=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-404/paper-6
|storemode=property
|title=A Holistic Approach Towards a UML Profile for Business Modeling
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-404/Paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-404
}}
==A Holistic Approach Towards a UML Profile for Business Modeling==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-404/Paper5.pdf
A Holistic Approach Towards a UML Profile for Business
Modeling
∗ †
Rainer Schuster , Thomas Motal
Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems
Electronic Commerce Group
Favoritenstrasse 9-11/188
Vienna, Austria
{schuster, motal}@ec.tuwien.ac.at
ABSTRACT This approach is also reflected in the ISO 14662 standard
Due to faster and faster changing business conditions, com- on the Openedi reference model [15]. The reference model
panies must be able to quickly adopt these changes to their groups EDI related standards into two categories. i) The
IT infrastructure. Thus, business models must reflect these business operational view (BOV) addresses the semantics of
changes in order to design/align business processes support- electronic business, i.e. the semantics of business collabo-
ing the value exchanges defined in the business model. Presently rations and related business information exchanges. Spec-
there are three major and well-accepted business modeling ifications going into the BOV capture business knowledge
techniques - e3-value, Resource-Event-Agent (REA) and the in a technology independent way. ii) The functional service
Business Modeling Ontology (BMO). All of them use their view (FSV) addresses the technologies and the implementa-
own proprietary notation, which is incompatible with UML tion aspects to support business collaborations specified in
- the de-facto modeling standard in software engineering. In terms of BOV related specifications.
order to allow a straight-through modeling approach from
business models over business process models to software ar- Figure 1 depicts an extension of the Openedi reference model.
tifacts, it is desirable to use a common modeling approach. This three layer approach is proposed in one of our papers
Therefore we propose to specify a UML profile for business covering the different aspects of a B2B information system
modeling integrating all benefits of these methodologies in [13]. In other words, it is a model-driven top-down approach,
one ontology. As a result this new ontology helps to cover in order to reach agreements between business partners (1)
our main research question - the transition between a busi- on the economic level, (2) the (inter-) organizational pro-
ness model and a business process model. Furthermore the cess choreography, and (3) on the services implementing the
introduction of a framework for measuring the quality of choreography. The upper layer describes the economic goals
business models as well as the definition of business model- and values from a management perspective. It captures the
ing patterns is discussed. rational as well as the economic resources being exchanged
with business partners. The second layer in the middle spec-
1. MOTIVATION ifies a flow of business activities and their dependencies spe-
With the growing importance of web services, companies cially designed to reach the business goals. The business
need to align their IT applications in order to compete within models and the resulting business processes of the two BOV
the growing service industry. However, the environment as layers must be supported by IT systems on the FSV layer.
well as customer decisions are changing over the time lead- Therefore the IT layer implements the business processes by
ing to a re-engineering of company’s processes and business means of tools, frameworks, API’s, Web Services, etc. As
goals. In such fast changing environments it is of overall one can recognize, the overall goal of this three layer ap-
importance to align IT applications to the related changing proach is the mapping from business models to deployment
company goals. Therefore a flexible design, implementation artifacts.
and delivery of B2B information systems is necessary, which
links business modeling aspects with IT implementation. 1
Business Models PhD
Management
(value perspective) focus
∗2nd year PhD student at Vienna University of Technology
†1st year PhD student at Vienna University of Technology Business Process Models
2 Business
(process flow perspective) BOV
FSV
Deployment Artifacts
3 IT
(execution perspective)
Figure 1: A 3-layer approach - from business models
to software artifacts
We, the authors of this PhD proposal, are contributing to a
national funded IT project, called BSopt (Business Seman- cuses on a specific actor and outlines his position in the
tics on top of process technology)1 , where this three layer business network and how he can make profit.
approach has its origin from. Within this project we are
both responsible for the elaboration of the top layer and All these methodologies mentioned above have its own no-
the transition to the second one. Therefore our PhD thesis tations, concepts and rules. In order to allow a straight-
focuses on the top layer - the business modeling layer. In or- through modeling approach between the different layers in
der to get an overview about the different business modeling the BOV as we proposed in figure 1, it is desirable to base
methodologies we firstly establish a survey about the exist- the different steps in developing inter-organizational systems
ing approaches. Secondly we compare these approaches with on a single modeling paradigm. Most of the business pro-
each other to see where they differ and elaborate potential cess modeling steps in the second layer are already based
shortcomings. Moreover, we propose a methodology in order on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This means that
to measure the quality of business models. Furthermore, the business process technologies customize the general purpose
reuse of business modeling patterns is an important issue of language UML by means of stereotypes, tagged values and
our PhD thesis. This will be established by the definition of constraints for their specific purpose. Therefore we will cre-
a global business modeling ontology, incorporating aspects ate a UML profile for business modeling integrating all ben-
of other approved ontologies in this area. Finally, the tran- efits of these methodologies in one ontology.
sition from a business model (layer 1) to a business process
model (layer 2) covers the main research question in our Since business models are the starting point for the design
PhD thesis. of an information system and the driver for an alignment
of the business processes of an enterprise, it is important
to measure the quality of a business model. Although the
2. PROBLEM term quality has been defined in many ways, ranging from
As motivated in section 1, integrating business processes extremes as conformance to requirements to fitness for use
into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is certainly a [16], we will specify a small set of quality properties for our
hot topic. However, most current approaches are limited metrics. Thus, we investigate business models for their effec-
to the technical process aspects, disregarding the economic tiveness, efficiency, suitability, completeness and coherence,
drivers of the information society. In order to open-up en- in order to define a framework for measuring the quality of
terprise applications to e-business and make them profitable business models.
for a communication with other enterprise applications, a
business model is needed showing the business essentials of A major research question to solve in our PhD thesis is the
the e-commerce business case to be developed. In former transition from business models to business process mod-
days business modeling was done by using standard process els. Thus, it is important to identify the dependencies be-
modeling methodologies such as UML’s activity diagrams tween the approaches on the management layer and the busi-
[24], Petri Nets [25], IDEF0 [1] or STRIM [22]. Since these ness layer. This is a prerequisite to define a semiautomatic
methodologies have been designed for modeling a sequence mapping between the artifacts on the different layers and
of activities, modelers tend to develop their business mod- to reflect changes on one layer to the other ones. As a
els in a workflow-oriented way. Therefore specific business demonstrating business process modeling methodology for
modeling techniques have been introduced in order to cap- our approch we take UN/CEFACT’s Modeling Methodol-
ture the business perspective of an e-commerce information ogy (UMM) [11] and the Business Process Modeling Nota-
system. tion (BPMN) [18].
There are three major business modeling methodologies our
thesis is focusing on. Firstly, the e3-value methodology has 3. METHODOLOGY
been developed to model a value web consisting of actors In order to solve the identified problems we subdivide our
who create, exchange, and consume things of economic value approach into 4 parts as depicted in figure 2. Part 1 evalu-
such as money, physical goods, services, or capabilities [8]. It ates current business modeling approaches to show similar-
is an ontology-based methodology for modeling and design- ities, strengths and weaknesses. The result of this survey is
ing business models for business networks incorporating con- a general description of relevant concepts for business mod-
cepts from requirements engineering and conceptual model- eling. Part 2 will cover all necessary aspects in order to link
ing. Secondly, the REA (Resource-Event-Agent) Ontology business models to business process models. To provide in-
is an approach for gathering the rationale behind business teroperability and best practices a UML profile based on the
collaborations [7]. REA captures the declarative semantics resulting description developed in part 1 is required. Addi-
of the collaborative space between enterprises from an eco- tional to the UML profile quality measurement methods for
nomic viewpoint. It describes the involved actors (A), their business models as well as reuse, and classification principles
value exchanges (R) and holds the triggers for economic will be considered in part 3 and 4. The final achievement
exchanges by the means of economic events (E). Finally, of our thesis is a holistic UML profile which is able to cover
the Business Model Ontology (BMO) [20] describes busi- business modeling aspects and combines relevant concepts
ness models with respect to four elements and their rela- from mature business modeling ontologies.
tionships: product innovation, infrastructure management,
customer relationship and financial aspects. In contrast to
e3-value model, which describes the network constellation
3.1 Evaluation of current business modeling
from a global point of view, the BMO ontology rather fo- approaches
The field of business modeling is a broad and complex do-
1
http://www.bsopt.at main. As introduced in section 2 there exist several solutions
3.2 Linking between business models and busi-
Analysis of business modeling approaches
ness process models
Flexibility in concerns with services requires a persistent
path from management (business models) to business (busi-
ness process models) and finally IT (deployment artifacts
like web services). In order to provide such a persistence a
Analysis of Linking between
semi-automated mapping between each of these layers is nec-
Analysis of design essary [5]. Therefore, the overall goal is to abstract business
measurement business goals and
patterns behavior from technical aspects. However, this thesis focus
methods processes
on the linking between business goals and business processes.
Business modeling approaches like REA, e3-value, and BMO
will be used to capture management aspects. These tech-
nologies are represented in their own proprietary notation
technically specified by formats such as the Resource De-
UML profile for business modeling scription Framework (RDF)[17] or the Web Ontology Lan-
guage (OWL)[4].
Figure 2: From the analysis of business models to a In order to overcome these limitations we propose to specify
UML profile a UML profile for the general business ontology described in
section 3.1. First approaches towards a definition of a UML
profile have been outlined in [14]. In this paper work the
which try to contribute their part to business modeling re- authors focus on a mapping from the e3-value ontology to
search. Theses ontological approaches are focusing on dif- UML. According to their investigations not all aspects of e3-
ferent aspects within the field of business modeling. Hence, value could be integrated into the UML profile. Nevertheless
a survey in order to investigate existing similarities between the developed UML profile captures all necessary aspects
these ontologies, as well as their strengths and weaknesses to link UN/CEFACT’s Modeling Methodology (UMM) with
will be necessary. their e3-value profile. However, this approach highlights the
mapping between business and business process models.
First steps towards a general description for business mod-
els have been done by [2] where a reference ontology for 3.3 Quality measurements for business model
business models was introduced. The survey is focused on
inter-organizational processes and includes concepts from
ontologies
Current business modeling approaches focus primarily on
operational and knowledge level. Therefore, their survey is
economical indicators. E.g., BMO and e3-value have inte-
an optimal starting point for our investigations on business
grated concepts to analyze monetary flows within a business
models. In contrast to the reference ontology our explo-
model. According to [21] BMO distincts between three eval-
ration purpose is more widespread and can be summarized
uation elements: (1) The revenue model which measures the
as follows:
ability of a firm to generate incoming revenue or with other
words translate offered value into money. (2) Cost structure
shows all costs the firm incurs in order to create, market and
• A comprehensive evaluation of the major business mod-
deliver value to its customers. (3) And finally the profit mod-
eling ontologies.
ule which is the output of revenue model and cost structure.
A less widespread concept is supported by e3-value. The e3-
• An overview about strengths and weaknesses of current
value editor allows to generate net value flow spreadsheets
modeling approaches.
to assess economic sustainability on a per enterprise basis
[10]. Such spreadsheets express the economic value flow for
• Review about similarities of concepts.
each participant in the value network.
• Identification of shortcomings.
The introduced concepts are both pure economical and there-
• First indications to link business models with business fore do not state the architectural quality of the underlaying
process models. business model. Hence, our measurement approach is more
focused on the business model graph. In order to realize
• New cognitions concerning a method to measure busi- such a solution the first step will be to evaluate measure-
ness model quality. ment metrics which indicate significant information about
the business model. E.g., the number of partners or the
complexity of the graph itself which can be measured trough
Additionally we will examine concepts from more broader value flows or relations within the network. In the following
approaches like the Business Motivation Model (BMM) de- we introduce a metric for evaluating the quality of business
veloped by the Object Management Group (OMG). BMM models regarding different quality properties - such as e.g.
is primely focused on the development of business plans and effectiveness, efficiency, suitability, completeness and coher-
supports the modeling of so called ends, means, and influ- ence.
ences an enterprise has to overcome in order to reach its
business goals [?]. 3.4 Design Patterns and Classification
Design patterns have been introduced to the object-oriented 5. CONCLUSION
world in the 90s and since then got more and more popular. The introduced holistic approach shows current lacks in the
In OOP a design pattern is defined as an abstract key aspect field of business modeling. Using the approach from our dis-
of a common design structure that make it useful for creat- sertation current business modeling issues such as the linking
ing a reusable object-oriented design. [6]. The use of design between business models and business process models, busi-
patterns allows to solve common problems in a clean and ness model measurements and design patterns for effective
reusable way by abstracting the problem structure. How- reuse of innovative business models will be examined. The
ever, a design pattern in the field of business modeling can final result of our PhD thesis will be a UML profile which
be seen as an abstraction of business behavior. In [12] the enables UML supported modeling of business models.
most common business patterns were introduced and imple-
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