Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Bart-Jan van Putten, Franziska Brecht, and Oliver Günther
structure is about reusing methods for ordering, aggregating and manipulating factors and values.
Current BCF support reuse to some extent. Especially the strict spreadsheet templates enable – or
enforce – the reuse of structure. However, these templates are often inflexible and unusable for
unexpected applications. Moreover, the reuse of content is very limited as spreadsheets are often
unconnected files, residing on a developers’ individual computers. The authors envision BCF that may
look and feel like ordinary spreadsheets, but which allow BC developers to interact with content that is
partly stored in central databases and which support the development of reusable components of
content and structure. This enables the reuse of content and structure among BCs and among BC
developers.
Figure 2: BCD story, modelled in BPMN
Adaptation: Current BCF often only support adaptation in the sense that BC developers need to put in
manual effort to do so. The authors envision BCF that support the (semi-) automatic adaptation of
BCs, e.g., by standardizing user input parameters, such as the pricing model, and by synchronizing
BC content with real-time dynamic data sources such as the databases in enterprise resource
planning (ERP) systems. This will not just increase the efficiency of BCD, but will also make BCs
more useful on the long-term, e.g., during project execution. Moreover, BCF could show the
discrepancy between actual values (ex-post) and estimated values (ex-ante), facilitating project
management interventions and organizational learning.
Collaboration: Current BCF, especially spreadsheet-based BCF that are not accompanied by
explanatory text documents, hardly support collaboration. Although it is possible to send around
documents and ask people for input, the chances are high that other BC developers and evaluators
do not understand the underlying assumptions, the calculation methods used, or have difficulties with
judging the reliability of information. The authors envision BCF that support collaborative BCD across
development projects, across organizations and across time, e.g., by making assumptions explicit, by
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