Lately the notion of capability has emerged in information system engineering as the means to support development of context dependent organizational solutions and supporting IT applications. To this end a Capability Driven Development (CDD) approach has been proposed. As key part of CDD is the concept of patterns that is used to support the capability design from existing solutions as well as the adjustment of the capability delivery at run-time. A pattern template and meta-model is presented together with the CDD lifecycle that incorporates pattern development and use. The initial experiences of use of the patterns as part of CDD at three industrial use cases are also presented. Authors: Janis Stirna, Jelena Zdravkovic, Martin Henkel and Janis Kampars.

1. CoBI Workshop, 17th IEEE Conference on Business Informatics 13th -
16th July 2015
Capability Patterns as the Enablers for
Model-based Development of Business
Context-aware Applications
Janis Stirna, Jelena Zdravkovic, Martin
Henkel, Jānis Kampars

2. Outline
• Problem statement
• Our proposal
• Meta-models
• Architectural overview of CDD
• Usage example
• Conclusions & future work
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3. Problem statement
• The need to adapt according to various
situations in which business applications
are used (e.g. context)
• Model Driven Development (MDD) mostly
relies on the models defined on a relatively
low abstraction level
• Enterprise Modeling (EM) models are
complex, not matching the dynamics of the
organizational change
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4. Our proposal
• CaaS project initiative - integrate the
principle of reuse and execution of
software patterns with the principle of
sharing best practices of organizational
patterns
• capability patterns - reusable solutions for
reaching business goals under specific
situational context
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5. Capability as a Concept
Enterprises must focus on their capabilities: the ability and capacity that
enables an enterprise to achieve a business goal in a certain operational
context
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6. Capability meta-model
Enterprise
modeling
Context
modeling
Pattern
modeling
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7. Pattern structure
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8. Architectural overview
Capability Navigation Application
Capability
Design Tool
Capability
Context
Platform
Data
providers
value push
Capability Delivery
Application
meta data
Model and
implementations
Adjustment
information
Pattern Repository
Pattern
reccomendations
during run-time
value push Pattern
creation/retrieval
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9. Usage example
• Pattern example from industrial partner
Fresh T Limited, UK
• Ensure maritime compliance of ships
• The process is defined as pattern
• Context – ship status & location, port type,
country etc
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10. Generic maritime compliance pattern
Context
Vessel approaching a port
Port’s regulations
Country’s legislation
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11. Local legislation for environmental
complience
Context Range
Port’s regulations
{type=envirnmentally
protected}
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12. Vessel’s state for environmental
compliance
Context Range
Port’s regulations
{type=envirnmentally
protected}
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13. Pattern viewed in CDT
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14. CDD lifecycle – pattern
perspective
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15. Conclusion & future work
• Identified ways of using patterns for
supporting Capability Driven Development
– Integrate patterns in the CDD lifecycle
– Designing capability delivery from reusable model
fragments
– Meta-model used to represent patterns
• Development of the next version for the
pattern repository
– Better integration with CDT
– Integration with CNA
– Web service API
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