Applying AHP for Collaborative Modeling Evaluation

In Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) giving a precise definition of quality models, identifying which quality attributes are of interest for specific stakeholders, and how relating and aggregating together quality attributes are still open issues. The main limitations of currently available quality approaches are limited extensibility, artifact specificity, and manual assessment. This paper proposes an approach supporting the definition of custom quality models consisting of hierarchically organized quality attributes whose evaluation depends on metrics specifically conceived and applied on the modeling artifacts to be analysed. A domain specific language is proposed to specify how quality attributes and metrics have to be aggregated. An execution environment is also provided to apply the defined quality models on actual modeling artifacts so to enable their automated quality assessment. Real applications of the approach are presented by defining and applying explanatory quality models suitably conceived to assess the quality of metamodels and transformations retrieved from public repositories.

The Open source ecosystem creates new pathways for participation and collaboration from a broad and diverse community of developers. As a software system grows, the need to capture its design, often through models, becomes important in order to boost communication and collaboration. In this paper, we report on a study that assesses the open source community’s adoption of modeling as a way to capture design and enable collaboration among development teams. The study includes a search of open source repositories to identify modeling artifacts, a survey, a questionnaire, and a set of interviews with open source contributors. Our findings show that there is a low number of modeling artifacts that are included in open source project repositories. However, the survey, the questionnaire, and the interviews suggest that capturing design in models is much more common than what can be inferred by searching the repositories alone. These models are created through collaborations, but often are not shared in the open source repositories. This is due to many factors including the lack of incentives to share modeling artifacts beyond the immediate circle of collaborators and limited collaboration support in modeling tools.

Contributors

Enterprise Architecture (EA) as a discipline that manages large amount of models and information about different aspects of the enterprise can support decision making on enterprise-wide issues. In order to provide such support, EA information should be amenable to analysis of various utilities and quality attributes. In this regard, this paper provides an approach based on Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) towards EA analysis. It proposes an extended quantitative method of assessing quality attribute achievement of different scenarios using AHP and Fuzzy AHP based on the knowledge and experience of EA experts and domain experts. Due to the uncertainty in the judgments of participants, the crisp pair-wise comparison in the conventional AHP is insufficient and imprecise to capture the right judgments. Therefore, a fuzzy logic is introduced in the pair-wise comparison of AHP in one of steps of the method. The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated using a practical case study.

Research on the construction of a collaborative ability evaluation system for the joint graduation design of new engineering specialty groups based on digital technology

In this paper, an integrated performance measurement model is developed, considering both productivity and quality dimensions together in one platform. The ranking of the units for the identified quality dimensions is found by the application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP). By using the technique of data envelopment analysis (DEA), the unit which is ranked high on productivity is obtained. The units are then grouped through the application of the K means clustering technique by providing the quality scores arrived through AHP and the productivity scores from DEA. The model helps to identify the best practicing units, in terms of quality and productivity, for other units to follow. This approach helps in identifying and improving the performance management in service organisations.

Variable Contents of Enterprise Models

In enterprise modelling, we witness numerous efforts to predefine and integrate perspectives and concepts for modelling some problem area, which result in standardised modelling languages (e.g. BPMN, ArchiMate). The empirical observations however indicate that, in actual use, standardising and integrating effect of such modelling languages erodes, due to the need to accommodate specific modelling contexts. Instead of designing yet another mechanism to control this phenomena, we argue it should first be fundamentally understood. To account for the functioning of a modelling language in a socio-pragmatic context of modelling, we claim it is necessary to go beyond a normative view often adopted in modelling language study. We present a developing explanatory theory as to why and how modelling languages are used in enterprise modelling. The explanatory theory relies on a conceptual framework on modelling developed as the critical synthesis of the existing theoretical work, and from the position of socio-pragmatic constructivism.

The aim of this paper is to present a learning model for programming based laboratory courses where cognitive enhancement is succeeded through active evaluation of programming assignments among peers. The model comprises three successive phases: training of students in peer-evaluation processes, in-class collaborative peer evaluation, and distance peer evaluation. A first experiment on the effectiveness of the model has been carried out in the context of an Artificial Intelligence laboratory course during the spring semester of 2012, with promising results. Students expressed their satisfaction with peer evaluation activities and especially with collaborative evaluation in class, by means of a questionnaire delivered to them at the end of the semester. Future steps will be to apply the model to additional programming courses of the curriculum in order to acquire more data and study in depth the obtained benefits with regard to the students' cognitive, behavioral and social enhancement.

Collaborative Declarative Modeling combines the flexibility of abstract declarative description of a scene with the integration of views and opinions of multiple designers. One of the stages where this integration applies is the scene understanding phase, where solutions corresponding to the submitted description are visualized and evaluated. In the current work we propose a mechanism for collaborative solution evaluation based on previous feedback with respect to each collaborating designer’s preferences. Designers are grouped into clusters of preference revealing the proximity of their evaluations for previously seen solutions. These clusters are formed upon criteria ensuring wide inter-cluster preference representation and thorough intra-cluster compactness. Clusters subsequently participate through representative designers to the formation of the consensus solution set corresponding to the submitted description. The proposed mechanism allows adjustment of parameters controlling intuitive characteristics of the collaborative declarative design methodology such as importance of each designer and strictness in solution evaluation.

Application of Monte Carlo AHP in ranking dental quality attributes

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained remarkable importance in research and practice in the last years. Innovative information and communication technology (ICT) is a driver for the effectiveness and efficiency of enterprise collaboration and the management of inter-organizational business processes. In this context, cooperating enterprises need a shared understanding of their own processes, those of their partners as well as of emerging inter-organizational process structures. In order to create such a shared understanding, the concept of collaborative modeling can serve as a useful approach. This article introduces a concept for collaborative business process modeling and its implementation in the CoMoMod tool. The tool supports several aspects of collaborative process modeling, such as simultaneous work of spatially distributed modelers on one process model diagram. Furthermore the tool permits synchronously creating a collaborative model with different modeling languages by automatically mapping and converting the different model representations. The proof of concept utilizes Event-driven Process Chains (EPC) and Petri Nets. The usage of an integrated chat messaging service supports communication during the process of collaboratively modeling business process.

“One system for everyone” has been an ideal goal for information technology (IT) management in many large organizations, and the deployment of such systems has been a major trend incorporate world under the name of enterprise systems (ES) (Brown & Vessey, 2003; Davenport,2000; Markus, Petrie, & Axline, 2000). Benefits from ES use are claimed to be significant and multidimensional, ranging from operational improvements through decision-making enhancement to support for strategic goals (Shang & Seddon, 2002). However, studies (Hanseth & Braa, 2001; Rao, 2000; Robey, Ross, & Boudreau, 2002) of the deployment of ES in private sector organizations show that the ideal is difficult to accomplish. This paper reports a case in which a major university system in the US attempted to develop an in-house enterprise system. The system is currently used by more than 4,000 individual users in almost 20 universities and state agencies. This case offers a historical analysis of the design, implementation and use of the system from its inception in the mid 1980s to the present. This case indicates that ES design and implementation in higher education are quite challenging and complex due to unique factors in the public sector — including state mandates/requirements, IT leadership/resources, value systems, and decentralized organizational structure among other things — that must betaken into account in planning, designing and implementing ES (Ernst, Katz, & Sack, 1994;Lerner, 1999; McCredie, 2000). This case highlights (1) the challenges and issues in the rationale behind “one system for everyone” and (2) some differences as well as similarities in IT management between the private and public sectors. It offers some unique opportunities to discuss issues, challenges and potential solutions for the deployment of ES in the public arena, particularly in higher education.

“One system for everyone” has been an ideal goal for information technology (IT) management in many large organizations, and the deployment of such systems has been a major trend in corporate world under the name of enterprise systems (ES) (Brown & Vessey, 2003; Davenport, 2000; Markus, Petrie, & Axline, 2000). Benefits from ES use are claimed to be significant and multidimensional, ranging from operational improvements through decision-making enhancement to support for strategic goals (Shang & Seddon, 2002). However, studies (Hanseth & Braa, 2001; Rao, 2000; Robey, Ross, & Boudreau, 2002) of the deployment of ES in private sector organizations show that the ideal is difficult to accomplish. This chapter reports a case in which a major university system in the U.S. attempted to develop an in-house enterprise system. The system is currently used by more than 4,000 individual users in almost 20 universities and state agencies. This case offers a historical analysis of the design, implementation and use of the system from its inception in the mid 1980s to the present. This case indicates that ES design and implementation in higher education are quite challenging and complex due to unique factors in the public sector—including state mandates/requirements, IT leadership/resources, value systems, and decentralized organizational structure among other things—that must be taken into account in planning, designing and implementing ES (Ernst, Katz, & Sack, 1994; Lerner, 1999; McCredie, 2000). This case highlights (1) the challenges and issues in the rationale behind “one system for everyone” and (2) some differences as well as similarities in IT management between the private and public sectors. It offers some unique opportunities to discuss issues, challenges and potential solutions for the deployment of ES in the public arena, particularly in higher education.

“One system for everyone” has been an ideal goal for information technology (IT) management in many large organizations, and the deployment of such systems has been a major trend in corporate world under the name of enterprise systems (ES) (Brown & Vessey, 2003; Davenport, 2000; Markus, Petrie, & Axline, 2000). Benefits from ES use are claimed to be significant and multidimensional, ranging from operational improvements through decision-making enhancement to support for strategic goals (Shang & Seddon, 2002). However, studies (Hanseth & Braa, 2001; Rao, 2000; Robey, Ross, & Boudreau, 2002) of the deployment of ES in private sector organizations show that the ideal is difficult to accomplish. This paper reports a case in which a major university system in the US attempted to develop an in-house enterprise system. The system is currently used by more than 4,000 individual users in almost 20 universities and state agencies. This case offers a historical analysis of the design, implementation and use of the system from its inception in the mid 1980s to the present. This case indicates that ES design and implementation in higher education are quite challenging and complex due to unique factors in the public sector — including state mandates/requirements, IT leadership/resources, value systems, and decentralized organizational structure among other things — that must be taken into account in planning, designing and implementing ES (Ernst, Katz, & Sack, 1994; Lerner, 1999; McCredie, 2000). This case highlights (1) the challenges and issues in the rationale behind “one system for everyone” and (2) some differences as well as similarities in IT management between the private and public sectors. It offers some unique opportunities to discuss issues, challenges and potential solutions for the deployment of ES in the public arena, particularly in higher education.