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In this paper, we describe the development of a collaborative approach to elicit and analyse service process experience as part of a project commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. We designed and deployed a model-based instrument for measuring the experiences of both the general public and the civil servants, involved in information sharing, delivery and use and execution of environmental permit application services. In addition, information on the case-specific process structure that is underlying the service delivery was to be gathered with the instrument. We combined a collaborative, stakeholder-oriented process modelling technique with workshops, inspired by the CoMPArE method, with detailed service experience-oriented probing questions focusing on interactions, roles and process ‘bottlenecks’. We carried out a first, baseline measurement on the information, processes and experiences around environmental permit services through 6 identical six-hour workshop sessions with 67 civil servants. Our experiences in executing the baseline measurement are reported, as well as some main results, and lessons learned in developing and applying the workshop approach.

This paper reports on a case study of abstract reasoning in a real collaborative modeling setting. The study was conducted according to the behavioral observation principles of human ethology. Our findings indicate a relation between an individual's executive functioning and his ability to do abstract reasoning. Furthermore, we find individual differences in these abilities, and our results suggest that lack of certain skills pushes a session back to its initial phase until a shared conception of what is being modeled is achieved. These findings further our understanding of the process of collaborative modeling, how the qualities and behaviors of an individual modeler influence the interactive modeling process and its final outcomes.

Part 1: Enterprise Modeling; International audience; In this paper we explore the subject of question asking as an inherent driver of enterprise modelling sessions, within the narrower context of the ‘dialogue game’ approach to collaborative modelling. We explain the context, but mostly report on matters directly concerning question asking and answer pre-structuring as a central issue in an ongoing effort aiming for the practice-oriented development of a series of dialogue games for collaborative modelling. We believe that our findings can be relevant and helpful to anyone concerned with planning, executing or facilitating collaborative modelling sessions, in particular when involving stakeholders untrained in systems thinking and modelling.

Contains fulltext : 93906.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Contains fulltext : 111674.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) HICSS 2012 : 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii, USA, 4-7 January 2012, 04 januari 2012

We report on the development of a prototype dialogue game for FCO-IM. Dialogue games are systems for executing controlled conversations. As part of an ongoing effort to analyze and support collaborative modeling processes by means of dialogue games, we created a dialogue game prototype for essential parts of the FCO-IM modeling process. The project was exploratory in nature, but results suggest that eventually it should be possible to develop dialogue games that could effectively support fact-based conceptual modeling efforts. In addition, work on such games enhances our insights in the FCO-IM modeling process, and leads to improvements and extensions of its operational guidelines.

This paper concerns the application of a gaming approach to the validation of ArchiMate models, with the aim of enhancing validation, by non-architects, beyond mere reading of the model. The game offers a guided process for systematic exploration of ArchiMate models, and for systematically raising questions about them. The development process and the design principles behind the game are discussed, as well as the information transformation involved in creating a model-specific game from an ArchiMate model. The game has been evaluated through application in a small real life case. We discuss the influence of our approach to model understanding by the players, and the conceptual merits and flaws of the game.

Collaborative modeling uses and produces modeling artifacts whose quality can help us gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of the modeling process. Such artifacts include the modeling language, the modeling procedure, the products and the support tool or medium. To effectively assess the quality of any collaborative modeling process, the (inter-) dependencies of these artifacts and their effect on modeling process quality need to be analyzed. Although a number of research studies have assessed and measured the quality of collaborative processes, no formal (causal) model has been developed to assess the quality of the collaborative modeling process through a combination of modeling artifacts. This paper develops a Collaborative Modeling Process Quality (CMPQ) construct for assessing the quality of collaborative modeling. A modeling session involving 107 students was used to validate and measure the quality constructs in the model.

Understanding modelling behaviour is an important step towards situated modelling support, especially when aiming to actively involve the domain expert in modelling without expert interventions. In search for a hypothesis on which modelling acts humans exhibit naturally, this paper presents an exploratory study into the modelling approaches intuitively taken by people trained in modelling as opposed to people not trained in modelling. Participants were asked to create a concept map of either a familiar or unfamiliar knowledge domain.

This paper reports on a next step in a line of research taking the perspective that modelling as an activity is a ‘constrained conversation’. We focus on concrete communication situations in context of (enterprise) modelling sessions, with special attention to the involvement of ‘novice modellers’. We present some theoretical notions that are helpful in understanding why modelling performed by/with novice modellers can usually be best broken down in sub-tasks, and how such decomposed tasks can be analysed and structured to match the limited skills of (novice) modellers. The generic aspects presented are then linked to generic types of questions and answers that are both drivers and constraints for the ‘dialogue games’ played in conversations-for-modelling. We also present and illustrate an instrument for analysis, the ‘Focused Conceptualisation’ (FoCon), which can help identify, evaluate and create dialogue games for model-oriented communication situations; we discuss three working examples of the use of FoCons.

A process-oriented framework (QoMo) is presented that aims to further the study of analysis and support of processes for modeling. The framework is strongly goal-oriented, and expressed largely by means of formal rules. The concepts in the framework are partly derived from the SEQUAL framework for quality of modelling. A number of modelling goal categories is discussed in view of SEQUAL/QoMo, as well as a formal approach to the description of strategies to help achieve those goals. Finally, a prototype implementation of the framework is presented as an illustration and proof of concept.

A coherent description of architectures provides insight, enables communication among different stakeholders and guides complicated (business and ICT) change processes. Unfortunately, so far no architecture description language exists that fully enables integrated enterprise modeling. In this paper we focus on the requirements and design of such a language. This language defines generic, organization-independent concepts that can be specialized or composed to obtain more specific concepts to be used within a particular organisation. It is not our intention to re-invent the wheel for each architectural domain: wherever possible we conform to existing languages or standards such as UML. We complement them with missing concepts, focusing on concepts to model the relationships among architectural domains. The concepts should also make it possible to define links between models in other languages. The relationship between architecture descriptions at the business layer and at the application layer (business-IT alignment) plays a central role.