TOWARD GENERIC CONSISTENCY PATTERNS IN MULTI-VIEW ENTERPRISE MODELLING

Modelling methods are applied for decades focussing on the analysis and design of holistic conceptual representations of entire enterprises. Creation and interpretation of such holistic representations in one single model is unrealistic. It is therefore widely adopted to refer to multi-view enterprise modelling methods. Such methods decompose the holistic model into views that focus only on some aspects while omitting others. The views, however, rather usually than rarely overlap. Usability and utility of multi-view enterprise models therefore significantly depends on consistency between all views. This paper explores enterprise modelling methods with a focus on multi-view consistency, thereby contributing a thorough investigation of the syntactic and semantic overlaps between views. It then abstracts from concrete examples to derive generic consistency patterns which can be specified in a novel formalism. Utility of the formalism is evaluated in two case study applications. One strength of this approach is its conceptual nature, enabling its adoption by method engineers who not necessarily have a computer science background. The consistency patterns facilitate specification of modelling methods while the formalism eases the validation of models, and the implementation of multi-view modelling tools