Running head: ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 1 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT BASED ON DEMO METHOD. Anitha Devi Nagarajan. Utrecht University

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1 Running head: ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 1 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT BASED ON DEMO METHOD Anitha Devi Nagarajan Utrecht University Author Note Author of the method: Dietz J.L.G Authors of the original paper: Albani A., Dietz J.L.G (2011) Name of Method: Design and Engineering Methodologies for Organization

2 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT...3 INTRODUCTION...4 UNDERSTANDING THE ENTERPRISES WITH DEMO...4 ABOUT THE AUTHOR...5 EXAMPLE...6 PROCESS DESCRIPTION...7 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY...8 Construction Model....8 Process Model....8 Action Model....9 State Model....9 PROCESS DELIVERABLE DIAGRAM...9 ACTIVITY TABLE...11 CONCEPT TABLE...12 RELATED LITERATURE...14

3 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 3 Abstract Design and Engineering Methodology for Organization (DEMO) is a renown Enterprise Engineering method for designing and constructing an organization by effectively understanding the organization structure through decomposing it. This paper looks at the Enterprise Ontology development using DEMO method presented by Albani and Dietz (2011) in the angle of method engineering. This paper explains the overall working of DEMO method and illustrates it with an example. Later the actual work of enterprise ontology development method is presented in the method engineering specific way. Keywords: DEMO, Enterprise Ontology, PDD, Method Engineering

4 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 4 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY DEVELOPMENT BASED ON DEMO METHOD Introduction The implementation of Information and Communication Technologies in various organizations throughout the world has improved the performance of their business processes. At the same time, it has also increased the need to adapt the business processes in order to comply with the fluctuating market needs and organizational restructuring. In order to manage with these aspects and to enhance the business processes, it is highly required to have the deep understanding of the construction and operation of enterprises and enterprise networks. Understanding the enterprises with DEMO Albani et al., (2011) described that DEMO is the method for modeling redesigning and reengineering business processes of an organization by helping to understand the notion of business processes in it. As per Dietz (2006b; 2008a) a DEMO transaction is the basic element of a business process in DEMO method. As it is seen in Figure 1, a DEMO transaction is a pattern of two kind of acts performed by the social individuals (also called as subjects or actors), who are actually the active elements of an organization. Those two kinds of acts are namely: Production acts or P-acts and Coordination acts or C-acts. As their names imply, production acts will produce something which is either material (goods) or immaterial (services) and on the other hand, coordination act will be an act of compliance. The outcome of any successful P-act will be called Production fact (P-fact) and the similar one for C- act will be called Coordination fact (C-fact). As mentioned earlier, these acts will occur in a generic coordination pattern called transaction and the actors involving in these transactions are called initiator and executor. Any demo transaction occurs in three phases namely, Order Phase (O- Phase), Execution Phase (E-Phase) and Result Phase (R-Phase) (Dietz, 2006b).

5 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 5 In the O-Phase, both the partaking subjects (initiator and executor) will come to an agreement about the P-fact to be produced. The corresponding C-acts in this phase are request and promise. In the E-Phase, the executor will produce the P-fact and so in the R-Phase, again both the actors will negotiate and settle with each other on delivered P-fact (Dietz, 2006b). Figure 1 Basic DEMO transaction pattern imitated from Dietz (2006b) Figure 2 Basic process step diagram model as adopted from Dietz(2006b) About the Author DEMO method was developed by Dr. Jan L.G. Dietz, who is a professor of the Information Systems Design at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. His research and educational interests are in modeling, (re)designing and (re)engineering organizations and in

6 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 6 engineering advanced ICT- applications to support them. He has published over 200 scientific and professional papers as well as several books. He is a co-founder and chairman of the Enterprise Engineering Institute ( Example In this section, the DEMO way of modeling of an organization has been illustrated with a practical example of a pizzeria. Assume that there is a pizzeria which has an owner who processes the orders from a customer and he has an employee who actually bakes the pizzas. Every customer who comes to the pizzeria will provide the order to the owner and he will inform the baker to prepare the pizza. Once the pizza is ready, the baker hands it over to the owner and the owner hands it over to the ordered customer. For the above scenario of the pizzeria, let us try to construct the process step diagram. First there are three actors identified from the scenario as given below. Actor A0: Customer; Actor A1: Fulfiller (Owner who fulfills the customer order); Actor A2: Baker For every pizza ordering process, there are two transactions involved as following. Transaction T1: Between A0 and A1 Customer (A0) placing the order to the fulfiller (A1) Transaction T2: Between A1 and A2 Fulfiller (A1) placing the order to the baker (A2) Hence the transaction flow happens as follows: The Actor A0 (Customer) requests the Pizza Order (T1 in state Request) to Actor A1(Fulfiller). Once the order was taken the T1 moves to state Promise and then the second transaction T2 is coming into place when A1 places the pizza order to A2(Baker). Here the Transaction T2 is in

7 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 7 state Request and moves to state Promise when the request was accepted. Then the baker bakes the pizza (which is the P-fact of T2) and gives it to Fulfiller so that T2 enters into state T2. Once the Pizza was taken by the fulfiller the Transaction T2 moves to accept and completes at that point. The fulfiller takes the pizza (now it is the P-fact of T1) and gives it to customer so that T1 enters into state. Once the customer accepts the pizza given the transaction T1 enters into accept and completes over there. Figure 3 Process Step Diagram of the Pizzeria From the Figure 3, it can be seen that the there is an intermediate flow which is not including the transaction T2. This will be taken for example when the customer orders a pizza and if it is not available in the pizzeria, the transaction T1 will be completed without involving the baker (and so no T2). Process Description In this section, a global overview of the enterprise ontology construction process using DEMO method is presented with the help of a method engineering technique known as Process Deliverable Diagram (PDD) (Weerd & Brinkkemper, 2008). A PDD comprises of a Meta Process Model on the left hand side and Meta Data Model on the right hand side of the diagram. The Meta Process Model describes the activities and sub-activities to be carried out in the method and Meta

8 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 8 Data Model depicts the corresponding deliverables/concepts which are obtained as an output from the activities involved. At the end, a concept table and an activity table is included in order to explain the corresponding items. These tables are further explained clearly below when they are brought up. Enterprise Ontology Albani and Dietz (2011) described that an enterprise ontology is a business domain model with the characteristics namely coherence, consistency, comprehension, conciseness and essentiality. The entire ontological model of an enterprise comprises four aspect models i.e. Constructional Model (CM), Process Model (PM), State Model (SM) and Action Model (AM) as seen in Figure 4. Figure 4 The four aspects ontological model reproduced from Albani & Dietz (2011) Construction Model. The Construction Model of an organization details the model of its construction and it consists of internal and external actor roles of an organization, the transaction and information links between the actor roles. This model is represented in Object Construction Diagram, Transaction Result Table and Bank Contents Table. Process Model. The Process Model of an organization specifies all the identified transactions from CM with the help of the DEMO transaction pattern explained earlier. This model also details the relationships among the transactions. These tree structure of enclosed transactions

9 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 9 define the business processes of the corresponding enterprise. This PM model is represented by Process Step Diagram and may be complemented with an Information Use Table. Action Model. The Action Model of an organization consists of a set of action rules which specify the production and/or coordination acts that must be performed and the production and/or coordination facts whose presence in the state of the world must be assessed. This model is represented in Action Rule Specifications document. State Model. The State Model describes the fact types, object classes and ontological coexistence rules in the production world. This model is represented using Object Fact Diagram and possibly complemented by Object Property Table. Process Deliverable Diagram The process deliverable diagram given in Figure 5 has been constructed based on the procedure described by Albani et al., (2006c). Please note that the role names are not mentioned since the enterprise ontology will be developed by DEMO specialists (internal or external) and the situation may be very different for every organization. All of the activities are depicted as closed complex activities since all the detailed steps of performing those activities are not found in the identified literature documents.

10 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 10 Figure 5 PDD of the Enterprise Ontology Development Method as proposed by Albani et al., (2011, 2006c)

11 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 11 Activity Table The activities of method that correspond to the left-hand side of the PDDs are shown in Table 1. The table provides a more elaborated description of the activities (i.e., process steps) of the PDD. As can be seen, activities can be divided in sub-activities, and each sub-activity has an associated description. Table 1 Activity Table Activity Sub-activity Description 1. Construction Model 2. Process Model 1.1 Create actor transaction diagram 1.2 Create actor bank diagram 1.3 Derive transaction result table 1.4 Build bank contents table 2.1 Construct process step diagram This sub-activity is to create the ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM after identifying the actors and transactions within the organization. Production banks are conceptual stores of production facts and in the same way, Coordination banks are conceptual stores of coordination facts. This subactivity will be expanding the ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM by including the ACTOR BANK DIAGRAM in it. Hence the resulting complete diagram will be the ORGANISATION CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM. This sub-activity will construct the TRANSACTION RESULT TABLE along with the ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM. This sub-activity will construct the BANK CONTENTS TABLE which is corresponding to the ACTOR BANK DIAGRAM. This sub-activity will construct the PROCESS STEP DIAGRAM based on the basic transaction pattern of DEMO. The basic transaction pattern consists of three phases namely Order Phase, Execute Phase and Result Phase. Also it is multiple states called request, promise, execute, state, accept etc.

12 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO Action Model 2.2 Create information use table 3.1 Find action rules 4. State Model 4.1 Draw object fact diagram 4.2 Derive object property table This activity is related to the transaction processes however this table will be produced as the last activity after the complete ORGANISATION CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM is obtained. There is an action rule for every agendum kind for every internal actor role. An action rule specifies the (production and/or coordination) acts that must be performed, as well as the facts in the production world and/or the coordination world whose presence or absence in the state of the world must be assessed. This sub-activity will be creating the ACTION RULE SPECIFICATIONS once after the PROCESS STEP DIAGRAM is produced. The OBJECT FACT DIAGRAM will be developed as a result of this sub-activity based on the action model of the scope of interest. If the action model is missing, one has to rely on the available information for determining which fact types are used and/or created. This sub-activity will derive Property type, Object class and scale details from OBJECT FACT DIAGRAM and represent it in the OBJECT PROPERTY TABLE. Concept Table Table 2 depicts the concept table of the method that lists all the concepts shown in the right-hand side of the given PDD. Please note that each of the concepts has an associated description and a reference to it. Table 2 Concept Table Concept ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY Description ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY is the business domain model of an organization. All the remaining concepts mentioned in this table together constitute the complete ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY of an organization. This concept in combination with business process

13 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 13 ORGANISATION CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM ACTOR BANK DIAGRAM TRANSACTION RESULT TABLE BANK TABLE PROCESS DIAGRAM CONTENTS STEP INFORMATION USE TABLE ACTION RULE SPECIFICATIONS OBJECT DIAGRAM OBJECT TABLE FACT PROPERTY components help for the development of information systems (Albani et al., 2006c). ORGANISATION CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM shows the structure and environment of an organization. The ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM and the ACTOR BANK DIAGRAM together constitutes the ORGANISATION CONSTRUCTION DIAGRAM (Albani & Dietz, 2011). ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM demonstrates the identified transaction types, which are executed by associated actor roles (Albani & Dietz, 2011). ACTOR BANK DIAGRAM diagram shows the information links from actor roles to production and coordination banks, which are the conceptual stores of production and coordination facts respectively. This will be drawn as an extension of the ACTOR TRANSACTION DIAGRAM (Albani & Dietz, 2011). The TRANSACTION RESULT TABLE is a table of transaction kinds and the specification of resulting fact types (Geskus & Dietz, 2009). The BANK CONTENTS TABLE is a table that shows the fact kinds of which instances are contained in the transaction banks of the listed transaction kinds (Geskus & Dietz, 2009). PROCESS STEP DIAGRAM shows how the distinct transaction types are related. All the transactions are based on the basic transaction pattern of DEMO (Albani & Dietz, 2011). INFORMATION USE TABLE consists of all the process step names and the corresponding shortcuts assigned to it (Albani & Dietz, 2011). ACTION RULE SPECIFICATIONS specify the action rules that serve as guidelines for the actors in dealing with their agenda. It contains one or more action rules for every agendum type. These rules are grouped according to the actor roles that are distinguished. The action rules are expressed in a pseudo-algorithmic language, by which an optimal balance is achieved between readability and preciseness (Albani et al., 2006c). OBJECT FACT DIAGRAM specifies all object types and fact types occurring in the action rules from the ACTION RULE SPECIFICATIONS. This diagram is the ontological variant of the Object Role Model diagram (Albani & Dietz, 2011). OBJECT PROPERTY TABLE represents the properties and scale. Properties are binary fact types that happen to be pure mathematical

14 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 14 functions, of which the range is a set of, usually ordered, values, called a scale (Albani & Dietz, 2011). Related Literature In Bobbert s (2009) report on usage of DEMO methodology for business and ICT security alignment, he mentions that the DEMO method is an effective methodology of decomposing the enterprise based on Ψ-thoery (ψ is pronounced as PSI, standing for Performance in Social Interaction). Hoogervorst, et al., (2013) classifies the different EE theories and classifies Ψ-thoery as one of the Ontological Theories, which are theories about nature of things. The ψ-theory is rooted in speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), in social action theory (Habermas, 1984), and in information systems theory (Langefors, 1977), and it is extensively discussed in Dietz (Enterprise Ontology, 2006a). Albani, A. & L.G.Dietz J. (2006c) explains DEMO with an example of Strategic Supply Network Development (SSND) in their article Identifying Business Components on the Basis of Enterprise Ontology. They derive the business components and construct the enterprise ontology by means of DEMO for the SSND case. They also explained how the constructed ontological model was meeting the quality criterion.

15 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 15 References L.G.Dietz, J., A.P. Hoogevorst J. et al., (2013) The discipline of Enterprise Engineering, International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering, Vol.3 No.1, pp Albani, A., Dietz, J.L.G. (2011) Enterprise Ontology based development of Information Systems. International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management, Vol.7 No.1, pp Thuan N.H., Dietz, J.L.G., Lang Van Tran (2010) Combining DEMO Models with RAD s Techniques in the Analysis Phase of Software Development Process, IEEE- RIVF International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies, Hanoi, pp.1-4. Bobbert, Y. (2009) Use of DEMO as a methodology for business and ICT Security alignment. Informatiebeveiliging No. 6, PvIB, pp Dietz, J.L.G. (2008a) The atoms, molecules and fibers of organization, Data & Knowledge Engineering, Vol.47 Issue 3, pp A.P. Hoogevorst J., Dietz J.L.G. (2008b) Enterprise Architecture in Enterprise Engineering. Enterprise Modeling and Information Systems Architecture, Vol.3 No.1, Weerd I. and Brinkkemper S. (2008) Meta- modeling for situational analysis and design methods. Handbook of research on modern systems analysis and design technologies and applications, Hershey, Idea Group Publishing, pp Dietz, J.L.G. (2006a) Enterprise Ontology: Theory and Methodology, Berlin Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag. Dietz, J.L.G. (2006b) The Deep Structure of Business Processes. Communications of the ACM, Vol.49 No.5, pp

16 ENTERPRISE ONTOLOGY BASED ON DEMO 16 Albani, A., Dietz, J.L.G., and M.Zaha J. (2006c) Identifying Business Components on the Basis of Enterprise Ontology, Interoperability of Enterprise Software and Applications, pp Barijs, J., Chong, S., Dietz, J.L.G., Liu K. (2002) Engineering Agent-Based E-Commerce Systems Using the Semiotic Approach and the DEMO Transaction Concept. International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making, Vol.1 No.3, pp Hommes, B.J., Dietz, J.L.G. (2001) Business Process Modeling for the Purpose of Applying Internet Technology, International Workshop on Evaluation of Modeling Methods in Systems Analysis and Design, Switzerland, pp.1-8. Dietz J.L.G (1999) Understanding and Modeling Business Processes with DEMO. Conceptual Modeling - ER 99, LNCS 1728, pp Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and Rationalization of Society, Vol. 1, Cambridge, Polity Press. Langefors, B. (1977) Information System Theory. Information Systems, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp

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