How Conceptual Modeling Is Used

Conceptual models play an increasingly important role for business process engineering, information systems development, and customizing of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Despite the widespread interest in conceptual modeling, relatively little is known to date on the level and nature of conceptual modeling use in practice. Therefore our study investigates how practitioners use conceptual modeling. In particular, we address the following three key questions: To what extent do practitioners use conceptual modeling techniques and tools? How relevant is conceptual modeling for certain purposes? Are there barriers and success factors in using conceptual modeling? This paper informs information systems professionals about recent trends in the area of conceptual modeling. The results of our study should be considered when developing syllabuses for modeling courses as well as when judging the relevance of various research streams in the area of conceptual modeling

ON THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF RESEARCH INTO THE UNDERSTANDABILITY OF BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS

Against the background of the growing significance of Business Process Management (BPM) for Information Systems (IS) research and practice, especially the field of Business Process Modeling gains more and more importance. Business process models support communication about as well as the coordination of processes and have become a widely adopted tool in practice. As the understandability of business process models plays a crucial role in communication processes, more and more studies on process model understandability have been conducted in IS research. This article aims at investigating underlying theories of research into business process model understandability by means of an in-depth analysis of 126 systematically retrieved research articles on the topic. It shows in how far process model understandability research is multi-theoretically founded. Identified theories differ regarding addressed subject matters, their coverage, their focus as well as the underlying notion of model understanding, which is exemplarily demonstrated and discussed in this article. Moreover, implications of the findings are discussed and an outlook on future business process model understandability research and on the integration potential of theories in this field is given

Praxisleitfaden – Green IT für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen

Die vorliegende Veröffentlichung des Instituts für Wirtschaftsinformatik beschäftigt sich mit dem für Forschung und Praxis gleichermaßen bedeutsamen Thema „Green IT“. Unter dem Schlagwort Green IT wurden in den vergangenen Jahren Konzepte und Methoden zur ökologisch nachhaltigen Herstellung, dem Betrieb und der Entsorgung von Systemen der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IKT) entwickelt. Die Konzepte sollen dabei helfen, bei der Produktion solcher Systeme soweit möglich auf problematische Inhaltsstoffe zu verzichten oder geeignete Recycling-Konzepte für die Wiederverwertung von Rohstoffen aus den Geräten am Ende ihres Lebenszyklus bereit-zustellen. Für viele kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU) in Deutschland stellt die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema eine Herausforderung dar. Nicht zuletzt deshalb, da Informationstechnologie (IT) vor allem für kleine Unternehmen, wie etwa Handwerksbetrieben, außerhalb des eigenen Kompetenzbereichs liegt. Die Chancen, die sich durch Green IT auftun, werden so nur unzureichend von den entsprechenden Unternehmen gesehen und verwirklicht. Neben der unmittelbaren Reduzierung des Energieverbrauchs von IKT-Systemen sind dies vor allem die Verlängerung der Lebensdauer von Endgeräten und damit Einsparung endlicher Rohstoffe bei der Produktion oder die Einhaltung gesetzlicher Vorgaben. Im Rahmen der Initiative "eKompetenz-Netzwerk für Unternehmen" des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi) stellen bundesweit 38 regionale eBusiness-Lotsen anbieterneutrale und praxisnahe IKT-Informationen für Unternehmen, insbesondere für KMU und Handwerk zur Verfügung. Im Folgenden wird ein Praxisleitfaden präsentiert, der vom Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik im Rahmen des eBusiness-Lotsen Saar entstanden ist. Der Leitfaden hat das Ziel, KMUs für die Chancen zu sensibilisieren, die aus der Anwendung von Konzepten des Themenbereichs Green IT im betrieblichen Alltag entstehen können. Hierfür werden insgesamt 22 Maßnahmen zusammen mit Umsetzungsempfehlungen für verschiedene Unternehmensgrößen vorgestellt. Die Umsetzung der Maßnahmen wird anhand einer Fallstudie erläutert, welche die KMUs als Orientierung für die Implementierung der Maßnahmen im eigenen Unternehmen verwenden können

Organizational and Technological Options for Business Process Management from the Perspective ofWeb 2.0 - Results of a Design Oriented Research Approach with Particular Consideration of Self-Organization and Collective Intelligence

Corporate operative systems are often highly dynamic, a fact which is only insufficiently taken into account by recent process management approaches. In contrast, the perspective of Web 2.0 opens up new options for action in process management. In this contribution, we figure out new organizational and technological options of process management using a design-oriented research approach. The analysis especially considers the aspects of self-organization and collective intelligence in process management. We conceptually develop options for action and illustrate them based on a prototype platform for process management. The paper is complemented by a presentation of real-world application scenarios in the construction industry and results of an evaluation of the design-oriented research approach

TOWARDS A REFERENCE MODEL FOR ECOLOGICAL IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

The incorporation of ecological objectives in the design of information systems has gained increasing attention by IS research in recent years. Nevertheless, from the perspective of IT Service Management (ITSM), comprehensive approaches are still warranting attention. The objective of this paper is therefore to develop a process for the management of ecology in ITSM. By using the method of reference modeling, the widely-used IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is extended by a new process category, called Ecology Management. Based on a requirements analysis, four ecology management processes are introduced: Resource Substitution Management, Resource Efficiency Management, Resource Demand Management, and Ecological Transparency Management. In addition, interrelations to the existing ITIL processes are built by defining ecological concepts, like Green Incidents, or Green SLAs. These results are validated for the example of Green Incident Management in the related consortium research project. An important limitation is the focus on ITSM

Inductive Reference Modelling Based on Simulated Social Collaboration

Organizations nowadays possess huge repositories of process models. Inductive reference modelling can save costs and time by reusing process parts of process models belonging to a common domain. The inductive development of a reference model for a large corpus of process models is a difficult problem. Quite a few, primarily heuristic approaches have been proposed to the research community that require an approximate matching between the single processes. With our approach, we introduce a new concept that brings in for the first time an abstract efficiency simulation of the social collaboration around knowledge-based process models. A reference model is assembled featuring at least the topological minimum requirements to be significantly more efficient than the input process models. Our evaluation indicates that the approach is able to generate reference process models that are more efficient than the input process models and at least as a reference model designed by an expert