Value and Intention Based Information Systems Engineering

Abstract

In order to cope with increasingly complex business and IT environments, organisations need effective instruments for managing their knowledge about these environments. Essential among these instruments are models, i.e. representations of aspects of reality including the domain of work, the processes, and their context. Models come in a variety of forms, formal or informal; describing static or dynamic aspects; representing agents, data, goals, processes, or resources; focusing on business or IT aspects. A major question is how to organise and relate the different models that are needed for representing and visualising enterprises and their environments, and this issue has been addressed within the area of enterprise architecture. In this chapter, we propose a light-weight enterprise architecture framework based on linguistic theories and organizational metaphors. The concepts and entities of an organization are categorized into three groups concerning resources and resource exchanges, contracts and commitments, and authorities and roles. The activities and processes in organizations are divided into three levels based on how they affect physical, communicative and social aspects of organizations.