A Model-based Approach to Managing Enterprise

Information Systems

Robert France

, Roger Burkhart

, Charmaine DeLisser

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado

Information Systems, Deere & Company, Moline,Illinois, USA

University of Technology, Kingston, Jamaica

Abstract. Organizations must evolve their infor

mation systems (IS) in order to

adapt to changes in their environment or to maintain or enhance

competitiveness. The use of modern application integration technologies (e.g.,

middleware) and advanced network technologies has resulted in IS that provide

services at unprecedented levels, but at the price of becoming more complex

and thus more difficult to evolve. By way of concrete examples, this paper

focuses on the use of system models expressed in the Unified Modeling

Language (UML) to effectively manage information systems assets. The system

models capture critical information about an organization and are part of an

overall framework called the Application Mapping Framework or AMF. The

AMF can be used by IT architects and planners to track applications, relate

descriptions of system artifacts across different levels of abstraction and support

redundancy, gap and impact analyses. The paper also identifies management

roles needed to ensure that the AMF repository contains comprehensive and up-

to-date models.

1 Introduction

The mission-critical role that Information Systems (IS) play in accomplishing

business goals requires that they be managed and tracked as organizational assets. In

this paper we describe a framework called the Application Mapping Framework

(AMF), for organizing information about planned and deployed applications in an

organization. The AMF is intended to support disciplined management and evolution

of IS resources and enables business managers, information technology (IT) planners

and architects, and application developers to (1) make decisions that minimize

development risks and costs, (2) identify opportunities for cutting costs, and (3)

identify new business opportunities. The AMF is more than just a static application

portfolio. It provides services that can be used by IT planners and architects to support

redundancy, gap and impact analyses. Proper use of the AMF will enhance the ability

of an organization to maintain a corporate memory and utilize that memory to cost-

effectively evolve its IS resources and business processes to meet business goals. The

France R., Burkhart R. and DeLisser C. (2005).

A Model-based Approach to Managing Enterprise Information Systems.

In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Web Services and Model-Driven Enterprise Information Systems, pages 171-180

DOI: 10.5220/0002516201710180

 SciTePress

AMF is intended to provide a single, accurate, organized source of information about

business processes, applications, data and other IT resources.

An overview of the AMF architecture is presented in Section 2 of this paper.

Types of analyses supported by the AMF and management functions required to

build, use and maintain the AMF, are presented in Section 3. Section 4 explains by

way of an example how the AMF could be used to support IS planning and evolution.

The paper concludes with our views on the merits of using a model-based approach to

IS management and an outline of our planned work in this area.

2 An Overview of the AMF

The AMF provides a logical architecture for a repository of information on

applications and data within an organization. Its development is based on experience

gathered on industrial projects that focused on developing application portfolios for

organizations with a large and diverse set of distributed applications. The AMF

specifies an application that is flexible in terms of the physical form or location of

information could be captured and integrated in the framework. To help organize its

wide range of topics and content, the information in the AMF is structured into a

number of core views. Information in a core view can be further organized into sub-

views.

Business

Architecture

Physical Design

Architecture

Application and Data

Architecture

Deployment

Architecture

Tracked Artifact

Business to

Application Mapping

Application to Physical

Design Mapping

Physical to Deployment

Mapping

Model

Management

Fig. 1. Enterprise Application Map Structure

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The UML (Unified Modeling Language) [1] is used to describe the structure of

information in the AMF. An UML package is used to describe a view. UML Class

Diagrams are used to describe the conceptual structure of information in a view,

where a UML class represents a type of information item, a UML association

represents a conceptual relationship between peer information item types, and an

UML specialization relationship represents a further classification of an information

item type. A view, represented as a package, contains a structure of packages

(representing sub-views) and types (representing information item types).

At the top level, the AMF is organized into three views.

• The IT Planning View contains information pertaining to ongoing and planned IS

projects, and includes information on tactical and strategic plans. The IT

Planning View is intended to support the work of IT planners and project

managers.

• The Asset View contains information about enterprise-wide and domain-specific

reusable business artifacts. This view is intended to support systematic reuse of

development experiences across an organization.

• The Enterprise Application Map is the central component of the AMF and

contains information about the current and planned information system resources

(e.g., applications, data, processes, roles) that are tracked within an organization.

The previously mentioned views utilize information within this view (as

indicated by the dependency relationships – the dashed arrows – between the

packages).

This paper focuses on the Enterprise Application Map. The information in the

Enterprise Application Map is organized into the following primary views (see Figure

1):

• Business Architecture: This view contains information about the business

processes and entities that are tracked by an organization.

• Application and Data Architecture: This view contains information about the

logical (i.e., technology-independent) aspects of applications and data. The

information includes descriptions of the IS artifacts (applications and data) as

they exist, as well as plans for evolving the artifacts. Descriptions include models

and artifact metadata.

• Physical Design Architecture: This view contains information about the physical

design of applications and data, that is, it presents a technology-specific view of

applications. This view allows one to track the technologies that are used to

implement applications and data.

• Deployment Architecture: This view contains information about the deployment

and usage of applications within an organization. Information pertains to the “as

is” deployment and usage of applications and data, as well as to planned

deployments and usages.

Relationships between concepts across these views are described by the Mapping

Packages:

• Business to Application Mapping: This package links elements in the Business

Architecture view to the Application and Data Architecture view. The mappings

provide traceability of business concepts to logical (platform independent)

application concepts.

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• Application to Physical Design Mapping: The mappings in this package provide

traceability of logical application elements to physical (platform-specific) design

elements.

• Physical to Deployment Mapping: The mappings in this package provide

traceability of physical design elements to the artifacts to their deployed forms.

The other packages of information in the Enterprise Application Map contain

information that is orthogonal to the packages described above.

• Tracked Artifact: This package contains information about properties that are

common to artifacts that are tracked in the AMF. Currently, this includes only

information pertaining to versioning of artifacts.

• Model Management: This package contains information about models, groupings

of model elements used to present views of applications, the tools used to display

models and the organizational roles responsible for maintaining the views.

3 Using the AMF

This section outlines the kinds of analyses that are supported and the management

roles that are recommended for effective management and evolution of the AMF.

3.1 Management Roles

Effective use of the AMF by business analysts, architects and system developers is

possible only when the contents of the AMF are relevant, properly packaged, easily

retrieved, current and accurate. The following are recommended management roles

that address issues related to the relevancy, accuracy, and usability of the AMF:

• Content Manager: Responsible for packaging, cataloging, and updating AMF

contents.

• Content Collector: Responsible for collecting candidate contents.

• Content Certifier/Evaluator: Responsible for evaluating and certifying candidate

AMF contents. The evaluation is carried out to determine, for example, the

accuracy, relevance, and currency of candidate content.

• Content Disseminator: Responsible for promoting and facilitating the use of the

AMF.

• AMF Strategic Planner: Responsible for developing and maintaining plans for

evolving the AMF. This involves analyzing the usage of the AMF, analyzing

repository contents (e.g., identifying content with diminishing returns), and

identifying opportunities.

3.2 User Roles

Users of the AMF can be classified in terms of the roles they play in system and

business process management and development. Below we list the roles and the types

of interactions they can have with the AMF.

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• Business Analyst: Responsible for defining, documenting and updating business

processes.

• IS Architect: Responsible for planning and managing the integration and

evolution of IT systems that support business processes.

• System Architect: Responsible for designing and managing the evolution of a

particular system.

• System Developer: Responsible for implementing system designs and changes.

3.3 Model-based Analyses

A sample set of IT project planning activities supported by the AMF are listed below:

• Impact Analyses: During project planning one needs to determine, among other

concerns, how the system to be developed impacts other systems, what resources

are required and available for the project, what parts of the system functionality

can be provided by existing system components and what parts need to be built or

acquired. The AMF can be used to support impact analysis, determining the

impact of change on the organization’s ability to effectively meet business needs.

The relationships among the artifacts in the AMF (for example, data/object

create, read, update, and delete relationships between applications and

data/objects) can be used to determine the impact of planned changes and new

features on existing applications and data and on other current and planned IT

projects.

• Gap Analyses: The AMF can also be used to support gap analyses. As new

processes and system functionality are developed, gaps in the existing integrated

system need to be identified and filled. Gap analysis is concerned with

determining the missing functional and process elements that need to be present

in order to implement new functionality of processes. The repository can be used

to determine what parts of a system are under development or already exists, and

what parts need to be obtained from outside vendors or be built in-house.

•

Redundancy analyses: As an organization’s pool of systems grows, the need to

identify redundancies to reduce inefficiencies and avoid conflicts arising from

multiple representations of a single concept across an organization becomes

evident. Redundancy analysis is concerned with identifying systems that provide

similar services. The repository can be used to determine whether proposals for

new system features can already be met by existing systems and to determine

wasteful overlaps in system functionality.

• Reuse analyses: Order-of-magnitude improve-ment in productivity and system

quality can be accomplished if developers reuse product experiences. A well-

managed integrated system can form the basis for identifying potentially reusable

experiences across an organization. Reusability analysis is concerned with

identifying potentially reusable artifacts. Commonality analyses can be carried

out on the repository to identify organization-wide and domain-specific patterns

that can be packaged for reuse (e.g., as product frameworks, components,

reusable models).

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4 An order fulfillment process scenario

The following scenario, though fictional, provides a realistic view of how the AMF

can be used to support IT planning and system evolution within an organization. The

Commercial Equipment (CE) Division of a fictitious organization has acquired a new

distribution channel that is located overseas. The need to adhere to reporting

regulations and other standards (e.g., customer addressing) in force within the foreign

territory requires CE to reengineer its order fulfillment processes and systems.

In this scenario the AMF contains a web of artifacts ranging from business models

of the processes to documents describing the deployment and usage of applications,

and the computing infrastructure that currently support the processes. The AMF is

accessed through interfaces that provide reporting functions and browsing starting

points that are particular to the roles of the individuals accessing the repository. For

example, the Business View interface of the AMF provides business analysts with a

business-oriented view of the repository contents from which they can drill down to

more system-specific views if required.

In the absence of an AMF, analysts, planners and developers have the challenge of

locating, relating, and analyzing possibly poorly documented information about the

current order fulfillment processes and supporting systems within CE. They may even

have to revert to source code analysis. These activities are expensive, error-prone, and

time-consuming. More importantly, such an environment is not conducive to the

development of systems that fully exploit resources that can significantly reduce the

cost of development without sacrificing system quality.

4.1 Business Analysis

The business analyst is responsible for defining an order fulfillment business process

that will handle the orders of the new distribution channel. To carry out this task the

analyst needs to (1) consider the impact of the proposed process solutions on existing

processes and systems, and (2) identify possible opportunities for exploiting current

system resources in the execution of the new processes, in order to define a cost-

effective and realizable process.

As a starting point, the analyst uses the AMF to determine the location of

documents that describe the current CE order fulfillment processes. Using the

documentation reporting facility of the Business View interface, the analyst locates

information on order fulfillment processes. A partial view of the table that is

displayed as a result of the interaction with the AMF is shown below:

Table 1. Relationships between Processes and the Responsible Organizational Roles

Subject

Area

Business Activity Responsible

Organization

Order Fulfillment Org1

Order Entry Org2

Order Routing Org2

Order

Management

Org3

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The order fulfillment processes are contained in the Order subject area and

consists of business sub-activities. Clicking on an activity name in column 2 takes the

analyst to a page that contains model(s) of the activity. These models can be

expressed as Activity Diagrams, Interaction Diagrams, and/or Use Cases. Using these

links the analyst can not only access models that help in understanding the processes,

but also use the information to identify models that are impacted by the change and

that can be reused to describe the changed process. The analyst also needs to work

with the owners of the process descriptions that will be impacted by the change.

Clicking on the items in the third column of Table 1 results in a page that displays

contact information for business process owners.

Table 2 is a partial view of the table that is displayed when Order Entry in column

2 of Table 1 is selected (in this case the process models are organized by the types of

orders processed):

Table 2. Process Model Table for Order Entry

Business

Activity

Order Entity

Type

Essential

Process

Model

Process

Realization

Model

Domestic

Dealer Order

Ess-.mdl Real-

OD.mdl

Export Order

Region 1

Ess-

E1.mdl

Real-

E1.mdl

Order

Entry

Export Order

Region 2

Ess-

E2.mdl

Real-

E2.mdl

There are a number of variants of the Order Entry process, each determined by the

type of order it processes. Selecting an order type in column 2 of Table 2 results in a

page that describes the order type. Columns 3 and 4 contain pointers to models of the

processes. An essential process model describes a process in terms of externally

observable effects (i.e., effects that are observable by users of the business processes

– the external view), and a process realization model describes a process in terms of

how the activities are carried out (the internal view).

The analyst also needs to determine the business entities that are impacted by the

change. To support this task the AMF can be used to produce the following table:

Table 3. Trace relationships between business activities and business entities

Business Activity Business Entity Access Type Responsible

Organization

Order Fulfillment Org 1

Order Entry Order

FDD

…

Create

…

Org2

Order Routing Supplier

…

Update

…

Supp

Order Management Customer

Account

…

Update

…

Customer Dept

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Selecting items in column 1 of Table 3 results in a page that shows the realization

process models indicating which entities are created, accessed, updated and deleted by

the business activity. Column 2 lists the business entities that are manipulated by the

business activities, and column 3 specifies the type of access (Create, Read, Update,

Delete).

The analyst also needs to have an idea of the order fulfillment systems and

databases that would be impacted by the change in order to identify a cost-effective

process solution. Another table (not shown), can show the relationship between the

business activities and the systems and databases that support the activities

. Selecting

on the items in System and Database columns can link the analyst to a page that

contains descriptions of the artifacts, contact information for the owners of the

artifacts, and pointers to more detailed information about the systems and databases.

5 Related Work

Other frameworks for information systems architecture are being used today, most

notably being the Zachman Framework (ZF), the Four+one framework and the RM-

ODP. Each has its own merit providing developers of new systems architectural

options for conceptualizing and designing. Zachman Framework is pre-object and

reflects a structured approach to development. It consists of a thirty-six-cell matrix

covering the perspectives of different stakeholders and aspects of the architecture. It is

seen as the best way to conceptualize all the elements of a system but has been

criticized as being process-heavy, requiring years to create. Ambler [3] suggests ways

in which ZF can be used in an agile manner.

The RM-ODP [2] is rooted in object analysis, and covers five viewpoints

enterprise, information, computational engineering and technology. Evitt [4] points

out that the viewpoints are abstract and do not reflect the concerns of specific

stakeholders as the ZF.

The AMF being proposed provides a lower level of detail than the ZF and RM-

ODP. Whereas the frameworks mentioned above can be used for developing new

systems, the AMF is intended for use as a lightweight means to document existing

systems and the way they relate to each other. It is to be used as a management tool

for identifying gaps, redundancies and reuse opportunities, and to be able to perform

impact analysis. The AMF can be used within the context of both the ZF and the RM-

ODP.

6 Further work

The AMF can provide a comprehensive representation of an enterprise’s business and

information systems and the means to conduct relevant queries and analyses. The

proposed business architecture, application and data architecture etc. serve to define a

workable structure for organizing, managing, analyzing and evolving enterprise

information systems. Populating this framework with suitable, well placed and

accurate business and information system design and implementation models

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however, requires the involvement of skilled modelers, the formulation of and

adherence to standards of operating that will guarantee capture of accurate

information in a timely manner. The discipline required to make the use of the AMF

a success will ultimately result in improved practices, processes and tools and to a

more mature use of IT.

Our next step is to validate the AMF by using it to develop an IS repository for an

industrial partner. We are currently evaluating different development environments

for hosting, populating and querying an AMF repository. We will then develop and

deploy a prototype repository infrastructure and evaluated its usage. The experience

we gain will help refine the architecture and give insights into the types of

mechanisms needed to seamlessly integrate AMF related activities and IS

development and planning activities.

References

1. The Object Management Group (OMG): Unified Modeling Language: Superstructure, the

OMG, {http://www.omg.org}, Version 2.0, Final Adopted Specification, August, 2003

2. Open Distributed Processing Reference Model: ISO/IEC IS 10746.

http://www.joaquin.net/ODP. Visited 3/01/2005

3. Ambler, S.W., Architecture and Architecture Modeling Techniques (2002)

http://www.agiledata.org/essays/enterpriseArchitectureTechniques.html Visited 12/11/2002

4. Evitts, P. : A UML Pattern Language. MacMillan Technical Publishing (2000)

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