Supporting Continuous Changes to Business Intents

Software supporting an enterprise’s business, also known as a business support system, needs to support the correlation of activities between actors as well as influence the activities based on knowledge about the value networks in which the enterprise acts. This requires the use of policies and rules to guide or enforce the execution of strategies or tactics within an enterprise as well as in collaborations between enterprises. With the help of policies and rules, an enterprise is able to capture an actor’s intent in its business support system, and act according to this intent on behalf of the actor. Since the value networks an enterprise is part of will change over time the business intents’ life cycle states might change. Achieving the changes in an effective and efficient way requires knowledge about the affected intents and the correlation between intents. The aim of the study is to identify how a business support system can support continuous changes to business intents. The first step is to find a theoretical model which serves as a foundation for intent-driven systems. We conducted a case study using a focus group approach with employees from Ericsson. This case study was influenced by the spiral case study process. The study resulted in a model supporting continuous definition and execution of an enterprise. The model is divided into three layers; Define, Execute, and a common governance view layer. This makes it possible to support continuous definition and execution of business intents and to identify the actors needed to support the business intents’ life cycles. This model is supported by a meta-model for capturing information into viewpoints. The research question is addressed by suggesting a solution supporting continuous definition and execution of an enterprise as a model of value architecture components and business functions. The results will affect how Ericsson will build the business studio for their next generation business support systems.

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