Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Bart-Jan van Putten, Franziska Brecht, and Oliver Günther
dimension, which was therefore mainly used to provoke responses regarding which BCD tasks
could/should be automated and which could/should not.
For each topic, for each dimension, a statement was defined. E.g., for the topic Information Quality
the statements were:
“The quality of information in a business case should be clear.” (relevance dimension)
“Determining the quality of information in a business case is a challenge.” (challenge dimension)
“A BCF should support the determination of the quality of information.” (support dimension)
The interviewees were asked to what extent they agreed with the statements. A five point Likert-scale
ranging from -2 (‘strongly disagree’) to +2 (‘strongly agree’), including a ‘no opinion’ option was used.
Table 1 shows the mean scores and standard deviations, all with a sample size of eight. Based on the
mean scores, Figure 3 was drawn. Each dot represents one of the 15 topics. The size of the dot
represents the relevance of the topic (note that the scores have been categorized so that there are
only three different sizes, which makes it easier to see the difference in size). The vertical axis
represents the challenge dimension. The challenging topics need to be understood better and thus
require further investigation. The horizontal axis represents the support dimension. If BCF support is
needed, supporting functionality should be implemented.
Figure 3: The 15 topics structured along the three dimensions, based on the interviews
Four topics, Market Potential Estimation (MPE), Information Quality (IQ), Clarifying Reasoning (CR)
and Reuse of Structure (RS), fall in the highest relevance category. Three of them, MPE, IQ, CR, are
both challenging and require BCF support according to the interviewees. One topic, RS, only requires
BCF support but is not perceived as challenging. The remainder of this section will describe the
results of the interviews regarding these four topics in more detail.
Market Potential Estimation (MPE) is about estimating the sales and revenue potential for a certain
product or service, offered to a specific market segment. MPE is an issue for companies who sell
products or services and thus make ‘provider perspective BCs’. The interviewees strongly agreed with
the relevance of the topic and stated that it can be very challenging unless you have a lot of
experience in the respective market. They also strongly agreed with the need for BCF support for this
challenge.
Information Quality (IQ) is about making sure that BCs are reliable and have predictive value.
Gathering reliable data can be hard, doing quantifications on that data can be hard, but also
determining the quality of information provided by others can be hard, e.g., a precise number may
give an accurate impression, but may be a rough estimate in reality. Interviewees agree with the
relevance of the topic, agree with the challenges and agree with the need for BCF support.
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