OntoSoS.BPA.ChM: A semantically-enriched and business process architecture-driven framework for change management in system of systems context

Samhan, Ahmad

Abstract

The interaction and collaboration between the constituent systems in System of Systems (SoS) context entail more complex and new challenges that face the application of Change Management (ChM) frameworks. Some of these challenges include: (i) the insufficiency of adopting traditional ChM approaches for the emerging SoS context and the need for innovative directions to support ChM application in the SoS context; (ii) the heterogeneous context of SoS resulting from the different ChM standards adopted by the participating constituent systems; (iii) the lack of ChM frameworks that enrich the awareness of the ChM stakeholders of aspects related to the core ChM processes and their interrelationships based on generalised, explicit and formally represented knowledge; (iv) the lack of approaches that represent, align and link between global and local levels of SoS with focus on business-information technology alignment; (v) the high dependency of the ChM functional area on other configuration management functional areas in SoS context to empower ChM stakeholders with knowledge related to change impact analysis and authorities identification.
This research is aimed at addressing the above gaps through using a semantically-enriched Business Process Architecture (BPA)-driven approach in order to improve the effectiveness of the ChM application in SoS context. In addition, this research adopts the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) to develop, demonstrate and evaluate the research artefacts incrementally, leading to the final research framework; namely the OntoSoS.BPA.ChM.
The research framework is composed of three main components developed through multiple DSRM process increments. The ChM component provides a new generalised semantically-enriched BPA-driven model for the ChM functional area. The SoS context view component provides a new generalised semantically-enriched BPA-driven meta-model that can be instantiated for a given SoS arrangement. Finally, the alignment and knowledge retrieval component aligns the ChM component with the SoS view component and provides knowledge retrieval capabilities to retrieve purposeful knowledge from the ChM and SoS components that enriches the awareness of the concerned ChM stakeholders. The OntoSoS.BPA.ChM framework has been demonstrated and evaluated using a representative healthcare case study, in particular, the Cell Therapy and Applied Genomics (CTAG) at King Hussein Cancer Centre (KHCC), Amman, Jordan.
The OntoSoS.BPA.ChM framework has demonstrated its effectiveness in addressing the identified research gaps when applied to the selected representative case study. In particular, (i) a novel approach was used to capture related aspects of the ChM and SoS problem domains using new conceptual models (e.g. BPA models for ChM and BPA-driven models for SoS context) and then introducing innovative solution (semantically-enriched BPA-driven ChM framework) to support ChM application in SoS context; (ii) the heterogeneity impact of SoS arrangements on achieving a common agreement on the different ChM aspects related to managing a change request has been minimised; (iii) the enrichment of ChM stakeholders awareness of different ChM aspects related to ChM processes and the relationships between them has been enabled using knowledge-retrieval capabilities that are based on explicit and formal representations of the related ChM aspects; (iv) a better support of maintaining SoS global-local levels alignment and BITA during ChM application has been facilitated by capturing key related SoS elements and linkages between them using a semantically-enriched and BPA-driven approach; and (iv) compared to traditional ChM frameworks, the OntoSoS.BPA.ChM framework has minimised the dependency of ChM functional area on other separate configuration management functional areas by providing dedicated means that enable more comprehensive traceability of candidate change implications and more effective identification of configuration items and stakeholders related to a change request. In conclusion, the OntoSoS.BPA.ChM framework might be generalised to other healthcare areas, and/or industrial and business domains using more complex case studies.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jan 19, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 26, 2020
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/5184479
• Award Date: Mar 26, 2020