defined: the PRiM method, which addresses process reengineering, and SARiM, which addresses software architecture reengineering. On the other hand, we provide several i*-based techniques to be used for constructing i* models, generating alternatives, and evaluating them using Structural Metrics. These methods and techniques are based on exhaustive review of existing work and their validation is done by means of several formative case studies and an industrial case study. Tool support has been developed for the approach: REDEPEND-REACT supporting the graphical modelling of i*, the generation of alternatives and the definition of Structural Metrics; and J-PRiM supporting all the phases of the PRiM method using a textual visualization of the i* models