Traceability from the Business Value Model to the Enterprise Architecture:A Case Study

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a significant part of business value propositions. Netflix and Spotify would not have been possible without internet technology. Therefore, it is not sufficient to consider the ICT of a business as a cost center only. Rather it drives profit, and hence should be considered in concert with the business value model of a company. In previous research we have defined guidelines to transform a business value model into an enterprise architecture. In this paper, we validate the set of guidelines in a real-world case study, in which we created the business value model of a ecosystem and used our guidelines to redesign its enterprise architecture (EA). We quantified the business value model with revenues and expenses for the company. We validated the resulting models and their traceability with management and the enterprise architect of the company. The result is a further improvement and simplification of our guidelines. In this paper we present the case study, the models and the resulting guidelines. We end the paper with a discussion of further research needed to bring these research results to practice.</p

Quantitative Alignment of Enterprise Architectures with the Business Model

For many companies, information and communication technology (ICT) is an essential part of the value proposition. Netflix and Spotify would not have been possible without internet technology. Business model up-scaling often requires a different ICT architecture, because an up-scaled business model imposes different performance requirements. This new architecture needs investments and has different operational expenses than the old architecture and requires recalculation of the business model. Investment decisions, in turn are guided by performance requirements. There are currently no methods to align a quantified business value model of a company with performance requirements on the enterprise architecture. In this paper, we show how to derive performance requirements on an enterprise architecture (EA) specified in ArchiMate from a quantification of a business model specified in e3value. Second, we show how we can aggregate investments and expenses from an ArchiMate model and insert these into an e3value model.</p

Business engineering building blocks

In order to utilize the contemporary advanced technology, business processes need sound software support. With respect to this, one frequent cause of software project failure is the mismatch between the business requirements and the actual functionality of the delivered software application. To solve this problem, it is necessary to build software stemming out from a business process model. Aiming at aligning business process modeling and software design in a component-based way, the proposed research investigates the identification of generic business engineering building blocks and their use for building ICT applications which effectively support business processes

Challenging Dyadic Interaction in the Context of Multi-Organizational Business Processes

Value creation of today is often a co-production in multi-organizational settings. This requires knowledge about how to conceive multi-organizational actor roles as foundations for co-ordinating and efficiently co-produce customer value. Some contemporary business process modelling approaches builds upon modelling interaction between two business parties (i.e. dyadic interaction), but do not acknowledge interaction patterns involving several network actors in their different actor roles. In this paper value creation in multi-organizational businesses are seen as value chains in value networks. The notion of assignments is the underlying structure in a multi-organizational perspective on business processes and is used to create foundations for distinguishing interaction patterns. Modelling and improving multi-organizational business processes conceived as action and interaction arranged in assignment structures, imply that dyadic role models need to be challenged as generative instruments. In this paper four generic multi-organizational network actor roles are brought forward (end-customer, main actor, co-ordinating actor, and co-producing actor) given meaning in and further instantiated in generic assignment actor roles based on their involvement in different multi-organizational interaction patterns. Thus, patterns of interaction constituting multi-organizational business processes are distinguished creating the necessary conditions for diverse network actors by the identification of their role in the action logic

Developing eInteractions - A Framework for Business Capabilities and Exchanges

The development of e-interactions (IT supported business interaction) need to be facilitated by comprehensive frameworks for business interaction. Existing frameworks cover fragments of the important constituents of business interaction. Based on a review of existing frameworks a more comprehensive one is presented in this paper. This comprehensive framework builds upon a symmetric focus on a supplier and on a customer. Attention is directed towards both communicative and material/financial exchanges. It distinguishes between different levels (markets level and dyadic level) of business interaction and acknowledges the dynamics of business interaction as the continual development of capabilities and business relations. On the dyadic level a distinction is made between frame contracting and business transaction. The proposed framework should be and has been used for evaluating, modelling and designing e-interactions

Dividing Multi-Organizational Businesses into Processes: Capturing Value Creation in Assignment Structures

Business transactions of today often rely on the involvement of several organizations in its preparation and realization. This means that value creation is distributed among several actors and needs to be coordinated. The division of multi-organizational businesses into business processes need to reflect the co-production of value arranged in distributed value production structures. There relies however an unresolved quest of which criteria that should govern such division of business processes. In this paper, business processes for conceiving multi-organizational businesses are identified founded in how customer assignments embed and integrate other assignments through value chains in value networks. Five core process types are identified founded in this assignment structure; development processes, planning processes, provision processes, order fulfilment processes, and evaluation processes. These processes are of both condition creating and realization characteristics to enable an efficient co-ordination of the multi-organizational business

Design Theories in Information Systems - A Need for Multi-Grounding

Within the information systems community there is growing interest in design theories. These theories are aimed to give knowledge support to design activities. Design theories are considered as theorized practical knowledge. This paper is an inquiry into the epistemology of design theories. It is an inquiry in how to justify such knowledge; the need to ground and how to ground a design theory. A distinction is made between empirical, theoretical and internal grounding. The empirical grounding has to do with the effectiveness of the application of knowledge. External theoretical grounding relates design theory to other theories. One part of this is the grounding of the design knowledge in general explanatory theories. Internal grounding means an investigation of internal warrants (e.g. as values and categories) and internal cohesion of the knowledge. Together, these different grounding processes form a coherent approach for the multi-grounding of design theory (MGDT). As illustrations some examples of design theories in IS are discussed. These are design theories concerning business interaction which are based on language action theories

Understanding Multi-Organizational Collaboration Using Pragmatic Foundations

Contemporary organizations capability to collaborate is an important competitive advantage and aligning in business networks is an increasingly common business model. Therefore, knowledge regarding characterization of collaboration businesses as well as the structure of business interaction that consists of several dyadic relationships in a multi-actor setting is of growing importance. Understanding such multi-organizational collaboration results in knowledge essential for the coordination of actors and actions involved in the realization of the joint business assignment. In this paper a multi-organizational perspective on collaboration processes is outlined as a pragmatic construction