Towards the use of situational information in information retrieval

This paper is an exploratory study of one approach to incorporating situational information into information retrieval systems, drawing on principles and methods of discourse linguistics. A tenet of discourse linguistics is that texts of a specific type possess a structure above the syntactic level, which follows conventions known to the people using such texts to communicate. In some cases, such as literature describing work done, the structure is closely related to situations, and may therefore be a useful representational vehicle for the present purpose. Abstracts of empirical research papers exhibit a well-defined discourse- level structure, which is revealed by lexical clues. Two methods of detecting the structure automatically are presented: (i) a Bayesian probabilistic analysis; and (ii) a neural network model. Both methods show promise in preliminary implementations. A study of users\u27 oral problem statements indicates that they are not amenable to the same kind of processing. However, from in-depth interviews with users and search intermediaries, the following conclusions are drawn: (i) the notion of a generic research script is meaningful to both users and intermediaries as a high-level description of situation; (ii) a researcher\u27s position in the script is a predictor of the relevance of documents; and (iii) currently, intermediaries can make very little use of situational information. The implications of these findings for system design are discussed, and a system structure presented to serve as a framework for future experimental work on the factors identified in this paper. The design calls for a dialogue with the user on his or her position in a research script and incorporates features permitting discourse-level components of abstracts to be specified in search strategies

An Explorative Study Into Situational Artefact Construction in Business Rules Management

The implementation of software products is a time-consuming activity and requires specific expertise to be completed successfully. This is especially the case in research fields where there is no or little tool support available, such as Business Rules Management (BRM) and Business Rules Management Solutions (BRMS). Tool support is essential to successfully guide the organizational implementation of a BRMS. Motivated by the diversity of organizational structures and their BRMS implementation contexts, we design a situational-aware framework for the organizational implementation of BRMS. The framework is based on the theory of situational artefact construction. Using situational artefact construction, we study 13 BRMS implementation cases distributed over the financial and public sectors in the Netherlands. Based on the results of the cases analysed we present a framework with three main artefacts that are a stepping-stone towards further research on situational implementation methodology in the BRM field

How to Exploit the Digitalization Potential of Business Processes

Process improvement is the most value-adding activity in the business process management (BPM) lifecycle. Despite mature knowledge, many approaches have been criticized to lack guidance on how to put process improvement into practice. Given the variety of emerging digital technologies, organizations not only face a process improvement black box, but also high uncertainty regarding digital technologies. This paper thus proposes a method that supports organizations in exploiting the digitalization potential of their business processes. To achieve this, action design research and situational method engineering were adopted. Two design cycles involving practitioners (i.e., managers and BPM experts) and end-users (i.e., process owners and participants) were conducted. In the first cycle, the method’s alpha version was evaluated by interviewing practitioners from five organizations. In the second cycle, the beta version was evaluated via real-world case studies. In this paper, detailed results of one case study, which was conducted at a semiconductor manufacturer, are included