Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
case study. The use of labels stimulates a rational and easier to understand
argumentation. In case of need the moderator will contact experts to comment on a
contribution. For example, the lawyer could answer questions on the new laws of
warranty that became effective at the beginning of this year. On terminating the
discussion phase, the process author and the responsible person from the CoIN-team
will secure the contributions. Extracted experiences have to be approved by the
responsible process owner before they are transferred to the experience base. In some
cases, further focused investigations, like a project analysis, will be taken into
consideration (Tautz 2000). Text mining methods for clustering contributions or
adding semantic links will enhance the analysis conducted by both, the process author
and the experience engineer. Selected contributions, especially open arguments, will
remain with the process model.
In the subsequent pilot phase the process descriptions will be evaluated at daily
work. Now practical problems will turn up that have to be solved by the staff or some
experts. These discussions, too, will be evaluated for improving the process
descriptions and extending the experience base. Clearly, the emphasis will now lie on
gathering experiences while the process model will stabilize.
Finally, the revised process description will be published for regular operation.
Due to the comprehensive validation during the discussion and pilot phases the
number of new contributions is expected to be small. Therefore, the responsible
process author may monitor the discussion with low effort beside their other tasks.
For the process of writing project offers, this would be the administrative person
whose work will be alleviated through efficient instantiations of the process model.
Supported by text mining services the responsible moderator will continue to observe
the discussions in order to identify interesting experiences and projects that require
further analysis. If problems of executing the process models are starting to
accumulate a new revision will be scheduled.
4
indiGo - The Software Platform
The indiGo technical platform integrates two independent types of systems for a
completely new service. While one system acts as a source for documents, like
descriptions of business process models, the other acts as a source for related
information, like private annotations, public comments or lessons and examples from
an experience base. Currently the business process model repository CoIN-IQ acts as
the document source, related information is provided either by the groupware Zeno or
the lessons learned repository CoIN-EF.
As shown in Figure 2 the indiGo platform, as presented at CeBIT 2002, consists of
three core components. The integrator acts as a middleware between the document
and information source. On the left hand side CoIN-IQ hosts the business process
models that can be supported by information from the second system. Zeno on the
right side manages annotations and discussions about the business process models
from CoIN-IQ.
