Enterprise Modelling for the Masses – From Elitist Discipline to Common Practice

Abstract

Enterprise modelling (EM) as a discipline has been around for several decades with a huge body of knowledge on EM in academic literature. The benefits of modelling and its contributions to organizational tasks are largely undisputed. Thus, from an inside-out perspective, EM appears to be a mature and established discipline. However, for initiating serious innovations this view is not sufficient. This position paper takes an outside-in perspective on enterprise modelling and argues that EM is far away from reaching its maximum potential. EM is typically done by a limited number of people in organizations inclined to methods and modelling. What is captured in models is only a fragment of what ought to be captured. Many people actually develop some kind of model in their local practice without thinking about it consciously. Exploiting the potential of this "grass roots modelling" could lead to groundbreaking innovations in EM. The aim is to investigate integration of the established, often systematic and formalized practices of modelling in enterprises with local practices of creating, using and communicating modellike artifacts or objects of relevance for the overall organization. Abstract. Enterprise modelling (EM) as a discipline has been around for several decades with a huge body of knowledge on EM in academic literature. The benefits of modelling and its contributions to organizational tasks are largely undisputed. Thus, from an inside-out perspective, EM appears to be a mature and established discipline. However, for initiating serious innovations this view is not sufficient. This position paper takes an outside-in perspective on enterprise modelling and argues that EM is far away from reaching its maximum potential. EM is typically done by a limited number of people in organizations inclined to methods and modelling. What is captured in models is only a fragment of what ought to be captured. Many people actually develop some kind of model in their local practice without thinking about it consciously. Exploiting the potential of this "grass roots modelling" could lead to groundbreaking innovations in EM. The aim is to investigate integration of the established, often systematic and formalized practices of modelling in enterprises with local practices of creating, using and communicating modellike artifacts or objects of relevance for the overall organization.

Modeling methods for strategy formulation in a turbulent environment

“…EM proposes the formation of “added value” for strategic and tactical decisions. Modern research extends the possibilities of EM methodologies into the field of strategic management: concepts from strategic management appear in EM languages ( abilities, resources, factors of influence ) (Aldea, Iacob, Hillegersberg, Quartel, & Franken, ; Iacob et al, ); methods and tools of strategic management are formalized (Bock, Frank, Bergmann, & Strecker, ); the modeling methods become available not only to narrow specialists (Sandkuhl et al, ); the ways of presenting information about the enterprise structure are optimized (Kudryavtsev et al, ).…”

Five Inspiring Course (Re-)Designs

“…Finally, members of the global OMiLAB community started sharing their own teaching experiences on conceptual modeling topics (Buchmann and Ghiran 2017), benefitting from the open resources made available through the OMiLAB portal at http://omilab.org/. This contributes to fostering a teaching-oriented agenda which we consider an essential enabler towards the "modeling for the masses" vision that was formulated in recent publications, e.g., in the field of Enterprise Modeling (Sandkuhl et al 2016 It is well known that active learning is superior to passive learning. We have applied and evaluated a learning approach that seeks to foster active learning for Information Systems courses at two German universities.…”

A Model Based Approach for Complex Dynamic Decision-Making

“…They also support varying degree of analyses capabilities on a range of organisational aspects. However, they are found to be insufficient for CDDM [13,14]. The actor languages and frameworks such as Kilim [15], Scala Actors [16], and Akka [17], in contrast, adopt the actor model of computation [18] to specify socio-technical characteristics.…”