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Enterprise modelling in distributed teams - Lessons learned from information demand modelling
Abstract
Traditionally, enterprise modelling has one of its application areas in the context of improving business practice and management. In such improvement situations an important dimension is optimized information flow in organisations, i.e. to be able to provide the information required to complete organisational tasks. In order to systematically capture and analyse information demand in enterprises, a method for information demand analysis has been developed. The subject of this paper is the use of this method in distributed teams of modellers. This requires transfer of method knowledge to the modellers, coordination of its application, systematic evaluation of lessons learned, and collection of change proposals for the method. The aim is to report on the process of method knowledge transfer and usage including the lessons learned and implications on the used method.
The goal of this paper is to investigate the challenge of defining and answering modelling language requirements with domain specificity in the instance case of the ComVantage EU research project, which provides a multifaceted domain, with subdomains identified along two dimensions: a) the application dimension, where subdomains are defined by the application areas providing use cases: mobile maintenance, customer-oriented production and production line commissioning; b) the technical dimension, where subdomains are derived from a grouping of the encountered technical problems - supply chain definition in virtual enterprises, business process-driven mobile app and data requirements, business process management considering the execution environment and control of access to its resources/artefacts, design of products and services, or incident escalation management. The paper describes the requirements sources, their definition methodology and an initial derivation of modelling method building blocks from the identified requirements.
Information overload is perceived as a common problem in organisations and enterprises, which calls for new organisational and technological approaches for more pertinent and accurate information supply. The paper contributes to addressing this problem by proposing a method for information demand modelling, which contributes to capturing and understanding the information demand of roles in organisations. This method consists to a large extent of an application of enterprise modelling techniques. Illustrated by a case from automotive industries, lessons learned from information demand modelling are presented and discussed. This includes the specific perspective taken in the method for information demand analysis, common challenges experienced in demand modelling, and the validity of recommendations from participative enterprise modelling for information demand modelling. Furthermore, the paper introduces the notation applied for information demand models and discusses refinement process of this notation.