=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-344/paper-2
|storemode=property
|title=Supporting Agile Development with Participative Enterprise Modeling
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-344/paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-344
|authors=Janis Stirna,Marite Kirikova
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/caise/StirnaK08
}}
==Supporting Agile Development with Participative Enterprise Modeling==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-344/paper2.pdf
Supporting Agile Development with Participative
Enterprise Modeling
Janis Stirna1, Marite Kirikova2
1
Jönköping University, PO Box 1026, SE-551 11, Jönköping, Sweden
janis.stirna@jth.hj.se
2
Riga Technical University, 1 Kalku Street, Riga, LV 1658, Latvia
marite.kirikova@cs.rtu.lv
Abstract. Agile Modeling provides a set of best practices of “light-weight”
modeling to support the modeling process on a macro level within the agile
development teams. The objective of this paper is to analyze the potential of
using Enterprise Modeling in agile development projects to address some of the
existing challenges of agile projects.
Keywords. Enterprise modeling, agile modeling, agile development
1 Introduction
The Information System (IS) development community has been trying out and
adopting various agile development approaches such as, e.g., eXtreme Programming
(XP) [1] and SCRUM [2]. One of the strengths of agile approaches is their flexibility
and ability of dealing with change efficiently. Their philosophy is development of
only those artifacts that are directly related to the software product. Agile approaches
typically do not prescribe which methods, languages, and tools are to be used. Instead,
the emphasis is on choosing the simplest, most effective and, therefore, the most cost
effective ones. To support the modeling process on a macro level within the agile
development teams Agile Modeling (AM) [3] was developed. AM provides best
practices of “light-weight” modeling and suggests active stakeholder involvement.
However, gathering requirements in agile methods is targeted exclusively to
software development needs. The relationship between knowledge of enterprise
stakeholders and software artifacts is tacit and contributes only to the software
development process, not to the enterprise knowledge development on a larger scale.
This phenomenon does no permit to utilize all possible benefits of requirement
gathering. Enterprise Modeling (EM) [4] on the other hand has proven to be a
practicable instrument for creating an integrated and negotiated model describing
different aspects of an enterprise. [5] show that EM can be used for two main types of
objectives – (1) developing the business, e.g. developing business vision, strategies,
redesigning the way the business operates, developing the supporting information
systems, or (2) ensuring the quality of the business, e.g. sharing the knowledge about
the business, its vision, the way it operates, or ensuring the acceptance of business
decisions through committing the stake-holders to the decisions made.
6 Proceedings of CAiSE’08 Forum
In this paper we analyze the potential of using EM, taking the EKD (Enterprise
Knowledge Development) approach as an example, in agile development projects.
The research approach is conceptual and argumentative based on findings of a number
of qualitative research studies [5, 6, 7, 8]. The rest of the paper is structured as
follows. Sections 2 and 3 summarize EM and agile development respectively. Section
4 integrates the AM and EM while section 6 presents concluding remarks.
2 Background to EKD
EKD is an EM method for developing, acquiring, and communicating early,
enterprise knowledge, such as strategies, goals, or requirements, by a structured,
iterative, working and modeling approach [4]. The Enterprise Model consists of set of
structured, goal/problem driven models to be used for structuring and representing
organizational knowledge – the modeling product. In a full enterprise model, the
relationships between Enterprise Model components (see table 1) play an essential
role because they allow tracing decisions. The EKD modeling process guides the
knowledge acquisition, analysis, and representation. Knowledge acquisition and
modeling needs to be participatory to consolidate multiple stakeholder views.
Goals Model Business Concepts Business Actors and Technical
(GM) Rules Model Model (CM) Process Model Resources Component &
(BRM) (BPM) Model (ARM) Requirements
Model(TCRM)
Focus Vision and Policies and Business Business Organizational Information
strategy rules ontology operations structure system needs
Issues What does What are the What are the What are the Who are What are the
the organi- business things and business responsible for business
zation want rules, how do “phenomena” processes? How goals and requirements to
to achieve or they support addressed in do they handle process? How the IS? How are
to avoid and organiza- other sub- information and are the actors they related to
why? tion’s goals? models? material? interrelated? other models?
Com- Goal, prob- Business rule Concept, Process, Actor, role, IS goal,
po- lem, external Attribute external proc., organizational IS problem,
nents constraint, information set, unit, individual IS requirement,
opportunity material set IS component
Table 1: Overview of the sub-models of the EKD method
3 Background to Agile Development Approaches
Agile approaches all share the same values, e.g. to be flexible and to be able to deal
with changes during the course of a software project. They provide a set of principles,
techniques and best practices for iterative and incremental IS development, but they
do not explicitly tackle modeling in terms of how to model and what. To address this,
AM proposes to integrate more traditional modeling approaches with the ideas of
agile development. See [6] for additional evidence about the suitability of AM in
practice.
Agile approaches primarily focus on the development of a software system. The
underlying assumption of agile projects is that the customer knows what kind of
system is needed, what are its features, and who will use it and how. In practice,
Proceedings of CAiSE’08 Forum 7
however, IS development is a part of some business development or change project.
Moreover, the developers and the stakeholders may have to face a number of hard
organizational problems requiring structured exploration of various business and IS
development alternatives. A common situation is to set up business goals of the new
IS system before the development project is commissioned. If this is done without
involving the developers of the new IS, it immediately puts them at a disadvantage
because not all information is properly communicated to them. The agile approaches
try to address this challenge by active stakeholder involvement and having a customer
representative on the development site. However, these practices might not be enough
because vital knowledge has to be re-acquired. Agile teams are also not used to
requiring the business people to think systemically about their business and to connect
their business needs to the new IS. Mush of this knowledge is scarce and tacit – it lies
in the heads of a few stakeholders. There might also be different opinions, especially
concerning the future plans of the organization, which, therefore, need to be
consolidated, made explicit, and transferred to the agile team. While XP suggests
“customer on site”, in reality, however, only a few stakeholder types can be kept on
site. High level managers such as CEOs or CFOs need to be engaged differently.
4. Using EM in Agile Development Projects
This section analyzes the potential of using EM, taking EKD as an example, in agile
development projects. We discuss the objectives and the compatibility of Agile Model
Driven Development (AMDD) [9] and EKD.
In both AM and EM the group work is used to achieve consensus, understanding
and commitment concerning the scope and requirements of the development project.
Furthermore, [8] shows close correspondence between artefacts of AM and EM.
AMDD stage EM support
Iteration 0: Envisioning
Initial Requirements modeling (identify An EM seminar with all key stakeholders to establish the
high level scope and an initial business goals of the system, to explore the business
requirements stack) requirements and to set the overall strategy of the project. The
intangible benefit is the consensus about these issues.
Initial Architecture Modeling An EM seminar to identify IS architecture on a crude level.
Iteration 1-n
Iteration Modeling: Thinking Through EM to elaborate detailed issues concerning the iteration. E.g.
What You'll Do This Iteration elaboration of the business process that needs to be supported.
Model storming (work through specific Short EM events in the development team to resolve specific
issues, just in time (JIT) modeling, modeling issue that they have involving stakeholder
stakeholders actively participate) representatives that are available on site. Involving other
stakeholders would have to be planned in advance.
Executable Specification via Test EM supports this by explicit linking of business goals, rules,
Driven Development and requirements which can serve as measurable constraints.
Table 2. Combining AMDD with the EKD modeling process
Agile projects using EM should focus on the business vision and business
requirements. This can be done by integrating prototyping approaches with business
analysis to explore alternatives of supporting business goals and processes by IS
components and features. Using EM to capture the business knowledge pertinent to
8 Proceedings of CAiSE’08 Forum
the IS development project is not the same as BRUF (big requirements up front),
which contradicts with the principle of iterative and incremental development and is
argued against by many practitioners. AMDD is a framework for iterative and
incremental modeling. Table 2 takes the EKD modeling process as basis and shows
how EM is able to contribute to AMDD.
Concerning the specifics of integrating the agile way of working with EM we
would like to propose the following recommendations: elaborate multiple
perspectives iteratively, involve different stakeholder types, link other models and
designs with the Enterprise Model, and use simple tools to support Agile EM process.
See [8] for a more extensive discussion on these issues.
5 Concluding Remarks
EM has a potential to be useful in agile development projects. The proposed
integration of AM and EM has been partly applied at two IS development projects at
Riga Technical University, namely “Professional Orientation Information Base in
Computer Science and Information Technology” and “Development of the Prototype
for the Support of Inter-Institutional Flow of Knowledge”. The EKD process helped
consensus building between different stakeholders while the resulting models
established project’s “backbone” of knowledge. Initial experiences suggest that not
only explicit artifacts of EM and AM influence project’s agility, but also the growth
of participants’ tacit knowledge is to be taken into consideration. Deeper analysis of
the tacit knowledge dimension in integrated AM and EM activities is a goal for future
research aimed at development of methods for IS engineering of agile enterprises.
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