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Modelling Information Demand in an Enterprise Context
Abstract
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.
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An important step in providing personalized information, such as personalized electronic program guides, is predicting the level of interest for a specific user in information, such as TV programs. This paper describes a model that can be used to combine prediction techniques, which predict the level of interest, into prediction strategies. Our hypothesis is that prediction strategies optimize the prediction quality and that they lead to more reliable predictions, because they take into account the state of the system, the users and the information. Results of an initial experiment support this hypothesis.
Information science emerged as the third subject, along with logic and philosophy, to deal with relevance-an elusive, human notion. The concern with relevance, as a key notion in information science, is traced to the problems of scientific communication. Relevance is considered as a measure of the effectiveness of a contact between a source and a destination in a communication process. The different views of relevance that emerged are interpreted and related within a framework of communication of knowledge. Different views arose because relevance was considered at a number of different points in the process of knowledge communication. It is suggested that there exists an interlocking, interplaying cycle of various systems of relevances.
Business Process Management or BPM, broadly speaking, is part of a tradition that is now several decades old that aims at
improving the way business people think about and manage their businesses. Its particular manifestations, whether they are
termed “Work Simplification,” “Six Sigma,” “Business Process Reengineering,” or “Business Process Management,” may come and
go, but the underlying impulse, to shift the way managers and employees think about the organization of business, will continue
to grow and prosper. This chapter will provide a very broad survey of the business process movement. Anyone who tries to promote
business process change in an actual organization will soon realize that there are many different business process traditions
and that individuals from the different traditions propose different approaches to business process change. If we are to move
beyond a narrow focus on one tradition or technology, we need a comprehensive understanding of where we have been and where
we are today, and we need a vision of how we might move forward. We will begin with a brief overview of the past and of the
three business process traditions that have created the context for today’s interest in BPM. Then we will turn to a brief
survey of some of the major concerns that process practitioners are focused on today and that will probably impact most corporate
BPM efforts in the near future.
Interoperability is a key property of enterprise applications, which is hard to achieve due to the large number of interoperating components and se- mantic heterogeneity. Platform-based approaches such as service-oriented ar- chitectures address the technical integration of systems. However, a deep inte- gration needs to cover the whole lifecycle of the interoperable system. We pro- pose method engineering as a means for encoding situated knowledge about achieving interoperability in the form of method chunks. We analysed the field of interoperability for enterprise applications and propose that a tool modelling the business- and ICT-related choices in the form of method chunks is needed for a knowledge-based solution of interoperability problems. An industrial case is included to back our claims.
Enterprise Modeling has been defined as the art of externalizing enterprise knowledge, i.e., representing the core knowledge of the enterprise. Although useful in product design and systems development, for modeling and model-based approaches to have a more profound effect, a shift in modeling approaches and methodologies is necessary. Modeling should become as natural as drawing, sketching and scribbling, and should provide powerful services for capturing work-centric, work-supporting and generative knowledge, for preserving context and ensuring reuse. A solution is the application of Active Knowledge Modeling (AKM). The AKM technology is about discovering, externalizing, expressing, representing, sharing, exploring, configuring, activating, growing and managing enterprise knowledge. An AKM solution is about exploiting the Web as a knowledge engineering medium, and developing knowledge-model-based families of platforms, model-configured workplaces and services. This book was written by the inventors of AKM arising out of their cooperation with both scientists and industrial practitioners over a long period of time, and the authors give examples, directions, methods and services to enable new ways of working, exploiting the AKM approach to enable effective c-business, enterprise design and development, and lifecycle management. Industry managers and design engineers will become aware of the manifold possibilities of, and added values in, IT-supported distributed design processes, and researchers for collaborative design environments will find lots of stimulation and many examples for future developments.
This paper proposes the term method engineering for the research field of the construction of information systems development methods and tools. Some research issues in method engineering are identified. One major research topic in method engineering is discussed in depth: situational methods, i.e. the configuration of a project approach that is tuned to the project at hand. A language and support tool for the engineering of situational methods are discussed.
Because the engineering situation of each Information System Development (ISD) project is different, engineering methods need to be adapted, transformed or enhanced to satisfy the project situation. Contributions, in the field of Situational Method Engineering (SME), aim at providing techniques and tools allowing to construct project-specific methods instead of looking for universally applicable ones. In addition to the engineering method tailoring, necessary to fit the project situation, a customization of the engineering method for each engineer participating in the project is also required. Such a configuration allows a better understanding of the method by focusing on guidelines related to the project engineer daily tasks. It also increases his/her involvement in the engineering method realization. To achieve this twofold objective (engineering method tailoring and customization), we propose a framework for SME combining an assembly- based approach for project specific method construction and a roadmap-driven approach for engineer-specific method configuration. The first step of our process provides support to build a new method the most suitable for the current ISD project situation, whereas the second step aims at choosing the most adapted path (roadmap) to satisfy the requirements of a particular project engineer within the project-specific method. The two core elements of our situational method engineering framework are the method chunks repository and the reuse frame. The former concerns reusable method components definition and storage whereas the latter deals with the characterization of the project situation and the project engineer profile. In this paper we start first by presenting our situational method engineering framework and its core elements: the method chunk repository and the reuse frame. Then we show how to take advantage of them through our two-step process combining assembly-based method construction and roadmap-driven method configuration.
Healthgrids unite a large amount of independent and distributed organisations to provide for various healthcare services. Often the involved organisations can belong to different areas of healthcare and even different countries. However to achieve efficient operation they have to act in a well coordinated manner. As a result, an efficient knowledge sharing between multiple participating parties of the healthgrid is required. The paper describes application of an earlier developed ontology-driven KSNet (Knowledge Source Network) - approach to knowledge repository support for healthgrids. This approach is based on representation of knowledge via ontologies using formalism of object-oriented constraint networks. Such representation makes it possible to define and solve various tasks from the areas of management, planning, configuration, etc., by using constraint solving engines such as, for instance, ILOG or CLP. The major discussed aspects cover the formalism of knowledge representation via ontologies and implementation of the approach as a decision support system for a case study from the area of health service logistics.
Ubiquitous computing, applications that serve users with information in any situation is currently a topic of frequent discussion. In this paper we argue that many of these applications lead to an information overflow rather than providing the user with the appropriate kind of information. We, therefore, introduce an approach that we call information logistics implementing the principle of just-in-time delivery into the information supply. We discuss the concept and present a framework that serves as a generic set of kernel components implementing the information logistics approach. Based on this framework, we have developed first information logistical demonstrators.
The work presented is part of the research field information logistics, which investigates and develops concepts and technologies for improving information flow in organisations. The intention of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of information management problems in enterprises, and also improvement potentials of current information systems. The paper presents results of a study focusing on information overload in industrial enterprises, an area that previously has attracted little academic attention. Two areas are investigated: is information overload perceived as a problem in enterprises, and which application areas of enterprise information management should be prioritised for improvement activities? The survey was sent to 436 enterprises in the South of Sweden, most of them small and medium-sized enterprises, and received 164 valid responses. The sample used for the paper includes industrial enterprises from manufacturing, construction, and electronics industries, which accounts for approximately 80% of the responses. When analysing the data from the study, the paper follows the opinion of various scholars in the field that the complexity of an application case is an essential parameter to take into account when deciding on improvement potential. The more complex the application scenario is, the more likely is the usefulness of IT solutions for improving information flow. Research on complexity of projects proposes to define complexity as "consisting of many varied interrelated parts", to distinguish between organisational and technological complexity, and to operationalise this in terms of "differentiation and interdependence". One result of the study is a clear indication that information overload is perceived as a problem in industrial enterprises, which surfaces in problems such as finding the right information needed for a work task, and in the time needed to structure and store information. Furthermore, the results indicate two application areas that offer improvement potential: information management with focus on search and retrieval, and management of product information.
Organisations can be interpreted as a collection of actors who produce value for clients. In order for organisations to stay competitive there is a need for organisations to continuously develop their ability. An organisation's ability is determined by its ability to effectively apply existing knowledge to create new knowledge and to take action that forms the basis for achieving competitive advantage from knowledge-based assets. One means for developing the organisational ability is to establish a mutually accepted understanding of the context in which the actors are acting. One important part of the organisation's knowledge creation processes is to facilitate the sharing of personal knowledge. A condition for developing the organisational ability is to expand the amount of shared knowledge to an appropriate level. One type of knowledge that needs to be shared among different actors within the organisation is the knowledge about how and in which order actions are performed (contextual knowledge) in order to satisfy client needs. In this paper an approach for team-based reconstruction, used for moving from personal to shared contextual knowledge, is presented. The approach bears on the foundation of theories about knowledge management for understanding the process of externalisation and theories about language action for understanding organisations. Experiences from three case studies are presented. Team-based reconstruction can be used for (1) moving from personal knowledge to shared contextual knowledge in an efficient way, (2) arriving at a foundation for efficient organisational coordination, (3) arriving at a base for development work, and (4) organisational learning.
In this paper, I present issues related to user profiles and their management in pervasive computing. I motivate the need for user profiles and present basic techniques that can be used in storing and managing profiles. I also present technigues that can be used to help profiling and Semantic Web techniques that are also emerging to help also in problems associated with user profiling and intelligent applications.
The problem to which the paper has been directed is the selection of an information requirements determination strategy. In developing the concept of strategy selection, the paper defines two levels of requirements: organizational information requirements and application-level requirements. The constraints on humans as specifiers of information requirements are explored. Four broad strategies for information requirements determination encompass groups of methods. These strategies are (1) asking, (2) deriving from an existing information system, (3) synthesis from characteristics of the utilizing system, and (4) discovering from experimentation with an evolving information system application.
Visual notations form an integral part of the language of software engineering (SE). Yet historically, SE researchers and notation designers have ignored or undervalued issues of visual representation. In evaluating and comparing notations, details of visual syntax are rarely discussed. In designing notations, the majority of effort is spent on semantics, with graphical conventions largely an afterthought. Typically, no design rationale, scientific or otherwise, is provided for visual representation choices. While SE has developed mature methods for evaluating and designing semantics, it lacks equivalent methods for visual syntax. This paper defines a set of principles for designing cognitively effective visual notations: ones that are optimized for human communication and problem solving. Together these form a design theory, called the Physics of Notations as it focuses on the physical (perceptual) properties of notations rather than their logical (semantic) properties. The principles were synthesized from theory and empirical evidence from a wide range of fields and rest on an explicit theory of how visual notations communicate. They can be used to evaluate, compare, and improve existing visual notations as well as to construct new ones. The paper identifies serious design flaws in some of the leading SE notations, together with practical suggestions for improving them. It also showcases some examples of visual notation design excellence from SE and other fields.
Information system development lacks support for the organisational modelling and analysis which should be carried out prior to or concurrent with the requirements determination stage. We propose a new approach, termed Organizational Requirements Engineering (ORE), for requirements determination, which links together organisational and information system modelling, provides for re-engineering the organisation, and contains new diagrammatic methods both for organisational as well as information system modelling, which focus on the event. The method is designed to allow users to build their own organisational models. Parts of the method are supported by software tools. In addition, the results of an action research study show the ORE approach to organisational modelling compares favourably with that of data flow diagramming.
The objective of this paper is to report a set of experiences of applying participative enterprise modeling in different organizational
contexts. While the authors have successfully applied the approach in many organizations, the paper primarily concentrates
on three cases. On the basis of these experiences the paper presents a set of generic principles for applying participative
enterprise modeling.
In order to deliver relevant information at the right time to its mobile users, systems such as event notification systems need to be aware of the users’ context (e. g., time, location, used devices). Many context frameworks have been introduced in the past few years. However, they usually do not consider the no- tion of characteristic features of contexts that are invariant during certain time intervals. This paper presents a model,to handle various contexts and situations in information logistics. A context is defined as a collection of values usually observed by sensors, e. g., location . A situation builds on this concept by intro- ducing semantical aspects defined in an ontology.
While the software process improvement movement is relatively recent, the need for improvement is not new. In this paper, the author reviews his personal experiences with software process improvement and describes some of the key events that led to such current widely-used methods as the CMMI, the PSP, and the TSP. He summarizes the principles behind these methods and explains the principal reasons that these highly effective development methods have not been adopted more rapidly. In closing, he notes that their ultimate adoption is inevitable. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Abstract Even though hundreds of modelling methods are in existence today, practitioners and researchers are zealously ‘producing’ new modelling methods. The ‘blooming’ production of modelling methods is not the problem; the lack of standardized techniques for evaluating them is. To complicate the matter even further, most of the modelling methods have been introduced based on common sense and intuition of the methods' developers. Many of these methods lack theoretical foundations and empirical evidence to demonstrate their worthiness. With the current state of affairs, studies on evaluation of modelling methods have become necessary and critical. Comparing modelling methods provides us with the necessary knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each method. This knowledge can also guide us in our quest for better modelling methods. This paper reviews various evaluation techniques used by both researchers and practitioners. The evaluation techniques are categorized into three classifications: feature comparison, theoretical and conceptual evaluation, and empirical evaluation. This research also analyses the underlying philosophies and assumptions of these evaluation techniques.
Ph.D. Gregory D. Abowd
In many situations there is a need to integrate methods. In any
method integration learning aspects should be addressed explicitly. The
paper presents procedure and experiences from a research and development
project concerning integration of two development methods. Communication
problems obstruct the integrative method redesign initially. The
communication problems are resolved through the use of an explicit
method theory for classification and reconstruction of the method
candidates. During application of the integrated method, further
reconstruction of tacit method knowledge is performed. The method
integration process also includes meta learning: formulation of the
method integration as a learning process and modification of the applied
method theory
Customizable CASE environments: A framework for design and evaluation. Paper presented at the COPE IT/NordDATA Workshop
- G Goldkuhl
- S Cronholm
Method requirements for information demand analysis
- M Lundqvist
- K Sandkuhl
- U Seigerroth
- J Stirna
Optimising information flow by means of context: Models and architecture
- S Haselhoff
På väg mot en komponentbaserad metodsyn
- A Röstlinger
- G Goldkuhl