A Situating Method for Improving the Utility of Information
Products
Anders W. Tell
a
Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Keywords: Work-Oriented, Work Practice, Enterprise Architecture, Evaluation, Situational Method Engineering, Method
Construction, Information Product, Architecture Framework, ISO 42010, Architecture Model.
Abstract: Information is driving enterprises and ecosystems forward. The availability of relevant, useful and timely
information is important for discussions, decision-making, and action. Enterprise architecture is a field that
provides frameworks, methods and stakeholder-oriented models as information enablers. However,
stakeholder-based frameworks and methods may not identify and capture sufficient details about stakeholders'
work practices, pains and relationships between stakeholders. This paper presents a work-oriented approach
with method parts and constructs that aim to improve the design, documentation, relevance, enactment,
intention to use, use, and evaluation of information products, particularly in enterprise architecture. The
explicit incorporation of detailed situational factors, relationships and roles, and actors' work practices can
improve relevance, effectiveness and other use-qualities of information products such as enterprise models.
The method parts are designed to extend and be infused into enterprise architecture methods and frameworks,
which can be ISO 42010-based.
1 INTRODUCTION
The availability of relevant, useful and timely
information is vital for most enterprises and
ecosystems with collaborating enterprises. How and
what information is designed, produced and
consumed are key considerations for any
information-dependent organisation.
Enterprise architecture (EA) is a field that works
with architectural knowledge and descriptions to
manage complexity, solve business and IT problems,
and improve communication and cooperation, aiming
at enabling stakeholders to work together in an
integrated and coherent fashion. A central part of EA
is the design and use of information products such as
models, maps, diagrams, and documents.
It may be tempting to let one profession, such as
EA architects define one single way to represent,
analyse or use enterprise information or a single
source of truth. However, there is a risk that a narrow,
single-sided representation may miss incorporating
essential aspects that are highly relevant to other
professionals in their work practices (Bueger &
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3201-8742
Gadinger, 2015; Nicolini, 2012; Ulwick, 2016)
(Clark et al., 2018) (Tell & Henkel, 2018).
In EA frameworks and methods, it is common to
organise architecture descriptions and artefacts
according to stakeholders and their concerns
(TheOpenGroup, 2018). EA practices have been
codified in international standards such as ISO 42010
Architecture description (ISO/IEC & IEEE, 2022)
and ISO/IEC 19540 Unified Architecture Framework
(UAF) (ISO/IEC, 2022).
In ISO 42010, the concept of viewpoint is used to
represent and frame one or more concerns, which is
something of interest, relevance or importance to a
stakeholder, such as developmental, technological,
business, operational, organisational, political,
economic, legal, ecological and social influences.
Unfortunately, this practice provides few details
on why, how, and when an information product and
model should be used (ISO/IEC, 2022)
(TheOpenGroup, 2018). Details about what
stakeholders do, their questions, and their information
needs are missing or scarce, as are the roles and
relationships between stakeholders and their' work.
An exception is the Zachman Framework which
Tell, A.
A Situating Method for Improving the Utility of Information Products.
DOI: 10.5220/0011854300003467
In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2023) - Volume 2, pages 589-599
ISBN: 978-989-758-648-4; ISSN: 2184-4992
Copyright
c
 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
589

provides some information from the perspectives of a
select set of stakeholders (Zachman, 2008).
A lack of consideration of details and
relationships may impair the design and evaluation of
the use of information products and cause unbalanced
evaluations when not all stakeholder voices are heard.
Furthermore, research has shown that
architectural languages and work products tend to
favour the perspective of architects and not the (work)
perspectives of non-architects (Malavolta et al., 2012)
(Khosroshahi et al., 2018). This suggests a need to
adjust the perspective and languages according to the
situation in which information products are used.
This paper presents a work-oriented approach
(WOA) to information products with WOA method
chunks and constructs that can be used to identify,
clarify and document actors' varying perspectives on
information products in different situations, roles and
relationships. They aim to contribute to enterprise
architecture to improve the design, documentation,
relevance, enactment, intention to use, , use and
evaluation of situated information products, such as
models or related artefacts such as algorithms.
The WOA offers an opportunity to shift the focus
from stakeholder's concerns to the work that actors
do, from designing and evaluating the qualities of an
information product to evaluating the qualities of the
use of an information product and from a single
architect and producer focus to multi perspectives
based on roles and relationships that consider all
participants views in their own words.
The WOA method chunks and constructs enable
the identification and documentation of detailed
situational factors, relationships and roles, and work
practices, which can improve relevance,
effectiveness, user satisfaction, and other salient
qualities of information products.
The WOA method chunks identify information
that can be used to situate information products for
specific situations. The WOA method chunks are
designed according to the principles of situational
method engineering (Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014).
They are designed to complement and enrich
existing EA methods to improve information
production and consumption and do not aim to
provide a complete method for enterprise or
enterprise modelling, or stakeholder analysis.
The WOA method chunks can be reconfigured to
situate other artefacts not related to information
products, but this is outside the scope of this paper.
The WOA constructs build upon knowledge from
the fields of work practices and jobs to be done
(Bueger & Gadinger, 2015; Nicolini, 2012; Ulwick,
2016), situational analysis (Clark et al., 2018),
situational method engineering (Henderson-Sellers et
al., 2014), and ISO 42010 (ISO/IEC & IEEE, 2022).
The novel contribution of WOA method chunks
is that they extend and enrich existing EA methods
with situational method engineering. The WOA
constructs Situation and Accommodation viewpoints
add situational and relational knowledge, while the
Interested party, Information product, and Work
viewpoints add knowledge at the desired level of
specificity about stakeholders and the work they do
that involves information products through work
statements. The Frame viewpoint introduces framing,
the possibility to look at information products through
different and possibly novel lenses.
The WOA address primarily the life cycles of
method parts and not the life cycles of the systems.
The focus is on using information products (at both
type and instance levels) by actors.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Related
work and the design science research approach taken
with problem identification is described in section 2
and 3, while the WOA method chunks are presented
and demonstrated in section 4. Section 5 presents the
WOA Constructs. Sections 6 and 7 conclude with a
discussion and summary.
2 RELATED WORK
The field of enterprise architecture (EA) includes a
large number of frameworks and methods, such as
TOGAF (TheOpenGroup, 2018), Zachman enterprise
ontology for EA (Sowa & Zachman, 1992; Zachman,
2008), and the ISO 42010 (ISO/IEC & IEEE, 2022)
standard that codifies existing EA practices.
The Unified Architecture Framework (UAF),
ISO/IEC 19540:2022 (ISO/IEC, 2022), is an example
of a standard based on ISO 42010 that aims to unify
Architecture Frameworks. The core concepts in UAF
are based upon the DoDAF 2.0.2 Domain Metamodel
(DM2) and the MODAF ontological data exchange
mechanism (MODEM), Canada's Architecture
Framework (DNDAF) and the NATO Architecture
Framework (NAF) v 4.
UAF contains many viewpoints with complex
dependencies, where each viewpoint is documented
with stakeholders and their concerns, as exemplified
in the Strategic Taxonomy:
 Stakeholders: PMs, Enterprise Architects, and
Executives.
 Concerns: capability needs.
 Definition: shows the taxonomy of capabilities.
 Recommended Implementation: SysML Block
Definition Diagram.
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The analysis of stakeholders is a commonly used
practice, not only in EA (TheOpenGroup, 2018),
systems engineering (Incose, 2022), and business
modelling, where actors are attributed as having a
stake in the game (Friedman & Miles, 2002;
Stéphanie Missonier & Loufrani-Fedida, 2014) or can
affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected
by a decision or activity (ISO/IEC, 2015). Typically,
stakeholders are identified with their interests, needs,
and powers to influence decisions and then
categorised and related to each other.
Adjacent to EA, we find the practice of enterprise
modelling (EM), where integrated enterprise models
are designed by someone with a purpose and a target
audience in mind and a focus on a particular aspect of
the enterprise (Stirna & Persson, 2018).
The development of Use Cases focuses on
capturing the use of systems and artefacts such as
information products and identification of functions
and functional requirements (Stirna & Persson,
2018). However, using information products is only
one part of a stakeholder's real work.
The design of the method chunks and related
constructs is informed by ISO/ 42010 standard, which
codifies existing EA practices, situational method
engineering that addresses the creation of
development methods for specific situations
(Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014) and collaborative
engineering (Randrup, 2014).
3 RESEARCH APPROACH
This paper presents results from the second iteration
of a research effort that uses a design science research
methodology, which is carried out to change the state
of affairs by designing and evaluating innovative
artefacts. The applied research method follows the
steps outlined by Peffers (Peffers et al., 2007).
In the first iteration, problems were identified
based on a case study (Tell & Henkel, 2018), which
led to the development of solution methods chunks
and constructs. In this second major iteration, the
overall problem addressed is:
The differences in perception and use across work
practices may hamper the utility of information
products over time. However, at the same time, a
single and focused definition of an information
product may miss incorporating essential aspects
needed in different work practices.
This paper brings forward the following
observations that raise problems with a potential
impact on using information products in EA.
Availability of relevant information: The
documentation of EA viewpoints and models
(ISO/IEC, 2022) (TheOpenGroup, 2018) provides
little to no documentation of why a stakeholder wants
to use views and models, thus limiting detailed
evaluation of how an information product is or was
used in stakeholder's actual work.
Documentation of how a model can or should be
used is primarily found in adjacent EA methods.
Although, this documentation can be argued to focus
primarily on the architect's production perspective.
Although the Zachman ontology defines
stakeholder perspectives, these do not provide
concrete details of what the perspective holders do.
Furthermore, the set of perspectives appears not to be
extendable within the ontology.
A lack of details can impair evaluations of an
information product's relative advantage compared to
other information products, which is argued in the
Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Dearing & Cox,
2018) and the User Acceptance of Information
Technology model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) to be
important for the use of information products.
Although a stakeholder analysis can be elaborate,
it often focuses on interests and powers to influence,
leading to a potential need for documented details
about actual work practices and relationships.
A lack of details about “who says what about
whom and what?” may impair the analysis of
stakeholders' work and their information needs.
The development of use cases focuses on using
systems and information products. However, it
cannot be easy to understand information needs if
details of the stakeholder's work are not documented.
Being vague about what an information product is
supposed to contribute can impair its usage, as
identified in a case study (Tell & Henkel, 2018).
Stakeholders may use different languages that
may impair the consumption of information products.
An example is when architectural languages and work
products tend to favour the perspective of architects
and not the (work) perspectives of non-architects
(Malavolta et al., 2012) (Khosroshahi et al., 2018).
Documentation of stakeholders' concerns
provides the rationale for using viewpoints. However,
in viewpoint documentation, concerns are often
imprecisely documented with one or a few words,
such as “Executives” and “Capability needs“
(ISO/IEC, 2022).
Concerns should be derived from stakeholders'
prior knowledge, experiences, responsibilities, needs,
requirements, expectations, etcetera. However, the
documentation of where the concerns are derived
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from, the grounding, is often largely or altogether
missing (ISO/IEC, 2022) (TheOpenGroup, 2018).
An EA framework is typically designed at a point
in time for intended use in varying fields and
situations. The generic nature may pose a problem
later when the framework is applied to a specific field,
organisation, and situation.
It is often the case that stakeholders participate in
the facilitated development and evaluation of
information products in EA (TheOpenGroup, 2018)
and enterprise modelling (Stirna & Persson, 2018).
However, a question can be raised if such facilitation
ensures that the stakeholders have expressed
sufficient details about their own work and
information needs since a facilitator mediates the
knowledge capture.
In organisations with work specialisations, it is
clear that stakeholders have different interests and do
different work, and they exchange information in
constellations, roles and relationships. A lack of due
consideration for the differences between
stakeholders' work may impair the design of relevant
information products, and the evaluation of fit
between roles stakeholders play in relationships.
Traditional EA frameworks such as TOGAF do
not specifically include documentation of roles and
relationships involving stakeholders. However, this
may not be needed if architects are responsible for
ensuring that all stakeholder concerns are covered and
for producing information for consumer stakeholders.
The ISO 42010 standard includes aspects of
correspondence between architecture description
elements but does not include rich relationships
between stakeholders, their roles and concerns.
The Zachman framework comes with a pre-
constructed set of perspectives similar to work
practices and reification-relations between
perspectives. However, the reification relations only
partially represent rich relationships.
Asymmetries: Actors with specialised work
practices inevitably raise the possibility of
asymmetrical situations with potential problems.
Examples include an architect (or business analyst)
producing a model for a stakeholder, where the
architect and not the stakeholder have defined the
consuming stakeholder’s work, when a producer
claims (self-reporting) that a consumer is satisfied
hoping that the consumer will buy and use it but the
consumer reports other experiences, or when some
actors’ voices are absent.
4 WOA METHOD CHUNKS
The solution artefacts presented in this paper are the
five (5) WOA method chunks that create, use and
modify seven (7) WOA constructs (see section 5) and
method parts such as an information product, model
or method part where an information product
participates such as an algorithm.
The WOA method chunks are developed based on
situational method engineering principles
(Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014) and experiences from
situating information products (Tell et al., 2016). A
method chunk can be infused into methods that
construct new method parts and/or tailor existing
methods parts, such as an EA development method or
extend an existing EA framework,
The method chunks “Locate”, “Frame,
“Characterise” anchor and frame situational method
engineering and can be executed early in a process,
such as in project initiation (Commission &
Informatics, 2016), in defining a design brief, or in
the preliminary phase of an architecture development
method (TheOpenGroup, 2018). The ”Situate”
activity uses the results from the “Locate”, “Frame,
and “Characterise” activities as input to the
construction, situation and/or tailoring of method
parts. The “Evaluation” activity performs evaluations
of method parts at any time.
4.1 WOA Locate
In the Locate method chunk, information about the
situation to focus on, where information (products) is
invented, produced and/or consumed, is located and
documented. A situation often involves a problem,
opportunity, challenge, dilemma or paradox to
address. This information anchors situational method
engineering, the use of information products and
evaluations in relevant contexts and situations.
Goal: The step aims at anchoring the situational
method engineering by identifying and representing
the situation to focus on and outer contexts.
Activities:
 Identify and describe shortly the situation-in-focus.
 Analyse the situation-in-focus to identify an initial
set of actors, actants, roles and relationships.
 Analyse the situation-in-focus to identify an initial
set of artefact, such as information products.
 Identify and describe shortly the project that works
to transform or evaluate the situation-in-focus.
 Identify the outer contexts of the situation-in-focus.
 Identify the outer contexts of the project.
Results: New or updated SME Brief with:
 Initial or updated Frame and Situation View
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Guidelines:
 Select and use suitable techniques for identifying
contexts, such as Stakeholder Analysis (Friedman
& Miles, 2002; Stephanie Missonier & Loufrani-
Fedida, 2014) or “Frame Innovation” (Dorst, 2015).
 Select and use suitable techniques for
understanding the situation-in-focus from fields
such as creative problem-solving and design.
4.2 WOA Frame
In the Frame method chunk, information about
factors influencing how the situations-in-focus,
situational method engineering, use of information
products, and evaluations are interpreted, approached
and worked on.
The method chunk supports active work with
frames (Schön, 1983) and enables a situational and
constructionist approach with the notion that reality is
not objective but rather socially constructed.
Goal: The step aims to identify and represent factors
and frames that influence the situational method
engineering, enactment, intention to use, use of
information products, and evaluations.
Activities:
 Identify contextual, situational, and frame factors.
Results: Updated SME Brief with:
 Updated Frame View with Identified factors.
Guidelines:
 Select a suitable technique for analysing frames,
such as “Frame Innovation” (Dorst, 2015).
 The 27 factors identified by Bekkers referenced in
“Situational Method Engineering” (Henderson-
Sellers et al., 2014) can inform this step.
4.3 WOA Characterise
In the Characterise method chunk, the situation-in-
focus is detailed by identifying and characterising
relevant work practices in which actors and
information products participate.
Goal: The step aims to identify and characterise
relevant work practices in the situation-in-focus, at
the desired level of detail, with participating actors
and information products, roles, and relationships
between the work practices.
Activities:
 Identify and describe relevant work practices and
represent them each as a work-to-be-done.
 Identify and describe roles that work practices play.
 Identify and describe relationships between roles.
 Identify and describe actors and information
products that participate in work practices.
 Identify aspects of relationships and fit between
work practices' roles as accommodations.
 Identify and describe shortly alternative methods
parts that could participate in work practices.
Results: Updated SME Brief with:
 New or updated Situation, Work, Accommodation,
Interested Party, and Information Product Views.
Guidelines:
 Adding more or fewer work statements regulates
the desired level of detail.
 Narrow down a potentially large set of work
practices, originating from each participant's own
world-view of their work situation, into a
reasonable and practicable set of work practices that
can be used for the situational method engineering.
4.4 WOA Situate
In the Situate method chunk, method parts are
constructed or tailored. A method part can be situated
or be prepared to be situated in a later tailoring step.
The method parts are constructed based on
situational factors captured in the SME brief,
embedded knowledge in the method base and method
construction guidelines, and the knowledge embodied
in method engineers (Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014)
to improve qualities such as intention-to-use
(Venkatesh et al., 2003) and actual use.
Goal: This step aims at constructing situated method
parts based on situational factors, as represented by
the SME brief.
Activities:
 Construct and situate method parts.
 Identify and analyse alternative method parts.
Results:
 Constructed method parts.
Guidelines:
 The book “Situational Method Engineering”
provides guidelines (Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014)
for constructing methods and/or method parts.
Example:
An example of a type of information product that
can be situated is the capability map construct with
the general capability pattern (Tell & Henkel, 2022).
The pattern can be instantiated to define capability
maps suited to practices where actors are interested in
different capabilities, such as competitive advantage,
sustainability, risk, processual or human capabilities.
4.5 WOA Evaluate
In the Evaluate method chunk, method parts (at type
or instance levels) are evaluated against the identified
situational factors, actor's work practices, roles, and
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Figure 1: Illustration of the Wireframe method with infused WOA method chunks.
relationships as captured in the SME Brief, which is
also evaluated.
Evaluations form a natural part of quality
assurance processes and development methods such
as design science research (Peffers et al., 2007), agile
build-measure-learn cycles (Reis, 2011), quality
management (ISO/IEC, 2015), design (Dorst, 2015),
and project management (Commission &
Informatics, 2016).
An evaluation can be performed at different times,
such as ex-ante to create baselines, during use and ex-
post, for different reasons, such as formative for
improvements or summative, according to a
paradigm such as artificial (abstract) or naturalistic
(concrete) (Venable et al., 2016).
The WOA recognises a wide range of qualities
relevant to method parts that can be evaluated:
 Inherent qualities, without reference to contexts.
 Internal and Internal in-use qualities, as stated
internally by own role and work practice.
 External and External in-use qualities as stated
externally in other work practices in a relationship.
 Qualities of Alternative methods parts that are
feasible with relative (dis)advantages.
Goal: This step aims to evaluate method parts and to
develop insights and ideas for improvements.
Activities:
 Prepare evaluation, select the method part(s) to be
evaluated, and establish purpose and plan.
 Select the evaluation approach(es), quality
model(s), and measures and add them to the plan.
 Execute evaluation according to plan.
o Evaluate the qualities of the SME Brief.
o Evaluate the qualities of constructed, tailored,
intended, alternative or actual method parts.
 Record evaluation results, findings, feedback from
participants, and ideas for improvement.
Results:
 Descriptions of evaluation results, findings,
conclusions, and ideas for improvements.
Guidelines:
 Select the quality models that are relevant to the
SME effort, such as those found in business models
(Stirna & Persson, 2018), services (Kang & James,
2004), software products (Miguel et al., 2014) and
EA models (Rumapea & Sitohang, 2017).
 Actors from all roles should participate to ensure a
balanced evaluation.
 Alternative method parts with potentially higher
relative advantages should be evaluated, such as a
less complicated and desirable information product.
4.6 Demonstration
The method chunks can be applied to a varied set of
situations. To demonstrate applications of WOA, an
explanatory tool and frame of reference, the
wireframe method has been developed based on a
generic situational method construction method
(Henderson-Sellers et al., 2014). It provides a simple
guide for where the WOA method chunks can or
should be positioned. The wireframe method consists
of seven (7) activities (see Figure 1).
Anchor and Frame
In the Anchor and Frame activity, key situational
factors that influence and instruct the situational
method construction activities are identified and
documented in the SME Brief.
Construct
In the Construct activity, (new) method parts are
constructed based on an SME Brief and a Method
Base, which contains codified knowledge and method
parts from different domains that can be assembled,
configured and potentially situated into an ideal
Constructed Method. Examples of pre-fabricated
methods are the TOGAF Architecture Development
Method (ADM) which has been constructed to be
used by different enterprises and architecture
frameworks and the Zachman ontology.
Tailor
In the Tailor activity, a constructed method and its
method parts are adjusted and adapted to a particular
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target usage scenario into a personalised and bespoke
Intended Method based on an adapted SME Brief.
Examples of tailoring are found in the TOGAF ADM
Preliminary Phase, in the customisation of the UAF
framework and in the Zachman ontology, which is
used as a basis for creating EA frameworks.
Enact
In the Enact(ment) activity, the intended method is
introduced and transitioned (ISO/IEC, 2008) into the
target environment and organisation (Henderson-
Sellers et al., 2014). This step provides an opportunity
to address participants’ acceptance of new method
parts, as well as coherence between work practices.
Execute
In the Execute activity, the intended method is
realised. An example is TOGAF ADM phase A-H.
Evaluate
In the Evaluate activity, method parts are evaluated.
Retrospect
In the retrospect activity, participants can discuss the
utility of using method parts, learn, and capture
lessons learned.
Infusion of WOA method chunks
The ‘WOA Locate”, ‘WOA Frame’, and ‘WOA
Characterise’ strengthen the Anchor and Frame
activity. The ‘WOA Situate’ strengthen the
construction of new method parts and the tailoring of
existing ones. The ‘WOA Evaluate’ can be infused
into all activities to evaluate how the method parts fit
with the SME Brief and to offer a space where actors
can discuss, deliberate, and form intentions and
commitments to use method parts.
5 WOA CONSTRUCTS
The WOA methods chunks deliver results in the form
of WOA constructs that are governed by viewpoints,
which are “set of conventions for the creation,
interpretation and use of an architecture view to frame
one or more concerns” (ISO/IEC & IEEE, 2022).
Each of the constructs serves as a representation
of captured knowledge and can be expressed as
models, textual stories, diagrams, or canvases.
5.1 WOA Viewpoints
The main result is the Situational Method
Engineering Brief (SME Brief) which contains
information that informs and instructs situational
method engineering, documentation, evaluation
activities, and the use of information products. An
SME Brief can be included in a design brief or a
project charter. The SME Brief contains views and
information governed by the following WOA
viewpoints but can also contain other information that
is needed for SME activities.
The Work Viewpoint establishes conventions for
representing work practices (Bueger & Gadinger,
2015; Nicolini, 2012; Ulwick, 2016) (Clark et al.,
2018) (Tell & Henkel, 2018) as a ‘work-to-be-done’.
Examples of work practice aspects include:
 Work done and ways of working.
 Jobs to be done (Ulwick, 2016)
 Actors, stakeholders, artefacts and information
products participate in a thematic role.
 Questions asked, and decisions to make.
 Goals, objectives, results, and outcomes.
 An actor is using an artefact or system.
 As a Manager, I am experiencing a problem or pain
(Osterwalder et al., 2015).
 An actor has information needs (Incose, 2022).
Figure 2 Illustration of WOA constructs.
A 'work statement' represents details about a
situation-in-focus, role, relationship, work practice,
actor or information product.
Examples include: “The decision X is based on
report Z”, and in template form, “When … actor ...
feel … because … therefore … [stated by]”.
A set of work statements forms a linearisation of
a concept and fact model that approximates a small
part of the world. Therefore, work statements can be
expressed both in model form and as text sentences in
work stories or work canvases (Group, 2019).
Work statements can be formulated using
(domain-specific) languages, such as a language
defined using the Semantics of Business Vocabulary
and Business Rules (Group, 2019) to improve
accuracy and consistency across WOA applications.
Level of Detail: More or fewer work statements
regulate the desired level of detail and accuracy.
State by: A work statement references the actor
who stated it, which can be a different actor than an
actor represented in the work statement.
Organisation: A more extensive set of work
statements can be organised according to underlying
ideas, such as aspects and themes, to simplify
understanding, design and evaluation.
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The Frame Viewpoint establishes conventions
for representing frames with situational and frame
factors and points of view that influence situational
method construction, tailoring, execution and
evaluation. Factors are associated with:
 Situation-in-focus and contexts surrounding the
situation-in-focus.
 Situational method engineering project that
addresses the situation-in-focus and contexts
surrounding the project.
Examples of frame aspects include:
 Assumptions, hypotheses, choices, constraints,
belief systems, conceptualisation, themes, reference
points upon which information is judged, principles
for organising facts, what to focus on, questions to
be asked, influencing factors and forces of change.
The Situation Viewpoint establishes conventions
for representing a situation-in-focus with roles and
relationships as a ‘work situation’, ‘work roles’ and
‘work relationships’ where each ‘work role’ is
associated with a ‘work-to-be-done’.
Two archetypical situations and relationships can
be found related to information products:
 <Producer, Consumer>, an information product, is
produced by an actor and consumed by an actor.
 <Creator, <Producer, Consumer>>, a new type of
information product, model or algorithm is invented
to benefit actors in both the producer and consumer
roles. An example is when an inventor creates a new
kind of algorithm for analysts, which is used to
produce an information product based on collected
data and the execution of the algorithm, to be sent
to an expert in support of the expert’s improved
decision-making process.
The Accommodation Viewpoint establishes
conventions for representing aspects of the coherence
between work practices within a relationship as the
‘accommodation’ construct.
Examples of relationship aspects include:
 FIT. How well a work-to-be-done with participating
actors and information products fit each other, such
as how information product features satisfy
information needs and how an actor’s pain is
relieved by an information product's pain reliever.
 Assurance. How a FIT is justified through claims,
argumentation and evidence.
 Effectuation. How values and artefacts are
transitioned between roles through interventions.
The Interested party Viewpoint establishes
conventions for representing aspects of actors that
participate in work practices or have stated a work
statement. Examples of actor aspects include:
 Persona aspects (Negru & Buraga, 2012).
 Importance & influence (Friedman & Miles, 2002).
The Information Product Viewpoint establishes
conventions for representing aspects of information
products that participate in work practices.
Examples of information product aspects include:
 Features, functions, and affordances (Tell, 2020)
 Pain relievers, gain creators, and value propositions
(Osterwalder et al., 2015).
5.2 Integration with ISO 42010
The WOA constructs can be integrated with EA
frameworks based on ISO 42010 by extending an ISO
42010-based Architecture Description with the
content of the SME Brief and by adding situated
information products and models to a framework.
An ISO 42010 concern can be considered a
simplification or condensation of work statements. In
the other direction, work statements make visible that
which is embedded in a concern and enable the design
and evaluation of information products and their
features against specific and concrete actions,
pains/gains, information needs, questions, and
decisions (Tell, 2020).
Furthermore, the Situation and Accommodation
views add information about situations, roles and
relationships not explicitly covered by ISO 42010.
6 DISCUSSION
This section presents an informed argument for the
WOA method chunks and WOA constructs. As
formulated by Hevner et al. (Hevner et al., 2004), the
informed argument is a type of lightweight evaluation
where the researcher argues for their solutions.
The availability of relevant information is
improved by the small and focused WOA method
chunks that can complement and be infused into
existing (EA) methods. Thereby lowering the barriers
to method application and improving facilitating
conditions for and actual use of information products.
The generally designed WOA constructs extend
the ISO 42010 standard, thereby increasing the
possibility of WOA being applied to a wide range of
frameworks and methods.
The WOA constructs and the SME Brief enable
the retainment of detailed relevant work-oriented
documentation over methods and information
product life cycles so that they do not disappear after
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a framework has been constructed. This enduring
information can be used to increase the understanding
of EA artefacts and how they are supposed to be used
throughout the life cycle of architecting.
The relevance of work practices and relationships
to information design, production, consumption, and
evaluation is well-known in many fields. WOA
makes the differences between practices and roles
visible by including situations, roles, relationships,
practices, and accommodations. Examples of fields
include: Jobs to be done (Christensen et al., 2016)
(Ulwick, 2016), Situational Analysis and grounded
research (Clark et al., 2018), work practices (Adler
& Pouliot, 2011), Diffusion of Innovation (Dearing &
Cox, 2018), User Acceptance of Information
Technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003), REA (Gailly et
al., 2008; Geerts & McCarthy, 2002; McCarthy et al.,
2016)(ISO/IEC, 2007)(Ito & Vymetal, 2013), and
value proposition design (Osterwalder et al., 2015).
When roles and work situations are made explicit,
it becomes possible to analyse questions such as, is
the information product co-created with the
consumer, or is the production mediated by a business
analyst? If the information product is complicated, or
if its relative advantage is not clear, then the
consumer may report problems or non-intention to
use (Khosroshahi et al., 2018) (Venkatesh et al.,
2003). If the information product is new, the rate of
enactment, spread and adaptation may take time
(Dearing & Cox, 2018).
The desired or necessary levels of precision can,
in WOA, be regulated through the number and
expressiveness of work statements, which enables
design and evaluation to be more precise and relevant.
The open-ended nature of work statements can be
used to capture the source and grounding of needs,
concerns, expectations, goals, and requirements.
Furthermore, research methods such as grounded
theory are supported by organising work statements
in aspects such as thick descriptions and insights.
Language and mediated knowledge problems can
be identified and addressed through the
representation of who made a work statement about
an actor's work practice in a relationship and the use
of domains specific work statement languages.
Furthermore, the active voice and engagement of all
roles are supported since actors should be involved in
specifying their own work and needs (Incose, 2022).
WOA provides an opportunity to identify and
analyse the effects of asymmetrical situations through
captured knowledge about work situations, roles,
relationships and work statements stated by actors.
WOA offers the possibility to situate and adapt
information products to specific situations. Thereby
enabling the design of relevant information products
that match actors’ specific information needs and
increase the intention to use and utility of use.
Furthermore, preparing generic information products
to be situated for specific situations later bridges the
generic-specific gap and promises to improve the
utility of pre-fabricate and methods.
WOA aims not to replace adjacent theories and
practices but to complement and enrich them by
explicitly adding detailed WOA parts.
WOA supports the development of use cases.
Here, the use of information products is considered as
insights derived from work statements that provide a
thick description of what happens in work practices.
The definition of use or functional requirements is
argued to be enriched by clarifying why, when, and
how an information product should be used and
which questions should be answered.
7 SUMMARY
This paper presents a novel work-oriented method
and constructs resulting from a design science
research effort. The main contributions of this
research and the paper are the WOA method chunks
and constructs that enable the capture and
representation of detailed situational factors,
relational aspects, and work practices, which are
argued to improve the design, documentation,
relevance, enactment, intention to use, use and
evaluation of information products in the field of EA.
The WOA method chunks and constructs can
extend ISO 42010-based enterprise architecture
methods and frameworks by enriching the
identification and specification of concerns with
detailed work practices and adding work situations,
roles, relationships, and accommodations.
The WOA method chunks and constructs provide
a rich foundation for designing situated information
products that are considered relevant and fit better
with specific information needs, thus increasing the
intention to use and utility in their use.
The solution artefacts open up future research
about which factors, aspects, and details contribute to
multi-perspective situations and how they can be
evaluated as part of the construction, tailoring,
enactment, and use of EA frameworks and methods.
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