Modeling of cooperative tasks in Business-IT management – A proposal for a domain-specific extension of BPMN 2.0

The increasing influence of information technology in enterprises expands the demand for closer coordination and cooperation between business and IT. In a qualitative survey study we researched the relationship between IT strategy development, IT project portfolio and enterprise architecture management as well as relations between business and IT. As result a Business-IT management reference process model based on the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 was developed. During the research process it became evident that visualization of coordination and cooperation within business processes needs to be improved gaining higher readability and intelligibility. Based on these requirements we present in this paper five domain-specific tasks and a new marker for BMPN 2.0, which are able to visualize coordination-specific tasks in processes. The proposed extension will be linked to theoretical concepts about cooperation. Two exemplary processes (developing an IT strategy and filtering of relevant IT projects) will illustrate the usefulness and higher readability of the new types and marker

An Extension Proposition for the Agent-Based Language Modeling Ontology for the Representation of Supply Chain Integrated Business Processes

The recent introduction of supply chain systems has redefined the way organizations perceive collaboration. Although characterized as a human driven process by which people communicate, share knowledge, and cooperate internally; collaboration also extends outside the organization and across the supply chain by interacting with both suppliers and customers. While human driven collaboration is fundamental in operating certain business processes, they are usually depicted in models such as high-level abstracts or implicitly integrated in exception related mechanisms. This creates the need for an ontology capable of representing human-driven collaboration. The Agent Lab Language (TALL) ontology was selected as a possible solution to the research problem given its emphasis on agent/ business collaborations. A Bunge-Wand-Weber ontological representation analysis was further used to evaluate the ontological completeness of the Agent Language Lab (TALL). From this analysis, a set of propositions were elaborated in accordance with human-driven collaboration requirements. Following these propositions and the results of the analysis, additional constructs were proposed to the TALL ontology as a solution to the research problem