Integrating Models of Observing and Observed Activities Based on an Example of Empirical Research in Information Systems Discipline

A situation where both observing and observed activities need to be taken into consideration is not uncommon in practice. In Viable System Model (VSM), System 3* is dedicated to making sudden inspections on how the work is done “on the floor”. A typical case in research is an empirical study, where research activities are aimed at understanding the activities of the object under investigation. Though separate models of the observation activity and the observed activity are often presented, having an integrated model that connects both often falls under the radar. This article investigates how the latter model can be built and used in empirical research projects in the Information System (IS) discipline.  Articles in the IS field presenting research projects that use data from practice, as a rule, describe the practice and research process, including which research methods have been used for obtaining and analyzing the data. Some articles present models of practice under investigation using appropriate modeling notations. Some articles present a research process in some graphical form. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no established practice of presenting a model that interconnects practical and research activities. This article tries to fill the gap, and it presents some ideas on how to build a model that integrates observing and observed activities. Such a model can be used for planning a research project and to better understand the limitations of the approaches used or to be used in the project

Building and Exploiting a Business Process Model for Lobbying: Experience Report

The paper describes a project in the domain of business process modeling that concerns loosely-structured business processes, i.e. processes for which it is difficult to establish an order of activities. The process in focus is the lobbying process, i.e. a process aimed at influencing decisions of others, e.g. politicians. The project was carried out at a non-profit interest organization, and the paper describes the project’s motivation, structure, methodology, results, and how the results were exploited, including a short description of an IT system built to support the lobbying process. As the commonly spread workflow technique is not particularly suitable for loosely-structured business processes, the project exploited an original state-flow technique for developing a model of the lobbying process. The state-flow technique is based on the state-oriented view on business processes that has been used as a foundation for building the support system. The paper reports a number of problems encountered during the introduction of the system into operational practice. These problems led to the needs of reducing the level of details initially introduced into the system; they will be reintroduced at the later stage when the users become more accustomed to work in the process-oriented manner. In the conclusion, the paper discusses success factors important for modeling projects, and pros and cons of the modeling method used, as well as a broader research context of which the work presented in the paper is a part

Towards a Business Process Modeling Technique for Agile Development of Case Management Systems

A modern organization needs to adapt its behavior to changes in the business environment by changing its Business Processes (BP) and corresponding Business Process Support (BPS) systems. One way of achieving such adaptability is via separation of the system code from the process description/model by applying the concept of executable process models. Furthermore, to ease introduction of changes, such process model should separate different perspectives, for example, control-flow, human resources, and data perspectives, from each other. In addition, for developing a completely new process, it should be possible to start with a reduced process model to get a BPS system quickly running, and then continue to develop it in an agile manner. This article consists of two parts, the first sets requirements on modeling techniques that could be used in the tools that supports agile development of BPs and BPS systems. The second part suggests a business process modeling technique that allows to start modeling with the data/information perspective which would be appropriate for processes supported by Case or Adaptive Case Management (CM/ACM) systems. In a model produced by this technique, called data-centric business process model, a process instance/case is defined as sequence of states in a specially designed instance database, while the process model is defined as a set of rules that set restrictions on allowed states and transitions between them. The article details the background for the project of developing the data-centric process modeling technique, presents the outline of the structure of the model, and gives formal definitions for a substantial part of the model

Design Science in Action: Developing a Framework for Introducing IT Systems into Operational Practice

The paper presents an example of using design science research for solving a problem arising from local practice. The problem concerns adoption of new technology. The paper aims to integrate existing approaches and theories of technology acceptance and change management in a framework useful for practical purposes. It is based on the idea that the successful introduction of an IT-system requires a number of conditions to be satisfied as well as means for bringing about the satisfaction of these conditions. The level of satisfaction of the conditions can be measured by a set of parameters, such as the level of strategic, tactical and operational understanding of the system by the users. Means include various types of actions, tools and strategies. The introduction process is steered via periodically measuring the parameters, and applying means that help to change the level of satisfaction of the conditions

Using a Socio-Technical Model of a Global Software Development Project for Facilitating Risk Management and Improving the Project Structure

Any global software development project needs to deal with distances – geographical, cultural, time zone, etc. – between the groups of developers engaged in the project. To successfully manage the risks caused by such distances, there is a need to explicate and present the distances in a form suitable for manual or semi-automatic analysis, the goal of which is to detect potential risks and find ways of mitigating them. The article presents a technique of modeling a global software development project suitable for such analysis. The project is modeled as a complex socio-technical system that consists of functional components connected to each other through output-input relationships. The components do not coincide with the organizational units of the project, and their teams can be distributed through the geographical and organizational landscape of the project. The modeling technique helps to explicate and represent various kinds of distances between the functional components to determine which of them constitute risk factors. The technique was developed during two case studies, of which the second is used for presenting and demonstrating the new modeling technique in the article

Structured Shared Spaces as a Basis for Building Business Process Support Systems: A Generic Model and Analysis of Examples

Though the concept of shared spaces had been known in Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for quite a while, it did not become popular until the arrival of the Internet and social software. Implicitly, the concept of shared spaces has penetrated many IT-areas, including the area of Business Process Management. Though shared spaces are used in many systems and tools, like Google Drive and Projectplace, there is a lack of research investigating this usage in a generic way. The article aims to fill this gap by introducing a generic model of a Business Process Support (BPS) system based on shared space that supports the comparison, analysis and design of BPS systems. In addition, the article goes in more details on one design issue – the structuring of shared spaces. This is done by analyzing and comparing two different BPS systems that exploit the concept of shared spaces, though implicitly. These systems use different approaches to shared space structuring. The first one organizes the information by grouping similar types of items without regard to the flow of activities in a business process, while the other organizes the information around groups of activities that are usually completed as a block. Which model to choose in a particular situation depends on the characteristics of the business process and its participants. In order to facilitate this choice, the article offers a number of guidelines derived from the experience of using the two BPS systems in practice. The article also discusses in what circumstances BPS systems with shared spaces are preferable to traditional workflow BPS systems

Is People-Structure-Tasks-Technology Matrix Outdated?

The paper investigates whether the classical socio-technical matrix that differentiate 4 quadrants of social-technical system: people, structure, tasks and technology can still be useful for practical purposes. The paper gives a positive answer on the question, provided that the level of abstraction in defining these four quadrants is increased to deal with culture, type of structure, methods (techniques) and type of technology, as well as the idea of joint optimization is substituted with the idea of alignment. The paper presents some examples where the concept of the augment matrix has been used

Functional Decomposition of a Socio-Technical System : What is Missing?

The paper discusses the needs of new expressive means for modeling a socio-technical system as consisting of functional components that are connected to each-other through the output-input relationships. The discussion is based on an example of depicting so-called feedback connections between the functional components of a system. The need to introduce a feedback connection arises when two connected components are heavily dependent on the intellectual activity of people who man the components. In such a situation, there is a risk that the output from one component could be misinterpreted by the component which takes it as an input. Using a simplified example of a software development project, the paper introduces the notion of a feedback connection and discusses the ways it could be realized in a socio-technical system

Choosing Approach to Business Process Modeling. Practical Perspective

Abstract: One of the essential parts of a business process modeling project is choosing an approach to modeling and/or modeling notation/tool. The selection of a “right for the task” approach can substantially increase chances for success. To ensure the “right ” choice, the following three sets of factors should be considered: (a) properties of modeling objects, i.e. business processes, (b) characteristics of the modeling environment, (c) intended use of the model. The paper is devoted to the analysis of these factors. It presents a simplified classification of the approaches to business process modeling. It lists the most essential properties of various business processes, it classifies modeling environments, and it discusses some practical tasks where the business process model can be used. Based on the analysis, practical recommendations on what approach to choose are given