In enterprise modeling focus has been on capturing the right level of information and how the models represent this information. This paper purposes a project, which aims to look at the stakeholder and their participation in the modeling process. The paper proposes a solution for how the stakeholders can be included in the process by drawing inspiration from knowledge of visual conceptual models, knowledge from industry modeling processes and digital interactive collaborative techniques. The result is a collaborative framework or methodology, which can make communication with models more exible and engage a wider audience in the creation and maintenance of conceptual models.
One of the key tasks in Enterprise Architecture (EA) is to analyse the current
situation and existing challenges in the enterprise with the active participation of
domain experts and decision makers [12]. Two of the elicitation approaches used
in this phase are interviews and participatory modeling workshops [12]. After an
iteration of the aforementioned elicitation approaches, possibly in combination
with other approaches [12], modelers create conceptual models of the knowledge
captured [12]. The models are created using one or several di erent notations, e.g.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) [
Enterprises operate in an ever-changing marketplace; this means that, if the enterprises want to stay competitive, it is crucial that it rapidly responds to any changes. Creating, changing and updating an di erent enterprise model can be a challenging task, particularly as the number of stakeholders increases. The tasks become even more complicated, if the stakeholders are in di erent departments and/or subsidiaries. A third aspect, is that a change can be initiated by any of the ? Copyright held by the author. stakeholders, for which the model is relevant. This puts additional constraints on the process, which is used to change and update a model. 2
Conceptual modeling of organizations is not a new concept. 2 of the pioneers of
this topic were Young and Kent in 1958 [
Among the common assumptions for these frameworks, is the notion that
enterprise modeling, to a certain extent, is a collaborative process among modeling
experts and stakeholders (domain experts and decision makers) [
Visual conceptual models can be created by using a wide range of di erent
modeling notations. Di erent modeling notations are usually used in di erent
contexts: UML in computer science and BPMN is usually used to model business
processes. In sociology, a boundary object is a piece of information, "which has
di erent meaning in di erent social worlds, but the structure is common enough
to more then one world to make them recognizable" [13]. Boundary objects can
be used to create understanding between di erent contexts [
Another aspect, which will in uence contextual information sharing is the
fact, that notations are di erent in their graphical construction and these
constructions have an in uence on how well, a model is understood by the
stakeholders [
Information sharing is considered an important approach to increasing organizational e ciency and performance [16]. With the advances in information 1 http://www.softwareag.com/corporate/products/aris alfabet/default.asp 2 http://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/DODAF/DoDAF v2-02 web.pdf 3 https://www.zachman.com/about-the-zachman-framework and communication technology, sharing information across organizations can become even more e ective. We have seen, how the internet has become a powerful information sharing tool in software development [15]. The question is, how can the internet and particularly mobile applications, support the usage of visual conceptual models in contexts, where these haven't been used before.
To summarize, the application space of conceptual models has continually increased since the 80-ties, in context, scope and size. A number of di erent frameworks have been proposed in order to manage and make the enterprise architecture models actionable. Given the increased application space of conceptual models and possibilities introduced by mobile devices, I will propose a research project, which aims to use conceptual models for cross-contextual communication. The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section 3 describes the problem I intend to address, section 4 describes the methodology, section 5 describes the expected contributions and sections 6 and 7 describe the current status and the plan for the future. 3
Given the overview of enterprise modeling and visual conceptual models presented in section 2 and the background description in section 1. I conclude that, this area presents considerable exploration opportunities. Furthermore, I envision that my solution will take the path of empirically founded research, which will demonstrate and provide evidence for the stated claims.
The goal of this research project is to e ectively and e ciently engage the stakeholders and modelers in cross-organizational collaboration, such that the organization can rapidly respond to any changes in the marketplace. I propose that we position the visual conceptual model at the heart of the conversation, such that the message is also the medium. I will elaborate with the following question: 1. How can visual conceptual models be used to communicate changes in an enterprise and how can all the relevant domain experts and decision makers be included in the communication?
From section 2, responding to rapid changes in the enterprise through stakeholder participation and using conceptual models to communicate the required changes, has not been researched before. To explore the di erent aspects, I have chosen to break, the overall question, down into the following sets of questions: 1. What are the main phases of a modeling process in a enterprise context? (a) Which stakeholders are involved in each phase? (b) What is their motivation? (c) Which tools are used in the each phase? 2. What do we know about comprehension of visual conceptual models? 3. What do we know about collaborative creation of visual conceptual models?
First, we need to establish, what the di erent phases are in a modeling process in a certain context, which stakeholders are involved, their motivation and which tools they use. This is necessary, in order to establish an initial state or the current state of a airs. Dialog with modelers, seems to indicate that there are 3 di erent phases: knowledge elicitation, model creation and circulation. I have not been able to nd any empirical evidence for this statement, therefore it would be interesting to see, if this holds true.
Secondly, there are several di erent visual conceptual modeling languages, e.g. UML, BPMN and Event-driven Process Chains (EPC). I have chosen to base my focus on empirical studies regarding visual aspects of UML. The intent is to identify the existing knowledge about visual aspects of UML models and their correlation to human comprehension. This knowledge could be used as a building block, when evaluating visual aspects and their in uence on visual conceptual model construction.
Enterprise modeling is a collaboration between modelers and stakeholders
(see section 2). The keyword is collaboration and this will add the third
dimension to this research project. In [
In order to evaluate and validate the outcome of this project, I plan to use a empirical approach. The idea is to conduct an ethnographic study in a enterprise setting, such that I can establish a initial state or more formally a null hypothesis. In this study, I plan to observe, how models are created and continually updated in an enterprise. The strength of this approach is that it gives very precise insights into a certain context and population. A weakness is that the insight gained, might be in uenced by aspects, which are outside the scope of the research. Nevertheless, the intent is to nd a model of the process, which is used to create conceptual model.
In order to establish a foundation regarding visual aspects of conceptual models and their correlation to human comprehension, I plan to conduct a Structured Literature Review (SLR) on the empirical studies of visual aspect of UML models. This will provide the basis for me to explore, how visual aspects a ect communication with models. The strength of conducting a SLR is that the literature is searched in a structured manner, which done properly could be repeated.
It is clear that in any collaboration, there are human factors, which a ect the
collaboration paradigm [
Technical solutions, which could be used to enable cross-enterprise
collaboration; such as social networks [15], blogs[15], wikis [15] or digitally augmented
table-tops [
The expected contributions of this research project are the following: 1. A Structured Literature Review on empirical research of visual aspects of
UML models. 2. A case study, which studies the process of conceptual modeling in a given context. 3. A study that focuses on the visual aspects, which a ect
comprehension/understanding of conceptual models. 4. A study that focuses on which stakeholder aspects, which can in uence participation in conceptual model creation. 5. A framework for creation and maintenance of conceptual models in a distributed environment. 6. A mobile application, which implements the framework in 5. The contributions above have relevance in di erent elds. The SLR has relevance in the UML and empirical research communities in computer science. A study on how conceptual models are created in industry, could provide an interesting insight in a wide range of di erent conceptual modeling communities; e.g BPMN and EA. An study into, which aspects can in uence stakeholders participation in a modeling process can provide profound insight, for the development of a collaborative framework and also a base for the evaluation of the same framework. The framework aims to answer the overarching question of this thesis and as such its focus is on the aspects, which motivate and engage stakeholder participation in the collaborative creation of visual conceptual models and providing the functionality for updating and continually evaluating the created models. The mobile application is the concrete instantiation of the framework and is intended to empirically evaluate it.
The insight gained form this research project could potentially contribute to a wide range of di erent modeling communities, because the question of this thesis can be applied to software development, information systems and obviously enterprise modeling. 6
The emphasis of this project has, up until this point, been 2 di erent activities. The rst activity is an SLR. The SLR aims to identify, which visual aspects of UML models have been evaluated empirically, in addition to the identi cation, the SLR aims to collect and map the results from the di erent studies. This should result in a condense overview of the empirical studies, which have been conducted and also identify areas, that could be explored further. The SLR will also provide valuable insight into, which visual aspects could in uence the understanding and communication with visual models.
The second activity has been the development of a mobile application with the primary functionality of showing stakeholders the conceptual models, which address their concerns. The application also provides functionality, such that the stakeholder can provide feedback and/or request a change to be made to a given visual model. The rst version of the application was demonstrated in a industrial conference hosted by QualiWare on the 05 - 06.05.2015. 7
The table 7 shows the current time-line for this project. The time line is split up in to half-year periods where the major focus points of that period are described. The focus of the time-line are the research activities, which are planned in that half-year. Industrial and academic commitments such as courses and other activities are not considered. At this early stage of the project the time-line is subject to possible changes. 12. Kurt Sandkuhl, Janis Stirna, Anne Persson, and Matthias Wi otzki. Elicitation Approaches in Enterprise Modeling. In Enterprise Modeling, pages 39{51. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. 13. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer. Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3):387{420, 1989. 14. Harald Storrle. On the impact of layout quality to understanding UML diagrams.
In 2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), pages 135{142. IEEE, September 2011. 15. Christoph Treude. The Role of Social Media Artifacts in Collaborative Software
Development. Dissertation, University of Siegen, 2012. 16. Tung Mou Yang and Terrence A. Maxwell. Information-sharing in public organizations: A literature review of interpersonal, intra-organizational and interorganizational success factors. Government Information Quarterly, 28(2):164{175, 2011. 17. John W Young and Henry K Kent. Abstract Formulation of Data Processing Problems. In ACM '58 Preprints of papers presented at the 13th national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, pages 1{4, 1958.