An Empirical Study on Data-driven Requirements Elicitation

2021. Alejandro Martinez (et al.). Proceedings of the Forum at Practice of Enterprise Modeling 2021 (PoEM-Forum 2021), 39-48

Conference

There is a plethora of digital data sources that may be exploited for collecting requirements for system development and evolution. In contrast to human sources, i.e. stakeholders, digital sources continuously generate data that is often not originally created for the purposes of requirements elicitation, e.g. on forums, microblogs, machine-generated trace logs, and sensor data. Streams of large volumes of data can be exploited to enable automation of a continuous requirements elicitation process using AI techniques that combine natural language or machine data processing, with machine learning. On the other hand, the complex characteristics of big data due to its size, lack of structure, high dynamics, and low predictability, present numerous challenges on the process of extracting requirements-related information that would be of a clear value for companies. The purpose of this interview study was to, from the practitioners’ perspective, elicit their overall expectations and needs for a method for the elicitation of system requirements from digital data sources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with several industrial experts from different business domains and the collected empirical data has been analyzed using thematic analysis. The results lead to the identification of a set of hig-hlevel requirements related to the method for the elicitation from digital data sources.

An Experience Report on the Implementation of the KYKLOS Modeling Method

2021. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel. The Practice of Enterprise Modeling, 103-118

Conference

Several types of enterprise models and methods have been developed that may help an organization to describe and improve its business. A common practice is also the development of tool support to complement an enterprise modeling method’s application. The development of tool support for a modeling method includes creating a representation of the modeling concepts, but also designing how the user should interact with the tool. This paper reports on the challenges and opportunities encountered during the process of implementing the KYKLOS modeling method in a modeling tool. The KYKLOS method, which is an enterprise modeling method, is specialized in supporting the design and analysis of changing capabilities. Using as input an initial meta-model of capability change, all the necessary tasks are performed to elicit a language model, which is required for the implementation of the method in a tool.

An analysis of capability meta‑models for expressing dynamic business transformation

2021. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. Software and Systems Modeling 20, 147-174

Article

Environmental dynamism is gaining ground as a driving force for enterprise transformation. To address the changes, the capabilities of digital enterprises need to adapt. Capability modeling can facilitate this process of transformation. However, a plethora of approaches for capability modeling exist. This study explores how concepts relevant to change have been implemented in the meta-models of these approaches, aiming to visualize relationships among change-related concepts, and identify ways to improve capability modeling toward a more efcient depiction of capability change. The concepts are visualized in concept maps, and a framework is developed to assist the classifcation of concepts relevant to change functions. Similarities and diferences among the existing models are discussed, leading to suggestions toward improvements of capability modeling for capability adaptation.

Capabilities in Crisis

2021. Georgios Koutsopoulos. Perspectives in Business Informatics Research, 100-114

Conference

Changing capabilities is a measure that businesses employ as a response to emerging opportunities, threats and necessary adaptations derived from the dynamic environment they operate in. Enterprise Modeling is a discipline that can provide support during the transition of capabilities and facilitate the process. This study is part of a project aiming to develop a method specifically designed for managing capability change using enterprise modeling. This paper’s goal is to identify candidate components for the method by exploring semantic consistency among different enterprise models developed in the context of a case study. The reported case study has been conducted in an organization of the public arts and culture sector in Greece that is dealing with multiple difficulties and challenges simultaneously and is driven to adapt its capabilities. Different Enterprise Modeling approaches are employed to capture the wide spectrum of concepts necessary for modeling the complex capability change phenomenon. Potentials for model integration and candidate method components are identified along with business transformation insight derived from the analysis of changes.

Is Enterprise Modeling a Data Analysis Method?

2021. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel. Proceedings of the Forum at Practice of Enterprise Modeling 2021 (PoEM-Forum 2021), 21-30

Conference

Qualitative research in organizational contexts has been dominated by descriptive methods such as thematic and qualitative content analysis for structuring the data, and visualization methods such as concept mapping for presenting the results. Similarly, conceptual modeling, and its specialization, enterprise modeling, includes both analytic and visualizing features. Despite the similarities, enterprise modeling is not considered to be a research method. The aim of this paper is to use literature sources to compare enterprise modeling’s core features with the respective features of thematic analysis and concept mapping. This is done as a means to suggest the establishment of conceptual and enterprise modeling among the qualitative data analysis methods. The results indicate common and tangent aspects in terms of common objectives, input, procedure and cognitive mechanisms, outcome and context. This indicates enterprise modeling being a cognate of established analysis methods in qualitative research.

A Case Study on the Use of Enterprise Models for Business Transformation

2020. Martin Henkel, Georgios Koutsopoulos, Erik Perjons. Trends and Innovations in Information Systems and Technologies, 404-414

Conference

Organizations constantly need to change due to their desire to improve, or due to the need to adapt to changes in the environment. The use of enterprise models could be a potential aid in this transformation process - by using models an organization can describe its business, analyze it, and design changes. For an organization, models may be important in order to determine if a transformation should be pursued, and determine the consequences of performing the transformation. In this paper, we report on a case study performed at an organization that uses enterprise models. Based on a set of business transformations that the organization is considering, we examine how the existing models they use can help in expressing the changes needed, and the shortcomings of existing models. We conclude with a set of tentative shortcomings of traditional models and pointers for future research addressing these.

Conceptualizing Capability Change

2020. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, 269-283

Conference

Organizations are operating within dynamic environments that present changes, opportunities and threats to which they need to respond by adapting their capabilities. Organizational capabilities can be supported by Information Systems during their design and run-time phases, which often requires the capabilities’ adaptation. Currently, enterprise modeling and capability modeling facilitate the design and analysis of capabilities but improvements regarding capability change can be made. This design science research study introduces a capability change meta-model that will serve as the basis for the development of a method and a supporting tool for capability change. The meta-model is applied to a case study at a Swedish public healthcare organization. This application provides insight on possible opportunities to improve the meta-model in future iterations.

Improvements on Capability Modeling by Implementing Expert Knowledge About Organizational Change

2020. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. The Practice of Enterprise Modeling, 171-185

Conference

Modern digital organizations are constantly facing new opportunities and threats, originating from the highly dynamic environments they operate in. On account of this situation, they need to be in a state of constant change and evolution to achieve their goals or ensure survival, and this is achieved by adapting their capabilities. Enterprise Modeling and capability modeling have provided a plethora of approaches to facilitate the analysis and design of organizational capabilities. However, there is potential for improving management of capability change. This Design Science research aims to provide methodological and tool support for organizations that are undergoing changes. A previously introduced meta-model will serve as the basis for a method supporting capability change. The goal of this study is to explore expert knowledge about organizational change in order to evaluate the initial version of the meta-model and identify possible weaknesses. Ten semi-structured interviews have been conducted to explore the perspectives of experienced decision-makers on capability change. Three categories emerged from the analysis, reflecting on howcapability change is observed, decided and delivered respectively. These have been used as input for revising the conceptual structure of the capability change meta-model.

Modeling the Dichotomies of Organizational Change

2020. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. Proceedings of the Practice of Enterprise Modelling 2019 Conference Forum (short papers), 26-39

Conference

Modern digital businesses are facing a constant challenge in adapting to dynamic environments. Therefore, change has become a significant element of business analysis. Capability thinking, when applied to business management, is associated to design and analysis of supporting information systems and is inextricably linked to strategy and change. This results in the need to monitor and analyze how and when the organization’s capabilities need to change. Capability and change dimensions have been explored in the literature in order to identify dimensions relevant to organizational change. The identified capability dimensions are purpose, potentiality and ownership while the relevant change dimensions are control, scope, stride, frequency, desire and tempo. The two sets of dimensions have been combined forming a typology and visualized in a StateMachine diagram. The contribution of this task lies in the conceptualization of the dimensions, including the negative aspect of capabilities, which can provide a starting point for an Enterprise Modeling method optimized for identifying the need for capability change and guiding the transition.

Towards an Integrated Meta-Model for Requirements Engineering

2020. Georgios Koutsopoulos (et al.). Proceedings of the Practice of Enterprise Modelling 2019 Conference Forum (short papers), 40-53

Conference

Traditional, plan-driven, requirements engineering identifies separate phases in the process with well-documented outputs associated with of each of them. The plan-driven system development is suitable for predictable projects where all properties of the end system are known or requested from the start. In many situations, however, the properties of the final system cannot be determined on beforehand requiring thus a basic part of the system to be built fast, and further enable it to evolve. For this reason, it has become more common in recent years to adopt agile development methods, which foster interactive working with customers, in short iterations, and with frequent system changes and releases. Because the plan-driven and agile approaches substantially differ in their main concepts and working steps related to requirements engineering, and the fact that larger projects often blend them, we have identified a need for establishing relationships between them through an integrated meta-model. The final artifact contains the elements of both agile and plan-driven requirements engineering, supporting thus their separate, or hybrid use, which we have illustrated and thereby discussed and concluded this research-in-progress study.

Dynamic Adaptation of Capabilities

2019. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, 181-195

Conference

Environmental dynamism is constantly gaining ground as a driving force for enterprise transformation. The enterprise capabilities need to adapt as well and capability modeling can facilitate the process of transformation. A plethora of approaches for capability modeling exist. This study aims to explore how adaptability has been addressed in the meta-models of these approaches, visualize relationships among adaptability concepts, and identify ways to improve capability modeling in terms of adaptability. The concepts are visualized in a map and a framework is developed to assist the identification of concepts relevant for adaptation. Similarities and differences among the existing models are discussed, leading to suggestions towards improvements of capability modeling for capability adaptation.

Requirements for Observing, Deciding, and Delivering Capability Change

2019. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Martin Henkel, Janis Stirna. The Practice of Enterprise Modeling, 20-35

Conference

Dynamic business environments create the need for constant change in modern enterprises. Enterprise transformation is associated to changes in enterprise capabilities since capabilities are an essential element in business designs. Capability modeling methods need to evolve accordingly and the development of such methods needs to be systematic. This study, as part of a Design Science project, aims to elicit requirements for a capability modeling method for addressing change. Literature sources and a case study at a healthcare organization that undergoes several changes are used to elicit requirements. The requirements are presented in the form of a goal model for the method under development.

Using Enterprise Models for Change Analysis in Inter-organizational Business Processes

2019. Martin Henkel (et al.). Business Process Management: Blockchain and Central and Eastern Europe Forum, 315-318

Conference

Organizations increasingly participate in and rely on inter-organizational processes to carry out work. However, inter-organizational processes may be complex, especially when there is a need to introduce and decide upon changes that affect the process. In this paper we examine the problems that may arise when changing inter-organizational processes. As the foundation for our examination, we use a case study performed at a healthcare region in Sweden. In the case, a number of potential changes to an inter-organizational process have been identified. Based on the analysis of the case, we identify the basic constituents that enterprise models need to contain in order to be useful tools for representing changes to inter-organizational processes.

Using the Fractal Enterprise Model for Inter-organizational Business Processes

2019. Martin Henkel (et al.). Joint Proceedings of the ER Forum and Poster & Demos Session 2019 co-located with 38th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2019), 56-69

Conference

Inter-organizational processes are important for delivering complex services and products. While these processes are important, they are also difficult to design and change. In this paper, we examine how a particular kind of model, the Fractal Enterprise Model (FEM), can help in describing and analyzing changes to inter-organizational processes. FEM is asset-based, meaning that it is focusing on how processes share and consume resources. We use a case study performed at a health care region in Sweden as the base of our examination. In the case, potential changes that affect the organization have been identified, and we use these changes to create FEMs. Based on the case, the need to extend FEM to improve its utility for modeling inter-organizational processes is identified

Business Process Canvas as a Process Model in a Nutshell

2018. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Ilia Bider. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, 49-63

Conference

The paper suggests using a business process canvas as a model of a process in a nutshell that presents the essential properties of the process and the context in which it is run, including the position of the process in the business process ecosystem. The canvas consists of three sections: positioning, operations and resources. A positioning section, called Outside, includes such components, as the purpose of the process existence, strategic goals (to be) achieved by having the process, related processes and mechanisms of initiation of new process instances. The operations sections, called Inside, gives an overview of the work of the process instance, and it includes such components as operational goal, milestones, main events and activities, outcomes and constraints. The resources section, called Resources, describes resources/assets used in the process instances, and includes such components, as participants, tools, methods, etc. The paper proposes a canvas layout, describes its components, and presents an example. In conclusion, the paper discusses areas where the canvas could be used in practice.

Introducing Goal Patterns for State-Oriented Business Process Modeling

2018. Ilia Bider, Georgios Koutsopoulos. 2018 IEEE 22nd International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference Workshops, 43-47

Conference

Patterns are a proven way to make analysis and/or design effective and efficient. The idea of using patterns in business process modeling is not new. However, it was applied only to workflow type of process modeling. In this paper, we explore an idea of using patterns for a different type of process modeling, namely, state-oriented business process modeling. The idea is introduced using an example of a pattern for decision-making.

Modeling Organizational Potentials Using the Dynamic Nature of Capabilities

2018. Georgios Koutsopoulos. Joint Proceedings of the BIR 2018 Short Papers, Workshops and Doctoral Consortium co-located with 17th International Conference Perspectives in Business Informatics Research (BIR 2018), 387-398

Conference

Organizational transformation in dynamic environments may be addressed using an approach based on the concept of capability. The aim of this thesis project is to tackle existing disadvantages that organizations are unaware of or missing business opportunities due to unoptimized design. Design Science is employed to elicit requirements and develop a method that assists the identification of desired organizational capabilities and outdated capabilities. This will enhance the value generating and supporting capabilities by introducing a new typology and exploring the factors affecting the introduced capability types. The developed artifact will also be supported by a modeling tool using the ADOxx metamodeling development platform and tested in a real use case.

Teaching and Learning State-Oriented Business Process Modeling. Experience Report

2017. Georgios Koutsopoulos, Ilia Bider. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, 171-185

Conference

Though experience on teaching and learning workflow-based business process modeling exists and is partly documented, this is not true for other types of business process modeling. Even if such experience exists, it is not documented in research publications devoted to process modeling or BPM education. This paper tries to fill the gap by reporting on experience of teaching and learning state-oriented business process modeling, which does not belong to the mainstream. The report gives both the teacher’s and learner’s perspective from a course where state-oriented process modeling was in the focus. The material is partly based on the reflections from the authors, one of whom is a learner, and the other - a teacher, and partly – on an investigation of opinions of other learners via interviews and a small-scale survey. The paper considers difficulties of teaching/learning state-oriented modeling, of which some does not exist for other types of process modeling, and gives suggestions on how they can be overcome.

Georgios KoutsopoulosTeaching assistant

Research projects

Publications

An Empirical Study on Data-driven Requirements Elicitation

An Experience Report on the Implementation of the KYKLOS Modeling Method

An analysis of capability meta‑models for expressing dynamic business transformation

Capabilities in Crisis

Is Enterprise Modeling a Data Analysis Method?

A Case Study on the Use of Enterprise Models for Business Transformation

Conceptualizing Capability Change

Improvements on Capability Modeling by Implementing Expert Knowledge About Organizational Change

Modeling the Dichotomies of Organizational Change

Towards an Integrated Meta-Model for Requirements Engineering

Dynamic Adaptation of Capabilities

Requirements for Observing, Deciding, and Delivering Capability Change

Using Enterprise Models for Change Analysis in Inter-organizational Business Processes

Using the Fractal Enterprise Model for Inter-organizational Business Processes

Business Process Canvas as a Process Model in a Nutshell

Introducing Goal Patterns for State-Oriented Business Process Modeling

Modeling Organizational Potentials Using the Dynamic Nature of Capabilities

Teaching and Learning State-Oriented Business Process Modeling. Experience Report