Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Bart-Jan van Putten, Franziska Brecht, and Oliver Günther
clarifying the source of content, by clarifying the quality of content, by enabling different viewpoints on
the same piece of information and by providing ways to share and protect information. This will not
just increase the efficiency of BCD, but will also make BCs more reliable for evaluators and support
today’s collaborative ways of doing business.
6. Interviews
To refine the identification of challenges and requirements in the reuse, adaptation and collaboration
solution areas, 15 topics were identified (Table 1). Each of the topics was discussed during the eight
structured interviews that were conducted with BC developers, who were invited among the industrial
companies participating in three research projects (ADiWa 2010; Aletheia 2010; SemProM 2010).
They were selected, because they were, or would be, developing BCs for new IS that were under
investigation in those research projects. The interviewees represented different industries: high tech
(3x), information technology (2x), logistics (2x), automotive (1x). The interviewees had experience in
BCD, but were not necessarily experts, and were representative for the population of target users of
the advanced BCF.
Each interview consisted of three main parts:
“Business cases in your organization”: This part investigated the development and use of BCs in
the organization and the role of the interviewee in that matter.
“Business case frameworks in your organization”: This part investigated the use of BCF in the
organization, the role of the interviewee in that matter and the interest in a BCF that would be
specific for the technology domain being investigated in the respective research project (Aletheia,
SemProM, or ADiWa).
“Challenges & Requirements”: This part investigated the 15 topics.
Table 1: Research topics within the solution areas and the scores from the interviews
Topic Reuse Adapt. Colla. Relevance Challenge Support
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Reuse of Content X 1,14 0,90 0,43 0,53 1,29 0,49
Reuse of Structure X 1,63 0,52 -0,13 1,25 1,75 0,46
Aggregation X 1,14 1,21 1,50 1,22 0,50 0,84
Comparison X 1,50 0,76 1,13 1,13 0,86 1,07
Provider vs. Customer Persp. X 1,38 0,74 0,88 1,36 1,13 0,99
Market Potential Estimation X 1,75 0,46 1,50 0,53 1,00 1,31
Changing Assumptions X 1,14 1,46 0,14 1,57 1,00 1,73
Product Innovation Lifecycle X 1,25 0,71 0,17 0,98 0,57 0,98
Business Model Adaptivity X 1,38 1,06 2,00 0,00 0,60 1,67
Clarifying Reasoning X 1,88 0,35 1,25 0,89 1,38 1,06
Stakeholders’ Opinions X 1,00 1,41 0,00 0,82 0,75 1,58
Information Sources X 1,50 0,53 1,00 1,07 1,00 0,58
Information Quality X 1,63 0,52 1,13 0,83 1,43 0,53
Sharing X 0,86 1,07 0,33 1,21 0,43 1,40
Security X 1,50 0,76 -0,50 0,84 0,57 0,98
The 15 topics were investigated in the interviews along three dimensions: the relevance dimension,
the challenge dimension and the support dimension. The relevance dimension was used to
investigate the required properties of BCs (not of BCF). E.g., a respondent could argue that
‘information quality’ is a relevant property of a BC – or not. It is assumed that relevant properties
should be obtainable through the use of BCF, or in the case that they can not be obtained through the
use of a BCF, the BCF should at least not prevent that. The challenge dimension was used to
investigate the complexity of the BCD task required to obtain (BC developer) or judge (BC evaluator)
the respective property of the BC. E.g., irrespective of the relevance of the topic, the interviewee
could argue that ‘determining information quality’ is a challenging BCD task. It is assumed that
challenging tasks are good candidates for BCF support. The support dimension was used to
investigate the need for BCF support for the respective BCD task. This dimension implicitly measured
a mixture of the respondent’s hope that a BCF would support the BCD task and the respondent’s
belief in the ability of a BCF to support the task, which in turn is based on the respondent’s knowledge
of state-of-the-art BCF and his/her imagination. Thus, the authors were aware of the inaccuracy of the
558