Situational Method Engineering Research Articles

Towards a process selection method for embedded analytics

AbstractDriven by technological progress, business analytics is gaining momentum while paving the path for next-generation business process management. Especially, embedded real-time analytics offers new opportunities for business process intelligence and value creation. However, there are several obstacles that organizations face in their adoption process. A key challenge is to identify business processes that are suitable for embedded analytics and hold relevant value potential. Our research addresses this need by introducing an exploratory BPM method, namely a process selection method. Applying action design research and situational method engineering, we iteratively built, used, evaluated, and refined the theory-ingrained method artifact. The method provides organizations with guidance in selecting operational business processes, for which a reengineering project should be initiated.

Software Process Improvement by Managing Situational Method Engineering Knowledge

Organizational processes have been recognized as valuable knowledge assets. Situational Method Engineering (SME) processes are particularly valuable as they are used for engineering other processes: SME processes help construct bespoke Software Development Methodologies (SDMs) for specific software-engineering project situations. Every SDM has a Software Development Process (SDP) at its heart, which specifies the activities that should be performed throughout the project, the products that should be produced, and the people that should be involved. Existing SME methods suffer from certain weaknesses that are rooted in loss of knowledge within their processes; for instance, the method engineers' experience, which is a kind of tacit knowledge, is not properly captured and utilized in these processes. Managing SME process knowledge helps alleviate these weaknesses through reusing the software developers' experience and maintaining the method engineers' knowledge. We propose an evaluation framework that can be used for assessing an SME method's ability to manage process knowledge. We also provide a model that guides the improvement of existing SME methods in their support for Knowledge Management (KM), and also helps engineer new SME methods that provide adequate KM support. We have assessed the applicability of the proposed evaluation framework and improvement model by using them to enhance eight prominent SME methods, and also by applying them to four industrial case studies.

Agile prototyping strategy for building shared understanding in requirements engineering

The strategy proposed in this paper addresses a critical challenge in requirements engineering: building a shared understanding among all stakeholders in software development. Shared understanding refers to the ability of people in a team to have a common and consistent understanding of the requirements that the system will have, which is essential for effective collaboration. The construction of this strategy was done using Situational Method Engineering (SME), which allowed to obtain, at the end of the realization of each of its activities, a set of phases, with their respective activities and tasks, which seek the construction of shared understanding through the realization of agile prototyping. The use of prototypes allows to provide a visual and tangible representation of the system requirements, which facilitates communication and feedback among stakeholders. In this sense, this article shows the use of SME for the final construction of the strategy, which consists of several phases, including planning, requirements identification and analysis, non-functional prototyping, requirements management, functional prototyping, and socialization. These phases are designed to strengthen communication, promote collaboration, and ensure a solid shared understanding throughout the software development process.

Developing and tailoring business process management methods using the situational method engineering approach

Effective business process management is one of the key tasks of every organization if it wants to compete successfully on the market and satisfy the needs of its customers. Although there are many established best practices, techniques, and more or less complex methods in business process management, no approach can fulfill a typical organization’s needs and wants. The key to success lies in developing new or adapting existing approaches for business process management to suit the unique characteristics of individual organizations and projects. This demands a solid methodological framework and a clearly defined work process. The aim of the paper is to apply situational method engineering concepts within the realm of business process management, thereby tackling the challenge mentioned above. As a result, a situational method engineering framework is defined to construct and customize business process management methods. The study proposes the conceptual foundations of the framework and a set of processes for constructing holistic and tailored methods that cover various aspects of business process management (analysis, modeling, management, etc.). The basis of the framework is represented by general method components at a higher level of abstraction, which are assembled into holistic methods via interfaces and are transformed into versions adapted to specific situations using tailoring rules. The practical applicability of the proposed framework is validated through its implementation in a project at a large manufacturing company, where it is used to develop both a general and customized business process management method.

Policy components – a conceptual model for modularizing and tailoring of information security policies

PurposeThis paper aims to propose a conceptual model of policy components for software that supports modularizing and tailoring of information security policies (ISPs).Design/methodology/approachThis study used a design science research approach, drawing on design knowledge from the field of situational method engineering. The conceptual model was developed as a unified modeling language class diagram using existing ISPs from public agencies in Sweden.FindingsThis study’s demonstration as proof of concept indicates that the conceptual model can be used to create free-standing modules that provide guidance about information security in relation to a specific work task and that these modules can be used across multiple tailored ISPs. Thus, the model can be considered as a step toward developing software to tailor ISPs.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed conceptual model bears several short- and long-term implications for research. In the short term, the model can act as a foundation for developing software to design tailored ISPs. In the long term, having software that enables tailorable ISPs will allow researchers to do new types of studies, such as evaluating the software's effectiveness in the ISP development process.Practical implicationsPractitioners can use the model to develop software that assist information security managers in designing tailored ISPs. Such a tool can offer the opportunity for information security managers to design more purposeful ISPs.Originality/valueThe proposed model offers a detailed and well-elaborated starting point for developing software that supports modularizing and tailoring of ISPs.

A knowledge management-driven and DevOps-based method for situational method engineering

A knowledge management-driven and DevOps-based method for situational method engineering

A method for digital business ecosystem design: situational method engineering in an action research project

Digital business ecosystem (DBE) is a paradigm that enables developing and monitoring novel business models of collaborating organisations and individuals using ICT as the foundation. Different from traditional online networked models such as manufacturer, retailer, or franchise centred, using a shared digital environment, DBE fosters heterogeneity, symbiosis, coevolution, and self-organisation of its multiple actors, which enables it to span different business domains as well as exhibits diverse interests. For many organisations and individuals, DBE presents a new collaborative approach to leverage offered and desired resources among the involved members to meet each of their goals. As such, it is foreseen to be of high value to the involved actors, but at the same time, it is often complex due to many correlated interactions of these actors and thus difficult to design and manage. Furthermore, the current state of the art shows a lack of methodological guidance for DBE design. We propose a method for DBE design that follows the requirements collected from industry experts and practitioners by applying situational method engineering to enable its modularised design. The method for design is validated by action research in the setting of Digital Vaccine, a Swedish DBE managing health-related services.

Continuous situation-specific development of business models: knowledge provision, method composition, and method enactment

The development of new business models is essential for startups to become successful, as well as for established companies to explore new business opportunities. However, developing such business models is a continuous challenging activity where different tasks need to be performed, and business decisions need to be made. Both have to fit the constantly changeable situation in which the business model is developed to reduce the risk of developing ineffective business models with low market penetration. Therefore, a method for developing situation-specific business models is needed. As a solution, we refine the concept of situational method engineering (SME) to business model development. SME, in turn, provides means to construct situation-specific development methods out of fragments from a method repository. We develop a concept for the continuous situation-specific development of business models based on design science. The approach uses the roles of a domain expert, a method engineer, and a business developer together with a repository with method fragments for developing business models and a repository with modeling artifacts for supporting the development. Both repositories are filled by utilizing the experience of domain experts. Out of these repositories, situation-specific development methods for developing business models can be continuously composed based on the changeable situation by the method engineer and enacted by the business developer. We implement it as an open-source tool and evaluate its applicability in an industrial case study of developing a business model for a local event platform. Our results show that situation awareness supports the continuous development of business models.

Are you of value to me? A partner selection reference method for software ecosystem orchestrators

• Software ecosystem partner selection. • Software ecosystem partner selection method development. • Software ecosystem partner selection criteria. • Software ecosystem orchestration. • Software ecosystem health. Software ecosystem orchestrators have insufficient insight and lack academic guidance in the partner selection criteria and methods available to aid them in their partner selection process. Therefore, orchestrators fail to vet, select, and engage suitable partners for their software ecosystem. Through six case studies with software orchestrators, we extract six industry methods for partner selection. Using situational method engineering, we create PALERMO: the PArtner seLEction Reference MethOd, which is subsequently evaluated by three different experts in the context of three more case studies. The method is composed and described using method engineering, and a list of partner selection criteria. Together, the method and list of criteria aid orchestrators in organizing and optimizing the partner selection process. The evaluation of the method in three extensive case studies, shows that the method is complete, effective, useful, and easy to use.

The Five Diamond Method for Explorative Business Process Management

Explorative business process management (BPM) is attracting increasing interest in the literature and professional practice. Organizations have recognized that a focus on operational efficiency is no longer sufficient when disruptive forces can make the value proposition of entire processes obsolete. So far, however, research on how to create entirely new processes has remained largely conceptual, leaving it open how explorative BPM can be put into practice. Following the design science research paradigm and situational method engineering, we address this research gap by proposing a method called the Five Diamond Method. This method guides explorative BPM activities by supporting organizations in identifying opportunities from business and technology trends and integrating them into business processes with novel value propositions. The method is evaluated against literature-backed design objectives and competing artifacts, qualitative data gathered from BPM practitioners, as well as a pilot study and two real-world applications. This research provides two contributions. First, the Five Diamond Method broadens the scope of BPM by integrating prescriptive knowledge from innovation management. Second, the method supports capturing emerging opportunities arising from changing customer needs and digital technologies.

Evaluating the Design of Service-Dominant Business Models: A Qualitative Method

Evaluating the Design of Service-Dominant Business Models: A Qualitative Method Rick Gilsing, Eindhoven University of TechnologyFollow Oktay Turetken, Eindhoven University of TechnologyFollow Baris Ozkan, Eindhoven University of TechnologyFollow Paul Grefen, Eindhoven University of TechnologyFollow Onat Ege Adali, Eindhoven University of TechnologyFollow Anna Wilbik, Maastricht UniversityFollow Frank Berkers, TNOFollow Abstract Background: Driven by factors such as digitization and rapid technological change, many contemporary organizations adopt a service orientation to sustain competitiveness and to improve their value propositions to customers. In doing so, organizations typically engage in collaborative service ecosystems to co-create value and exchange services, and conceptualize such collaborations using business models. The resulting models should be evaluated to support the development of service ecosystems and their long- term viability. Despite academic efforts on the evaluation of traditional, organization- centric business models, limited research is present supporting the evaluation of service- dominant business models, taking into account their key characteristics, such as service exchange and value co-creation in business networks. Method: Following a design science research methodology, we have iteratively designed a method addressing the qualitative evaluation of service-dominant business models, building on and integrating the theory on service-dominant logic, business model design and business model evaluation. To structure the steps of the design process, we leverage a situational method engineering approach, following a paradigm-based strategy. To evaluate the validity and utility our method, we have applied it to a real-life business case in the mobility domain, involving eight industry stakeholders in the process. Results: The method constitutes a set of guiding questions and a procedural description of their use, addressing the evaluation concerns of feasibility, viability, structural validity and robustness with respect to the service-dominant business model. The results of the evaluation demonstrate that the use of the method facilitates users to reflect qualitatively on design decision with respect the business model design and offers insights on its expected performance. Conclusions: This work contributes to extant research on service systems engineering and the instantiation of service-dominant logic, clarifying how service ecosystems can be evaluated through the business model concept and explicating how business models are impacted through service-dominant logic.

Role of situational method engineering to improve visual information systems in agile distributed environment

Software product prone to continuous evolution due to increase in the use of technology. Therefore, more stakeholders are involved in software evolution increases the cost and complexity. This required optimization of resources and cost to handle evolution with Global Software Development (GSD) to utilize time zones efficiently. The significance challenge of GSD reports: time zone difference, geographical location, communication delays, knowledge sharing, control among stakeholders and development team. Because of these challenges, the requirements for development in GSD environment are also challenge as compared to on site development. Different requirement engineering methods have been used to improve the requirements analysis to deal with ambiguities and inconsistency in large set of requirements. The customization and tailoring of requirements according to changing project’s situations required to improve project development with reusing existing agile methods during requirement engineering phase. Moreover, complex information systems where heterogeneity is inevitable that implies the involvement of divergent stakeholders and necessitate a comprehensive framework to capture multidimensional viewpoints and fulfill aforementioned issues. Therefore, a situational multi-dimensional agile requirement engineering method has been proposed to support team and stakeholders’ viewpoints. The schema of the proposed method is based on challenges recognized by performing Literature Review. Then proposed method has been evaluated via experimental approach and statistical analysis conducted to validated reliability of data collected. This result is significant approved both practically and statistically that the proposed approach ease to use, implement, trained and increased productivity and performance. Hence, the experimental study for the evaluation of the proposed approach results concluded that, proposed approach is the important multimedia tool for supporting organization and distributed development team for information sharing, collaboration, product development.

Inter-technology relationship networks: Arranging technologies through text mining

Ongoing advances in digital technologies – which enable new products, services, and business models – have fundamentally affected business and society through several waves of digitalization. When analyzing digital technologies, a dynamic system or an ecosystem model that represents interrelated technologies is beneficial owing to the systemic character of digital technologies. Using an assembly-based process model for situational method engineering, and following the design science research paradigm, we develop an analytical method to generate technology-related network data that retraces elapsed patterns of technological change. We consider the technological distances that characterize technologies' proximities and dependencies. We use established text mining techniques and draw from technology innovation research as justificatory knowledge. The proposed method processes textual data from different information sources into an analyzable and readable inter-technology relationship network. To evaluate the method, we use exemplary digital technologies from the big data analytics domain as an application scenario.

A Situational Method for Creating Shared Understanding on Requirements for an Enterprise Architecture

Lack of shared understanding among stakeholders is a commonly cited drawback in enterprise architecture development. Stakeholders need to have shared understanding of requirements and principles for an enterprise architecture, and the extent to which the resultant architecture addresses their concerns. However, existing approaches for enterprise architecture development lack adequate capabilities for managing aspects associated with creating shared understanding among stakeholders. Although such aspects can be largely managed by approaches for collaborative decision making and soft systems thinking, these approaches lack details on the enterprise architecture process and its products. Therefore, this paper explores ways of mutually diminishing these gaps through adopting situational method engineering, to guide the development of a situational method for enabling stakeholders to acquire shared understanding of requirements for an enterprise architecture. The situational method presented herein is a component of a broader method for supporting collaboration between stakeholders and architects during enterprise architecture creation. Although the latter was successfully evaluated in 6 enterprises, it exhibited highest performance scores in two enterprises after it was amended with the situational method. Therefore, this paper also presents key findings from evaluating the situational method in the two agencies that are located in Uganda.

Knowledge management in requirement elicitation

The application of situational method engineering in requirements elicitation phase is investigated.A novel, simple and dynamic web-based tool, Situational Requirement Method System (SRMS), is deve...

A Collaborative Situational Method Engineering Approach for Requirement Gathering

This article re-defines traditional requirement engineering processes by performing exhaustive requirement gathering through an interactive and collaborative communication, where stakeholders are equally involved in capturing and finalizing requirements in the scope of a project. It strongly supports concept of re-usability using principals of situational method engineering where methods are tailor-made per requirements from the method repository (maintained in the cloud). Search and selection of appropriate methods meeting stakeholder's interest is performed using concepts of knowledge discovery and data mining methods over a web interface. Knowledge extraction, in the form of a matched set of requirements is performed at every level of a proposed multi-layered framework, as progression towards a desirable method for reuse. This approach will help in overcoming the challenging tasks of identifying relevant requirements, incorporating change requests and minimizing the number of disagreements between stakeholders and developers.

Towards a Formalization of a Framework to Express and Reason about Software Engineering Methods

Software Engineering is considered a knowledge-intensive discipline, in which knowledge creation, collection and sharing is an uninterrupted process. However, a large part of this knowledge exists in a tacit form and depends on practitioners. Therefore defining a mechanism to transform tacit knowledge into explicit one is of upmost importance. This paper presents a formalization approach to represent Software Engineering practitioners' tacit knowledge, which is related to their ways of working, as a set of explicit statements. The formalization is based on KUALI-BEH, which is a normative kernel extension of ESSENCE formal specification, and consists of three parts: an ontology to share a common representation of knowledge as a set of concepts; a Situational Method Engineering based algebra that represents well-defined method properties and operations; and a knowledge representation of the ontology and algebra using Description Logics. The main objectives of this initial formalization are to improve communication among humans and machines, computational inference and reuse of knowledge.

How to Exploit the Digitalization Potential of Business Processes

Process improvement is the most value-adding activity in the business process management (BPM) lifecycle. Despite mature knowledge, many approaches have been criticized to lack guidance on how to put process improvement into practice. Given the variety of emerging digital technologies, organizations not only face a process improvement black box, but also high uncertainty regarding digital technologies. This paper thus proposes a method that supports organizations in exploiting the digitalization potential of their business processes. To achieve this, action design research and situational method engineering were adopted. Two design cycles involving practitioners (i.e., managers and BPM experts) and end-users (i.e., process owners and participants) were conducted. In the first cycle, the method’s alpha version was evaluated by interviewing practitioners from five organizations. In the second cycle, the beta version was evaluated via real-world case studies. In this paper, detailed results of one case study, which was conducted at a semiconductor manufacturer, are included.

Knowledge management in requirement elicitation: Situational methods view

In small-scale software development organizations, software engineers are beginning to realize the significance of adapting software development methods according to project conditions. There is a requirement to proliferate this know-how to other developers, who may be facing the same settings/context, so that they too can benefit from others’ experiences. In this paper, the application of situational method engineering in requirements elicitation phase is investigated. A novel, simple and dynamic web-based tool, Situational Requirement Method System (SRMS), is developed which can aid in conception/formulation, repository, and elicitation/derivation of methods related with this stage. The proposed approach and tool are validated by distributing a questionnaire among software professionals working in large software companies, and making SRMS accessible to them. The results indicate that a majority of the participants finds SRMS useful and provides various suggestions to improve it.

Scaling for agility: A reference model for hybrid traditional-agile software development methodologies

The adoption of agility at a large scale often requires the integration of agile and non-agile development elements for architecting a hybrid adaptive methodology. The challenge is ”which elements or components (agile or non-agile) are relevant to develop the context-aware hybrid adaptive methodology reference architecture?” This paper addresses this important challenge and develops a hybrid adaptive methodology reference architecture model using a qualitative constructive empirical research approach. In this way, we have uncovered the agility, abstraction, business value, business policy, rules, legal, context and facility elements or components that have not been explicitly modelled or discussed in International Standards (IS) such as the ISO/IEC 24744 metamodel. It is anticipated that a context-aware hybrid adaptive methodology can be architected by using the proposed context-aware hybrid adaptive methodology reference architecture elements for a particular situation when using a situational method engineering approach.