Rhetorical discourse analysis (RDA) emphasizes the communicative purpose and organization structures of texts. This paper proposes a rhetorical organization model for business-based technical documents. Using RDA and genre analysis, we define such a model based on functional and structural features in terms of macro-moves, moves, and functions that comprise a type of document called standard operating procedure (SOP). An SOP is a technical document that describes procedures for segments of business processes or policies to be implemented inside organizations (commonly called a procedure manual). We propose a functional-structural framework for analyzing SOP discourses by influencing and restricting their content based on the style of the 'manual' genre. We identify an SOP as a document with procedural information that serves as a relevant source for extracting domain knowledge and business information. We apply this model as an analytical-conceptual procedure for mapping business documents and generating a controlled language output.
PurposeOrganizational process improvement plays an important role for sustaining business in a competitive environment. Therefore, enterprise leaders are increasingly prone to adopt business process improvement (BPI) practices. However, organizations are unable to implement formal and reusable solutions, representing a gap between academic research and practical use. In addition, companies adopt discipline-dependent solutions, lacking BPI representations of best practices applicable to all organizational divisions. This paper aims to propose some constructs on top of the Quintessence kernel for representing the practice systematic development of the BPI in the BPI lifecycle and we conduct two case studies in a multinational company.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative research design was adopted for recognizing gaps in previous approaches and identifying best BPI practices. Subsequently, characterization of practices and activities are represented based on a unified definition model and the Quintessence kernel. Finally, two case studies are developed for applying the solution.FindingsThe formal representation is applicable to multiple disciplines in organizational environments. Besides, the sub-alphas (abstract level progress health attribute) states and the work products resulting from each activity completion criteria evidence the health and progress accomplished during the practice execution.Originality/valueThe practice representation serves as a formal, graphical, reusable and multidiscipline guide compiling activities and tasks for systematically developing BPI during the radical/incremental improvement lifecycle.
Abstract. In this paper, we propose a top-down approach for converting business processes information from corporate documents into controlled language. This proposal is achieved with a multi-level methodology. We first characterize document structure by using rhetorical analysis to determine relevant sections for information extraction. Then, a verb-centered event analysis is performed to start defining the typical patterns featured by business processes information. Lastly, morpho-syntactic and dependency parsing is carried out for extracting this information. This multi-level knowledge is used to define rules for converting the extracted sentences into a controlled language, which is intended to be used in software requirements elicitation.
A state-of-the-art review about the SEMAT Essence standard includes some games and workshops in order to simulate and remember a small set of the elements of such a standard. Alphas and states are the most common elements. For this reason, in this paper we propose a board game to simulate most of the elements belonging to the SEMAT Essence standard. We also apply this game to university students and we summarize the results. Even though the game is a little complex, the players are satisfied with the results, since the game provides a good idea about the usage of the different elements of the SEMAT Essence standard.
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