The Need and Requirements to a Strategy Ontology

The importance of strategy and strategy construct is not a new phenomenon. However as strategy work becomes less tangible, concerns with understanding, describing, and managing strategies develops into an increasingly complex subject. Current strategy concepts are dispersed and lack integration. Moreover, the enablement of modelling practices around strategy concepts considering the entire strategy lifecycle are also missing. Consequently, this paper focuses on issues with strategy in theory and practice, why a strategy ontology is needed and how this can be developed

Leading the Practice in Layered Enterprise Architecture

While Enterprise Architecture (EA) causes organisations to think, work and model in domains, there are inadequacies in such a waterfall approach. By restating domains as layers, i.e. LEAD (Layered Enterprise Architecture Design/ Development) based on the LEAD Enterprise Ontology, EA performs better in enterprise layers and levels of abstraction. Through LEAD, the domain relationships are also better captured, hence leading the advancement of agile EA

Introducing the strategy lifecycle: using ontology and semiotics to interlink strategy design to strategy execution

The ability of existing strategy concepts to analyse strategy, design strategy and execute strategy within organisations has an alarmingly poor historical track record. Based on the long-standing semiotics and ontology research work of the Global University Alliance (GUA) and its members, a Strategy Lifecycle is introduced. The Strategy Lifecycle, underpinned by ontology and semiotics incorporates all the constructs that can be found in the most popular strategy concepts and frameworks. It explains the value of the underlying strategy ontology and the relationship between the strategy meta model, the Strategy Lifecycle and various artefacts used around strategy work. The paper concludes with future scope and application that lies ahead for the Strategy Lifecycle

Business process trends

Business process and business process management (BPM) concepts have matured over the years and new technology, concepts, standards and solutions appear. In this chapter we will therefore focus on the current and future process trends. We will elaborate on the importance of trends, the maturity of the subject, giving a perspective on what emerging trends, industry trends, mega trends are, what is hyped at the moment, and what has reached a market adoption where it has started to become the de facto standard in terms of mega trends that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance

The value of ontology, The BPM ontology

It is generally accepted that the creation of added value requires collaboration inside and between organizations. Collaboration requires sharing knowledge (e.g., a shared understanding of business processes) between trading partners and between colleagues. It is on the (unique) knowledge that is shared between and created by colleagues that organizations build their competitive advantage. To take full advantage of this knowledge, it should be disseminated as widely as possible within an organization. Nonaka distinguished tacit knowledge, which is personal, context specific, and not so easy to communicate (e.g., intuitions, unarticulated mental models, embodied technological skills), from explicit knowledge, which is meaningful information articulated in clear language, including numbers and diagrams. Tacit knowledge can be disseminated through socialization (e.g., face-to-face communication, sharing experiences), which implies a reduced dissemination speed, or can be externalized , which is the conversion of tacit into explicit knowledge. Although explicit knowledge can take many forms (e.g., business (process) models, manuals), this chapter focuses on ontologies, which are versatile knowledge artifacts created through externalization, with the power to fuel Nonaka’s knowledge spiral. Nonaka’s knowledge spiral visualizes how a body of unique corporate knowledge, and hence a competitive advantage, is developed through a collaborative and iterative knowledge creation process that involves iterative cycles of externalization, combination, and internalization. When corporate knowledge is documented with ontology, a knowledge spiral leads to ontology evolution

The BPM ontology

This chapter introduces the BPM ontology that can be applied within the area of process modelling, process engineering and process architecture. At the highest level by providing the fundamental process concepts that are used to document corporate knowledge. At the lowest level by structuring the process knowledge itself in defining its relations

Conceptual structures in LEADing and best enterprise practices

Conceptual Structures, namely Conceptual Graphs (CGs) and Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) are beginning to make an impact in Industry. This is evidenced in LEAD as it seeks to provide its 3100+ industry practitioners in many Fortune 500 and public organisations with capabilities that can handle ontology and semantics. The existing ontology and semantics work in LEAD,supported by the Global University Alliance, is described and how CGs, FCA and their tools (e.g. CoGui, CG-FCA) enhance this endeavour

Highlighting the Gaps in Enterprise Systems Models by Interoperating CGs and FCA

Enterprises arise from creative human endeavours, articulated through business concepts encoded in enterprise information systems through a modular Enterprise information Model (EIM). The EIM thus brings the productivity of computers to bear. Essentially, the EIM represents conceptual structures, which align the computer's structured way of working with the human's conceptual way of thinking. Using an industrial-strength SAP exemplar known as 'Global Bike Inc.', and expressing its EIM's meta-objects as meta-object ! relation ! metaobject, Conceptual Graphs (CGs) simplified the EIM's modules, which consist of four business layers and two information systems layers. The logical simplification of these modules is extended into four levels of detail that culminate in performance indicators being assigned to each of the six layers. From the CGs, Formal Concept Analysis (FCA)'s CGtoFCA algorithm was used to generate the meta-objectarelation ! meta-object binaries that identified the pathways layer-wise and level-wise between the meta-objects. Through the interoperability of CGs and FCA, gaps in the conceptual structure of the EIM as highlighted by its performance indicator or measure, implying that the layer is not as modular as intended

Discovering the gaps in enterprise systems via conceptual graphs and formal concept analysis

Enterprise systems such as SAP are software applications that are intended to bring the productivity of computers to bear on the human endeavour of enterprise. An industrial-strength SAP enterprise information model was rendered as meta-object!relation!meta-object in Conceptual Graphs (CGs). Then Formal Concept Analysis (FCA)'s CGtoFCA algorithm was used to generate the meta-objectarelation!metaobject binaries, revealing gaps in some of model's key performance indicators that human decision-makers need to realise the enterprise's vision

Generating Layered Enterprise Architectures with Conceptual Structures

Enterprise Architecture (EA) uses metamodels to document and align organisations’ business, information, and technology domains. This structure then enables these domains to work in harmony. Layered Enterprise Architecture Development (LEAD) builds upon EA by introducing layered metaobjects connected by semantic relations that make up LEAD’s layered metamodel. Previously, an algorithm was developed to elicit active semantic relations to achieve a view highlighting the metaobject dependencies. Subsequently, CG-FCA (Conceptual Graph and Formal Concept Analysis) and a LEAD case study were used to develop an enhanced algorithm that also generates the LEAD layers. The resulting layered FCA lattice shows a way to discover the hitherto hidden insights in LEAD, including the relationship between business and information technology