Knowledge forms an important asset in modern organizations. In order to gain and sustain competitive advantage knowledge has to be managed. One aspect of this is to use Electronic Knowledge Repositories (EKR) to enhance knowledge sharing, reuse and learning. The success of an EKR is dependent on the quality of its content. For knowledge to be stored in an EKR, it has to be captured. One crucial part of the capture process is to evaluate whether the identified knowledge should be incorporated in the EKR or not. Therefore, to increase quality in an EKR, the evaluation stage of the capture process must be successfully carried out. Based on an interpretive field study and an extensive literature review, this paper identifies and characterizes Critical Success Factors (CSF) in the evaluation stage and presents guidance aiming to support implementation of the evaluation stage with the purpose to increase the quality of an EKR. In particular, the guidance supports the decision whether identified knowledge should be stored or not and it highlights the importance of performing evaluation addressing correctness, relevance, protection and redundancy. The characterization of the capture process contributes mainly to KM theory, and the guidance to KM practice.
In this paper, the authors demonstrate the suitability of IT-supported knowledge repositories for knowledge retention. Successful knowledge retention is dependent on whatis stored in a repository and, hence, possible to share. Accordingly, the ability to capture theright (relevant) knowledge is a key aspect. Therefore, to increase the quality in an IT-supported knowledge repository, the identification activity, which starts the capture process, must besuccessfully performed. While critical success factors (CSFs) for knowledge retention andknowledge management are frequently discussed in the literature, there is a knowledge gapconcerning CSFs for this specific knowledge capture activity. From a knowledge retention perspective, this paper proposes a model that characterizes CSFs for the identification activity and highlights the CSFs’ contribution to knowledge retention.
IT-supported knowledge repositories are an important part in Knowledge Management (KM) work. The success of an IT-supported knowledge repository is dependent on what is stored in the repository and hence the ability to capture the right knowledge is a key aspect. Therefore, to increase the quality in an ITsupported Knowledge Repository, the identify activity, which starts the capture process, must be successfully performed. While Critical Success Factors (CSF) for KM and KMS are frequently discussed in the literature, there is a knowledge gap concerning CSF for this specific knowledge capture activity. Based on an interpretive field study and a literature review, this paper proposes and characterizes CSF for the identify activity. For example, we highlight the importance of having organizational knowledge about what knowledge to capture and where to find it, i.e. having knowledge about potential sources of knowledge.
Knowledge forms an important asset in modern organisations. In order to gain and sustain competitive advantage knowledge has to be managed. One aspect of this is to use Electronic Knowledge Repositories (EKRs) in order to enhance knowledge sharing, reuse and learning. The success of an EKR is dependent on the quality of its content. For knowledge to be stored in an EKR, it has to be captured. One crucial part of the capture process is to evaluate whether the identified knowledge should be incorporated in the EKR or not. Therefore, to increase information quality in an EKR, the evaluation stage of the capture process must be successfully performed. This paper characterizes Critical Success Factors (CSF) for knowledge evaluation and presents six evaluation criteria to guide the evaluation stage in order to increase information quality in EKR:s. In particular we highlight the importance of performing evaluation addressing correctness, relevance, protection and redundancy.
Society is based on knowledge and the availability thereof. Access to knowledge empowers people, and organizations must reuse knowledge to be competitive. The right knowledge to the right person at the right time is important for success, and IT plays an important role in order to achieve this goal, for example in the form of Electronic Knowlege Repositories (EKR). The success of an EKR depends on what is stored therein, and the ability to capture the right knowledge is hence a key aspect. This, however, is a complex issue. The goal of this paper is to identify and describe different types of knowledge loss, seven of which have been identified and characterized. As an example, one knowledge loss shows that not all knowledge can be stored, and critical knowledge elements may therefore be lost when attempting to store it. Some knowledge loss may be desirable, since an organization should not want to store everything. The results contribute to capturing the right knowledge, and hence to successful EKR. The results thus contribute to elevating the competitive power of an organization.
Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of requirements engineering and the need for improved decision support for requirements engineers has been identified by a number of authors. A first step toward better decision support is to understand decision-makers’ complex decision situations. Aspects of decision situations are decision matters, decision-making activities, and decision processes. In this paper we present two requirements engineering decision processes and their decision-making activities and decision matters. These were identified in a case study conducted at Ericsson Microwave Systems. We also discuss the consequences of these for requirements engineering decision support.
Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of requirements engineering (RE) and the need for improved decision support for RE decision-makers has been identified by a number of authors in the research literature. Decision-supporting features and qualities can be integrated in RE tools. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the decision-supporting capabilities of RE tools. In this paper, we introduce a summative, criteria-based evaluation method termed DESCRY, which purpose is to investigate to what extent RE tools have decision-supporting capabilities. The criteria and their related questions are empirically as well as theoretically grounded.
Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of requirements engineering (RE) and the need for improved decision support for RE decision-makers has been identified by a number of authors in the research literature. A first step toward better decision support in requirements engineering is to understand multifaceted decision situations of decision-makers. In this paper, the focus is on RE decision-making in large scale bespoke development. The decision situation of RE decision-makers on a subsystem level has been studied at a systems engineering company and is depicted in this paper. These situations are described in terms of, e.g., RE decision matters, RE decision-making activities, and RE decision processes. Factors that affect RE decision-makers are also identified.
This paper provides an overview of a collaborative research program in information fusion from databases, sensors and simulations. Information fusion entails the combination of data from multiple sources, to generate information that cannot be derived from the individual sources. This area is of strategic importance for industry and defense, as well as public administration areas such as health care, and needs to be pursued as an academic subject. A large number of industrial partners are supporting and participating in the development of the area. The paper describes the program’s general approach and main research areas, with a particular focus on the role of information fusion in systems development
Purpose: The objective of this paper is to provide and argue for a comprehensive view of e-procurement that involves both the buyer and suppliers and that goes beyond looking at mere cost reductions on the buyer side. More specifically, the paper describes benefits and barriers of implementing e-procurement solutions for both buyers and suppliers.
Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports on a literature review combined with a case study. The case is a public organization in Sweden, which prepares to implement an e-procurement solution. Interviews were also conducted with a selection of suppliers to the case organization.
Findings: In e-procurement literature, drivers and barriers are often viewed only from the perspective of a buying organization. Benefits are mainly cost-related for the buying organization, while barriers often include suppliers. It is proposed that benefits and barriers should include both buyers and suppliers. The literature review and the case study findings form the basis for further investigation into this problem area.
Research limitations/implications: This study focuses on a public organization in Sweden. Yet, it could have implications for many public or private organizations considering implementing e-procurement systems.
Practical implications: This research suggest that organizations to a greater extent should take the supplier´s side into account when implementing e-procurement solutions.
Originality/Value: The study highlights a full cycle view on e-procurement taking both buyer and supplier into account.
A more precise definition of the field of information fusion can be of benefit to researchers within the field, who may use uch a definition when motivating their own work and evaluating the contribution of others. Moreover, it can enable researchers and practitioners outside the field to more easily relate their own work to the field and more easily understand the scope of the techniques and methods developed in the field. Previous definitions of information fusion are reviewed from that perspective, including definitions of data and sensor fusion, and their appropriateness as definitions for the entire research field are discussed. Based on strengths and weaknesses of existing definitions, a novel definition is proposed, which is argued to effectively fulfill the requirements that can be put on a definition of information fusion as a field of research.
Enterprise Modeling (EM) has two main purposes: (1) Developing the business, which entails developing business vision, strategies, redesigning the way the business operates, developing the supporting information systems, etc., and (2) ensuring the quality of the business where the focus is on sharing the knowledge about the business, its vision and the way it operates, and ensuring the acceptance of business decisions through committing the stakeholders to the decisions made. In addition, EM has also shown to be useful as a general tool for articulating, discussing, and solving organizational problems. Based on a number of case studies, interviews and observations this chapter defines what is required from EM when adopted for these purposes and intentions respectively. More precisely, it addresses the following types of requirements; documents and models required as input, models that should be developed, requirements on the modeling language, requirements on the modeling process, tool requirements and model quality requirements. The defined requirements are then discussed taking a specific EM method, Enterprise Knowledge Development (EKD) as example.
This paper aims at providing insights into the complex world of managing goals as part of change. The paper describes a digital prototype tool to support goal oriented improvement efforts towards company survival and growth. The prototype was developed based on the needs of practitioners in a SME construction company. Initial results indicates that a tool like the prototype can be helpful. This stimulates further research and development, and might inspire others to make and take advantage of IT solutions that go beyond traditional project scheduling to support change.
This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 8.1 Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling held in November 2016 in Skövde, Sweden. The PoEM conference series started in 2008 and aims to provide a forum sharing knowledge and experiences between the academic community and practitioners from industry and the public sector. The 18 full papers and 9 short papers accepted were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions and cover topics related to information systems development, enterprise modeling, requirements engineering, and process management. In addition, the keynote by Robert Winter on “Establishing 'Architectural Thinking' in Organizations” is also included in this volume.
The paper identifies and discusses what is considered to be the three most critical points, both up-stream and down-stream to Enterprise Modeling, for ensuring the usefulness and use of EM results in the continuous improvement of organizations. The model type that is targeted in the cases discussed in the paper is the process model, but other related model types, e.g. goal models and concepts models are also addressed in relation to process models. The points addressed in the paper are: 1) Trigger handling - acting on symptoms or the root cause problem, 2) critical aspects during modeling, and 3) establishing mechanisms for continuous model based business process improvement.
Eliminating the gap between business and IT within an enterprise, i.e., solving the problem of Business and IT Alignment (BITA), requires an instrument for the multidimensional analysis of an enterprise. Enterprise Modeling (EM) is a practice that supports such analysis and therefore can be used to facilitate BITA. EM serves as a tool that can capture, visualize and analyze different aspects of enterprises. This article presents a framework that describes the role of EM in the context of BITA and presents recommendations in EM for BITA.
Today’s dynamic business environment presents enterprises that wish to stay competitive with a great challenge. This is further complicated by rapidly advancing IT capabilities and the crucial role that IT plays in most organizations - a backbone for realizing visions and goals. The problem of eliminating the gap between business and IT within enterprises, i.e. the problem of Business and IT Alignment (BITA), has been acknowledged as a contemporary challenge and actively elaborated by academics and practitioners. One practice that is used to facilitate BITA is Enterprise Modeling (EM), which is considered as a catalyzing practice for capturing, visualizing and analyzing different aspects of enterprises.
This paper presents a framework that illustrates the role of EM in the context of BITA and suggests recommendations to deal with EM challenges.
Helhetlig virksomhetsledelse, digitalisering og gjennomføring av endring er viktige kompetanse- og fokusområder i lederens hverdag. Grunnen til dette er at en ny virkelighet har vokst frem for organisasjoner og deres ledere i dagens turbulente forretningsverden. Den nye realiteten fordrer at organisasjoner ikke bare blir bedre på å drive forretningen, men også på å bli fremragende i å endre måten virksomheten drives. Storparten av stoffet i Kontinuerlig endringsarbeid handler om forutsetninger, verktøy og tiltak for økt kontroll med drift og endring. Materialet som presenteres er hentet fra litteratur og forfatternes egen forskning i praksisfeltet. Målgruppen for Kontinuerlig endringsarbeid er ledere og endringsagenter, men også fremtidige ledere som nå er studenter innen ulike ledelses-, teknologi- og organisasjonsfag.
Requirements engineering for market-driven software development entails special challenges. This paper presents results from an empirical study that investigates these challenges, taking a qualitative approach using interviews with fourteen employees at eight software companies and a focus group meeting with practitioners. The objective of the study is to increase the understanding of the area of market-driven requirements engineering and provide suggestions for future research by describing encountered challenges. A number of challenging issues were found, including bridging communication gaps between marketing and development, selecting the right level of process support, basing the release plan on uncertain estimates, and managing the constant flow of requirement.s
Healthcare organizations are increasingly becoming dependent on knowledge management activities to improve the quality of care, to maintain a high level of efficiency and innovation as well as to flexibly adapt to raid change. Utilizing knowledge management support systems - e.g. Internet based knowledge portals - to manage medical information and healthcare knowledge aimed to support the full spectrum of knowledge needs has become an important issue for all healthcare professionals. This paper reports on the main findings from analyzing the characteristics and challenges of 15 Swedish knowledge portals containing healthcare information. The analysis is based on inspection of the portals and interviews with their owners. The main challenges found concern fragmentation of knowledge, structuring of knowledge content, usability, interaction and resources for maintaining knowledge content. Future successful development and use of knowledge portals to disseminate healthcare knowledge depend on addressing these challenges, which requires portal owners to have a long-term strategy as well as a systematic way of working.
Aims: To explore on how patients experience the information exchange with healthcare organizations and how this relates to the six areas that constitute good quality care.Method: A qualitative approach inspired by Grounded Theory was adopted. Seven interviews with patients were carried out in the homes of patients.Conclusion: Healthcare does not always meet the requirements of Health and Medical Services Act with regard to good quality health. An effective exchange of information between health professionals and patients was found as a key issue for creating the conditions for good quality care.
Succeeding with continuous improvement is important for manufacturing companies to increase the competitive edge. In order to succeed with continuous improvement, literature shows that communication of improvement indicators need to be integrated with communication of control indicators. This paper identifies divergencies between current practice and theory in the communication of CI, which can be a reason for why manufacturing companies fail in their CI implementation. An integration of control indicators and improvement indicators could improve continuous improvement results, increasing business performance.
Information Fusion (IF) is about combining, or fusing, information from different sources in order to facilitate our understanding of a complex system and thereby provide insights that could not be gained from any of the individual data sources in isolation. We argue in this paper that there is a need for applying an IF approach in bioinformatics research, since the aim of bioinformatics is to understand complex biological systems using many different data sources providing complementary views of the system. We illustrate this argument with two application examples, where IF-based bioinformatics is applied to the study of stem cell differentiation and lipid digestion, respectively. We also discuss the use of automated information extraction from text sources, which is an essential component of a bioinformatics IF approach, given the abundant literature.
The chapter entitled “The Practice of Participatory Enterprise Modelling – a Competency Perspective” by Anne Persson addresses the question of how to develop enterprise models in a participatory way, in particular which competencies that are required for this purpose. The chapter presents the two main ways of working when it comes to involving stakeholders in the modelling process, the participatory and the non-participatory, and then focuses on the participatory approach. The author describes the desired competencies of domain experts and method experts, which are two of the most crucial actors in the participatory modelling process. The author further argues that although competency is one of the most critical success factors in modelling it is an overlooked topic in modelling research. The chapter is illustrated with quotes from an interview study that the author has carried out.
Small and medium sized (SME) construction companies are often good at bricks, mortar and carpentry but not at management. However, it is often bad management that hinders companies to become financially sustainable over time and to grow. This paper presents a generic goal model aiming to support SME construction companies to systematically work with continuous improvement towards the overarching goal of becoming thriving businesses.
The goal model has been developed based on the principles of lean, balanced scorecards and the business canvas, as well as on a management consultant’s experiences from working with this kind of companies for many years.
An explorative study was carried out to investigate the intentions behind the use of Enterprise Modelling (EM) in organisations and to assess the implications of those intentions for EM tool support and participative EM. Some important conclusions are: 1) Participative EM should only be applied in consensus oriented organisational cultures and if properly applied it is a very strong way of committing stakeholders to business decisions, 2) The preparation of EM activities is critical and complex, meaning that it is not a task for novices, 3) Modelling experts prefer flexible and tools that give them methodological freedom, graphical power and reporting facilities, and 4) Future EM tools will need to cater for integration of methods.
The succesful implementation of a knowledge management approach in an organization is inherently difficult and risky. This paper presents, in the form of organizational patterns some concrete advice that will improve the possibilities of a knowledge management initiative to survive the implementation phase. The sources of the advice are a number of case studies that were carried out in private and public organizations.
Undertaking to implement a Knowledge Management approach is inherently difficult and risky for organizations. This paper describes and discusses an implementation of a Knowledge Management system that took place in a Swedish healthcare organization. The paper takes as its starting point a set of suggested best practices for implementing a Knowledge Management approach. For each of the best practices the successful case is discussed and contrasted with some less successful cases.
Organizations normally begin using Enterprise Modeling (EM) within the context of a development project of some sort, where an outside vendor and/or consultant provide the method and related IT tool usage compe- tence. If an organization uses EM sufficiently frequently it may be motivated to develop in-house EM competence and to acquire and adopt an EM method. The paper is an experience paper. It defines what it means to adopt an EM method in an organization and describes the process of adopting and institutionalizing EM as an organizational strategy to support continuous improvement and de- velopment. The process consists of three activities: deciding that an EM method should be adopted as part of the organization’s set of institutionalized methods, electing a suitable method and implementing the method.
Enterprise Modeling (EM) has established itself as a valuable instrument for various purposes related to organizational development, such as designing or redesigning the business, eliciting requirements for information systems, capturing and reasoning about organizational knowledge. A notable characteristic of EM is its collaborative way of stakeholder involvement in modeling. Much of the success of projects using EM depends on how the EM process is organized and on the competence level of the expert responsible for the EM approach. This paper analyses what are the competence needs for the method expert and what competences are needed in the different steps in the EM process. The EM process described consists of activities for project inception and planning, conducting modeling sessions, and delivering a result that can be taken up by a subsequent implementation project. Two main competence areas are discussed in relation to the EM process - competences related to modeling and competences related to managing EM projects.
Undertaking to implement a knowledge management approach is inherently difficult and risky for organizations. This article describes and discusses an implementation of a knowlege management system that took place at Skaraborg Hospital, a group of hospitals in the South West of Sweden. The article describes how the implementation process was carried out. Based on the experiences from this case and some previous cases, the article suggests a number of best practices for implementing a knowledge management approach.
When practitioners make decisions as well as treat and care for patients they interpret patient specific information according to evidence based medical knowledge. This process is complex as evidence is infrequently available in a form that can be acted upon at the time decisions must be made. The aim of this paper is to (1) explore how primary, secondary and municipality care in Sweden work with the process of managing knowledge, (2) explore how nurses and assistant nurses experience availability of medical knowledge when and where they need it and (3) conditions for developing a coherent IT-based knowledge portal for different areas of knowledge bases in healthcare. The results show significant deficiencies in the knowledge management process of the participating organizations. The knowledge management processes are not embedded in business processes, activities and relationships, which cause major difficulties for practitioners to keep up with the latest medical evidence.
When practitioners make decisions as well as treat and care for patients they interpret patient specific information according to evidence based medical knowledge. This process is complex as evidence is infrequently available in a form that can be acted upon at the time decisions must be made. The aim of this paper is to (1) explore how primary, secondary and municipality care in Sweden work with the process of managing knowledge, (2) explore how healthcare practitioners’ experience, availability of medical knowledge when and where they need it and (3) conditions for developing a coherent IT-based knowledge portal for different areas of knowledge bases in healthcare. The results show significant deficiencies in the knowledge management process of the participating organizations. The knowledge management processes are not embedded in business processes, activities and relationships, which cause major difficulties for practitioners to keep up with the latest medical evidence.
Healthcare processes require the cooperation of different healthcare providers and medical disciplines. In such an environment, the quality and safety of care rely heavily on the ability to exchange information from one software to another, and from one person to another. However, information systems that support a seamless flow of information along healthcare processes are not broadly used in healthcare environments. Usually, healthcare organizations have their own autonomously developed information systems that do not support the cooperation of different organizational units and medical disciplines. This has led to the fragmentation of the patients’ information in proprietary heterogeneous systems across healthcare organizations. The aim of this paper is to: (1) explore how healthcare practitioners´ in Sweden experience information system support in their daily work activities, and (2) present and illustrate how key design principles of a process support system prototype can support healthcare practitioners in their work practice. An important conclusion from this research is that a process support as the one described in this paper creates new opportunities to organize and coordinate healthcare
Healthcare processes require the cooperation of different healthcare providers and medical disciplines. In such an environment, the quality and safety of care rely heavily on the ability to exchange information from one software to another, and from one person to another. However, information systems that support a seamless flow of information along healthcare processes are not broadly used in healthcare environments. Usually, healthcare organizations have their own autonomously developed information systems that do not support the cooperation of different organizational units and medical disciplines. This has led to the fragmentation of the patients’ information in proprietary heterogeneous systems across healthcare organizations. The aim of this paper is to: (1) explore how healthcare practitioners´ in Sweden experience information system support in their daily work activities, and (2) present and illustrate how key design principles of a process support system prototype can support healthcare practitioners in their work practice. An important conclusion from this research is that a process support as the one described in this paper creates new opportunities to organize and coordinate healthcare.