Stakeholder-driven enterprise process model for complex services adaptation

Abstract

Service - oriented organizations often deal with incoming non-routine request types, each with significant variations in requirements consequently driving discovery of processing needs. At the same time such organizations are often challenged with sharing high-cost resources and executing static processes that do not lead to effective delivery. This requires an ontology designed for flexible adaptation to facilitate performance traceability and knowledge mining. Specifically we present a formal dynamic service ontology that 1) obtains tacit knowledge as explicit in-the-micro feedback from workers performing roles, 2) provides in-the-small evolutionary (dynamic) process instance structures and monitoring mechanisms, and 3) aggregates process instances metrics into a performance and decision-making facility to align to in-the-large goals of stakeholders. The multidimensional ontology for process flexibility and performance traceability was derived from industry case studies and is cognizant of stakeholder interests. We use customer service request data to validate the ontology through its use in adaptive decision-making applied to a large IT shared services organization. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.