Research projects have an inherent risk of failure, and learning howto cope with the risk is an important task for everyone involved. In order to doso it is necessary to share the knowledge of the experiences done during andafter the project. This paper investigates a recently completed enterprisemodeling research project and contributes with lessons learned andrecommendations for future enterprise modeling projects.

A clear understanding of the organizational competences of anenterprise and the underlying individual competences and the competencedevelopment needs has become more and more important for many industrialareas as a foundation for competence supply processes and adjustment tochanging market conditions. Competence modelling, i.e. the use of enterprisemodelling techniques for capturing existing and describing desiredorganisational and individual competences in enterprises, offers importantcontributions to this. In the last years, the authors of the paper have performed anumber of competence modelling cases, which revealed different characteristicsand resulted in lessons learned. This paper presents an examination of differentcharacteristics of competence modelling cases, and recommendations andlessons learned from these cases for the practice of competence modelling.

This paper addresses collaborative research as an action research approach. Many times action research is described as embracing one research organisation and one business organisation. We are challenging this view by introducing the concept of collaborative practice. A collaborative practice can be seen as a cluster of local practices and researchers working together. In this way, a collaborative practice should enable joint learning between, and joint development efforts for, several business practices as well as contributing to general practice and the scientific body of knowledge. Based on a case study within efficient IT Service Management (ITSM), the concept of collaborative practice and its relation to other adjacent concepts (such as local practice, general practice and scientific body of knowledge) have been characterized. Our results should be viewed as preliminary since they are gathered from an ongoing project.

The challenges in the global economy have forced companies to rethink the way they operate and their relations with both customers and subcontractors. To remain competitive, companies need to align their business processes with the firm’s strategy and make a strategic use of information technology. This paper addresses one of the important issues in business process management field as well as strategic alignment that is, how do we create and sustain alignment between business processes and strategy? A literature review has been performed by the authors in order to come up with the challenges and critical success factors in process management and business and IT alignment. The results of that investigation are the basis for developing the approach that is advocated in this paper.  Four case studies have been conducted in the area of Jönköping in order to test the validity of the approach in SMEs.  The results show that SMEs continuously put efforts to maintain alignment between their business processes and strategy by means of Information Technology. They usually consider people, management, IT/IS and organisational culture as most important in order to create alignment between strategy and business processes. Organisational structure and performance measurement tend to be less important.

In many situations there is a need to integrate different methods. In such a method integration process learning aspects should be adressed explicitly. The paper presents procedure and experiences from a R&D project concerning integration of two change methods. Communication problems obstructed the integrative method redesign initially. These communication problems were resolved through the use of an explicit method theory for classification and reconstruction of the method candidates. During application of the integrated method further reconstruction of tacit method knowledge was performed. The method integration process also included meta learning: Formulation of the method integration as a learning process and modification of the applied method theory. Use of an explicit method theory/notion is important for learning methods. It should thus be included in methods training.

In many situations there is a need to integrate different methods. In such a method integration process learning aspects should be addressed explicitly. The paper presents procedure and experiences from a R&D project concerning integration of two development methods. Communication problems obstructed the integrative method redesign initially. These communication problems were resolved through the use of an explicit method theory for classification and reconstruction of the method candidates. During application of the integrated method further reconstruction of tacit method knowledge was performed. The method integration process also included meta learning: Formulation of the method integration as a learning process and modification of the applied method theory.

— IT Service Management (ITSM) is an expensive field where small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) need to become more efficient in their ITSM related work in order to cut costs and improve quality. The focus of this paper is to suggest a solution to the scarcity of process improvement methods dedicated to ITSM-processes in SMEs. The solution consists of an agile self-assessment method designed and evaluated in accordance with Design Science Research. The aim of the method is to support SMEs in their attempt to evaluate and improve their quality of ITSM processes. The findings show that the method creates opportunities for organizations to improve their ITSM processes. The method can be used to identify process gaps in comparison to standards for ITSM. It can also be used for benchmarking purposes within an organization as well as it can guide an organization’s improvement efforts. The method also depicts a standard that is easy for SMEs to understand and to use as guidance (with ITSM specific examples). Finally, the method enables SMEs to implement standards for ITSM in a resource-efficient way. Based on empirical evidence from applying the method the conclusion is that the method is useful for the intended target group and that the method agrees well with theories within the field.

An obvious quest for system development researchers is to understand, describe and give advices concerning the domain of system development. One part of this domain is the System Development Practice (SDP). SDP means the way that system development projects are planned, structured and carried out in order to produce a product that creates value for its client. Our experiences are that SDP often involves three major dimensions; action pattern, method, and role interaction. In these three structural views we find concepts and aspects that are of importance such as, system life cycle, model, method, results, resources, milestones, project roles, project group constellations, clients etc. These dimensions with their concepts and aspects make the SDP a complex phenomenon to its character. In this paper we will therefore give a character to each of these three dimensions and how these dimensions can constitute the SDP as a whole, i.e. a conceptualisation of the SDP. To accomplish this goal we have based this paper on three major sources for inspiration and generation of knowledge within the problem domain that we have identified. Firstly, we all have experiences from several projects and work where we during recent years in different ways have taken part in projects where development of SDP has been in focus. Secondly, empirical experiences from several projects where development of the SDP has been in focus, and thirdly, theories related to the SDP domain. The approach bears on the foundation of language action theories for information systems, information system development and practices for understanding the domain of SDP. By identifying essential acts performed in SDP’s we are able to regard the relations between the three dimensions in order to form a holistic view, which means that we can understand and have constructive discussions about SDP’s.

Evaluation of IT-investments is a hard and tricky question. The paper presents a framework for control of IT-investments, which aims at providing decision-makers with a clear picture of, both individual IT-investments as well as an aggregated level where all IT-investments are compiled into a total picture. The framework has been developed with an action-research approach. In a number of workshops intermediate results have been presented and reactions from practitioners have influenced the development. Participants in the project come from different EU countries all directly concerned with IT-investments. The framework that is tested in authorities in different EU countries is from participants considered to have a potential to improve the decision-making processes. The framework also has potential to be used in academic teaching in IT economics. The framework is based on a lifetime perspective, where established investment models can be applied. A main dimension is to consider interrelations between different IT- investments through compilation into a total picture, in order to control the total spending on IT in organizations.

Small and medium-sized (SME) manufacturing enterprises have been described as a sector that traditionally has not been data-intensive, with low spending on IT and cybersecurity and employees with low cybersecurity awareness. SMEs have also been described as agile and under pressure to adopt new technology and embrace digitalization to gain a competitive advantage. Entering this data intensive world also comes with new risks, making them extra vulnerable. Not much attention has been directed at how SMEs in the manufacturing sector are working with improving employees’ cybersecurity awareness. Especially not where cybersecurity training programs are in focus. To investigate these aspects, we opted for a set of five SMEs in the manufacturing industry where it was possible to perform in-depth semi-structured interviews with chief information security officers’ (CISO) and employees. The results show several interesting results, for example, regarding the view on contextualization of training material and the relevance of microlearning. The study also presents several practical implications, including recommendations for improving cybersecurity training measures for SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

In this article we have presented different challenges that need to be handled during enterprise modelling if we want to achieve business and IT alignment. The over all research question in the paper is: What are the challenges within and between the levels in a multi-layered model for business and IT alignment? In relation to this research question we have addressed what consequences these challenges will have on our view on and use of enterprise models as a mean to achieve business and IT alignment. The aim with the paper is also to give guidance about how to deal with these challenges. Our recommendations for how to deal with these challenges are summarised in five conclusions about, 1) the use and support from ontologies, 2) change as driving force during modelling (AS-IS – TO-BE). 3) the dependencies within and between layers must be clarified, 4) create balance between degree of formalism, degree of details, and degree of accuracy, and 5) guidelines and best practices about how to deal with these types challenges during enterprise modelling to create business and IT alignment.

The importance of using appropriate and effective IT means to facilitate business functions have been acknowledged and discussed by practitioners and scientists over the past two decades thus giving a rise to the Business and IT alignment (BITA) problem. In BITA, the issue of sharing and processing large amounts of information from distributed and heterogeneous sources is of significant importance. Ontologies have shown their usability for this type of tasks. However, they also bring new challenges. The paper proposes utilising of the Semantic Web technologies to assist in solving them. Namely, the paper describes application and adaptation of the ontology matching algorithm for the BITA problem. The algorithm integrates different matching models. Its operation is shown via an illustrative example.

Efficient support of business needs, processes and strategies by information technology is a key for successful enterprise functioning. The challenge of Business and IT Alignment (BITA) has been acknowledged and actively discussed by academics and practitioners during more than two decades. On one hand, in order to achieve BITA it is required to analyze an enterprise from multiple perspectives. On the other hand, it is also required to deal with multiple points of views of involved stakeholders and create a shared understanding between them. In relation to both of these needs EM is considered as a useful practice, as it allows representation of various focal areas of an enterprise and facilitates consensus-driven discussion between involved stakeholders. Various focal areas of an enterprise are linked to various domains that BITA include, for example, time and function focal areas from the Zachman Framework contribute to analysis of business domain of BITA. This and other interrelations are investigated in this study, which is done by conceptual positioning of Zachman’s focal areas on Information System strategy triangle and Generic Framework for Information Management.

Digital innovation (DI), Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) offer new opportunities for enterprises but also cause new challenges for Enterprise Architecture Management. Based on an industrial case from power garden products illustrating potentials and challenges of DI and IoT, this paper investigates the integration of product-IT into enterprise architectures. Product-IT includes the embedded IT-systems in physical products and services / components for operations, maintenance or evaluation purposes. The paper investigates problems in product-IT and enterprise-IT integration and challenges for the field of EAM. The main contributions of the paper are (1) to position the area of product-IT in the field of EAM, and (2) to identify challenges from real-world cases regarding integration of product-IT into EA.

Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, cyber-physical systems and other recent technological innovations offer new opportunities for enterprises in the context of Digital Transformation (DT) but also cause new challenges for Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM), which traditionally deals with enterprise-IT planning and coordination. Based on an industrial case of a power garden products manufacturer that is exploring potentials and facing challenges in DT, this article investigates the integration of product-IT into EAM. Product-IT includes the embedded IT-systems in physical products and services, components for operations, maintenance or evaluation purposes. In this article we discuss product-IT and enterprise-IT integration in the context of EAM observed in the industrial practice. The main contributions are (1) positioning of the product-IT in the field of EAM, and (2) identification of the challenges from real-world case regarding integration of product-IT into EAM.

Products have evolved from being solely composed of mechanical and electrical parts to complex systems that are connected to the Internet and form the basis for new kinds of functionalities and services. Such smart connected products include a substantial amount of software and information technology which can be called the “product-IT”. Enterprise architecture (EA) management is an established function in enterprises providing methods and tools for a systematic alignment of business and IT in an organization. However, EA models capture the details of business, information and technology architecture of an enterprise (i.e., the enterprise-IT) but usually do not include the product-IT. When value creation and delivery in an enterprise’s business model also includes the product-IT, a product-IT inclusive view on EA urgently is required. The focus of this article is the methodical support for integration of product-IT and enterprise-IT using enterprise architectures. The main contributions in this article are the conceptual expansion of EA management to become product-IT inclusive that is manifested in a proposal for an extended EA meta-model, and an approach and method components to handle product-IT inclusive EAM.

The area of business and IT alignment (BITA) has received increased attention during the last decade. As a consequence of this the amount of literature has also been growing increasingly. Since the interest for the field has increased it has also become important to follow and monitor trends and dominant directions of ongoing research within the field. The purpose of this paper is therefore to make an inventory of what areas and constructs that have caught our attention in the literature. As a result of such an inventory we present a set of categories that shows the focus and diversification of the BITA field. In the findings we can observe that the area of the highest research interest is development of a new instrumental support (methods, frameworks, approaches, etc.) for BITA. One dimension that seems to be partly neglected in the literature is procedural guidance about HOW to conduct and achieve business and IT alignment. The existing instrumental support that are presented in the literature has a strong focus on WHAT to do and WHAT to deal with, but they are missing the HOW dimension to a large extent.

The call for business and IT alignment (BITA) is an everlasting and increasing concern for today’s enterprises. BITA is no longer just a technical or local concern. Instead we need to embrace various dimensions in the concept of BITA, for instance strategic, structural, social and cultural. In addition to this, the development of concepts like digital innovation (DI), internet of things (IoT), cyber physical systems (CPS) has further challenged the success of BITA. As one approach to deal with the multi-dimensional BITA problem and to move the BITA positions forward, enterprise modeling (EM) has been acknowledged as a helpful practice. Particularly, EM provides the opportunity to facilitate the creation of integrated models that capture and represent different focal areas of an enterprise, and allows representing the numerous points of view of the key stakeholders. In order to consider the points of view of different stakeholders and create share understanding between them the participative character of EM sessions can play an important role. This chapter presents various challenges that EM practitioners face during participative EM sessions, and a number of recommendations that can help to overcome these challenges.

IT har idag en framträdande roll i många olika sammanhang i vårt samhälle. Vi blir mer och mer beroende och påverkade av olika former av IT-baserad infrastruktur i såväl vårt vardagsliv som i vår yrkesmässiga gärning. Många av de IT-baserade tjänster och möjligheter som finns idag betraktas mer och mer som en naturlig del av vårt leverne och de förutsätts mer eller minde oreflekterat som en del av en samhällelig infrastruktur. Ungefär på samma sätt som vi ser på vägnät, sophämtning, barnomsorg, utbildning etc. I takt med denna utveckling har också kommuner, landsting och myndigheter tagit konsekvenserna av de nya möjligheter och krav som ett mer IT-baserat samhälle innebär. Medborgare och enskilda tillhör alltmer en generation som är uppvuxna med IT som en naturlig del av livet och deras tröskel för att tillgodogöra sig ny teknik och ta till sig nya tillämpningar blir successivt lägre. Dagens samhälle med sina medborgare ställer krav på moderna kommuner, landsting och myndigheter och att dessa kan tillhandahålla e-tjänster av olika slag på ett sammanhållet sätt i olika värdekedjor där såväl kommuner, landsting och myndigheter utgör olika sammanlänkade delar i dessa värdekedjor. e-utveckling är därför ett område som vuxit fram som något som inte kan hanteras enskilt av kommuner, landsting och myndigheter. e-utveckling är något som för att möta framtidens krav bör göras i samverkan vilket också kommer ställa nya krav på sättet att tänka om e-utveckling, hur man organiserar sig, vad som är lämpliga affärsmodeller och hur e-utveckling skall genomföras, bara för att nämna några områden där man behöver tänka till och i vissa fall tänka helt nytt.

e-tjänster och e-utveckling har i många sammanhang blivit ett konkurrensmedel och en nationell trend. Detta ställer dock också krav på såväl organisation, infrastruktur, tjänster, verksamhetsprocesser och kompetens på olika sätt. Det är inte bara en utmaning i att ha fungerande e-tjänster och IS/IT infrastruktur. Verksamhets-processer behöver anpassas och kompetensen hos personal behöver utvecklas, såväl på tjänstemannasidan som politiker. Denna kompetensutveckling handlar dock inte bara om att lära sig teknik utan, kanske framför allt, att ta till sig och utveckla nya arbetssätt, principer för samverkan och ansvarsförhållanden i värdekedjor som innefattar betydligt fler aktörer än vad man tidigare varit van vid.

Det finns i dagsläget många olika initiativ på olika nivåer som på ett eller annat sätt kan betraktas som e-initiativ, se t ex ”Digitala vägen till morgondagens välfärd – handlingsplan för eSamhället 2013-2015” med en kategorisering av 32 olika e-initiativ som skall skapa ett enklare, öppnare och effektivare samhälle, se Figur 1 nedan. e-initiativ kan dessutom återfinnas på regional nivå inom och mellan kommuner, på regional nivå mellan kommuner och/eller regioner, på nationell nivå och även på EU-nivå, se t ex Digital agenda som idag finns för EU, Nationell nivå samt att den i flera fall även blivit beslutat på kommunal nivå. Till denna bild skall också tilläggas myndigheter och landsting som i olika konstellationer och på olika sätt är involverade i olika e-initiativ.

Uppdraget för denna rapport avser att inom ramen för ett VINNOVA-projekt bidra med forsknings- och utvecklingsinsatser för att uppnå målet att skapa en nationell ”Guide för effektiv regional e-utveckling” (e-utvecklingsrådet, 2013). Detta innebär att denna rapport också kommer att ingå med vissa omarbetade delar i den nationella guiden.

Uppdragets syfte är att kartlägga lämpliga former för samverkan inom avseende e-utveckling mellan kommuner. Resultatet av denna kartläggning, slutsatser och analyser presenteras i denna rapport och skall användas som referens till den nationella guiden.

Uppdraget till högskolan har inneburit att på en övergripande nivå att bidra till en nationell vägledning genom att beskriva svårigheter och förslag till lösningar för regional e-utveckling mellan kommuner, regioner, myndigheter, landsting och medborgare.

In order to achieve Business and IT Alignment (BITA) it is required to capture and analyze both business and IT dimensions of enterprises. In this regard Enterprise Modeling (EM) is acknowledged as one useful mean. One of the central roles during EM is EM practitioner who drives and coordinates the EM project. Conducting EM is a highly collaborative activity that requires considerable skills and experience since EM practitioner has to deal with various challenges throughout the project. Despite a quite wide range of research, EM challenges needs to be further investigated, in particular concerning practical recommendations related to creation and usage of enterprise models. This article presents a framework with challenges and recommendations for EM that is aimed on facilitating business and IT alignment. The empirical base for the study consists of interviews with EM practitioners that have significant experience in EM.

The need to reduce a gap between organizational context and technology within enterprise has been recognized and discussed by both researchers and practitioners. In order to solve this problem it is required to capture and analyze both business and IT dimensions of enterprise operation. In this regard, Enterprise Modeling is currently considered as widely used and powerful tool that enables and facilitates alignment of business with IT. The central role of EM process is EM practitioner - a person who facilitates and drives EM project towards successful achievement of its goals. Conducting EM is a highly collaborative and nontrivial process that requires considerable skills and experience since there are various challenges to manage and to deal with during the whole EM project. Despite quite wide range of related research, the question of EM challenges needs further investigation, in particular concerning the viewpoint of EM practitioners. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify challenges that EM practitioners usually face during their modeling efforts taking into consideration potential influence of these challenges on successful conduct of EM and on alignment of Business and IT thereafter.

Today’s dynamic business environment presents enterprises that wishto stay competitive with a great challenge. This is further complicated by rapidlyadvancing IT capabilities and the crucial role that IT plays in most organizations -a backbone for realizing visions and goals. The problem of eliminating the gapbetween business and IT within enterprises, i.e. the problem of Business and ITAlignment (BITA), has been acknowledged as a contemporary challenge andactively elaborated by academics and practitioners. One practice that is used tofacilitate BITA is Enterprise Modeling (EM), which is considered as a catalyzingpractice for capturing, visualizing and analyzing different aspects of enterprises.This paper presents a framework that illustrates the role of EM in the context ofBITA and suggests recommendations to deal with EM challenges.

Eliminating the gap between business and IT within an enterprise, i.e., solving the problem of Business and IT Alignment (BITA), requires an instrument for the multidimensional analysis of an enterprise. Enterprise Modeling (EM) is a practice that supports such analysis and therefore can be used to facilitate BITA. EM serves as a tool that can capture, visualize and analyze different aspects of enterprises. This article presents a framework that describes the role of EM in the context of BITA and presents recommendations in EM for BITA

Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) is a practice for planning and governance of IT assets in an organization. Today, in the era of digital transformation, new digital opportunities and technological advancements are changing how companies create products and deliver services. Enormous potential for business value generation lies in product-IT - built-in software and digital services enhancing physical products. In this paper we discuss the need to approach product-IT and enterprise-IT in an integrated manner based on the findings from an exploratory case study. Particularly, we outline how to integrate these two in the context of EAM, considering the challenges that traditional EAM is facing in relation to the digital transformation. The main results of the paper are a set of high-level requirements for EAM that would enable product-IT and enterprise-IT integration. These requirements can serve as a basis for future development of methodological support in the outlined context. 

This paper describes and evaluates experiences of applying a business process perspective as a part of a change project in three different enterprises, especially with respect to improvements in production planning and information flow activities. The business process modelling gives a detailed and structured understanding of the relations between the business processes and the problems in the enterprise, problems that include quality and employee work conditions. The results indicate that the modelling of the processes provides the enterprises with more complete but simple and understandable images of the business, where the business process perspective accentuates a customer focus and a tight integration between production and sales. The perspective can be used to develop the understanding of the relations between the activities of strategic planning, the daily planning and scheduling of the production, and the personal planning of the single employee. The individuals’ working situation can be improved when the understanding of, and the possibilities to affect the own and others role in relation to the rest of the organisation are increased.

The problem of finding appropriate ways to organise and design organisational change processes, and especially their initial phases, is the main question behind this paper. It is argued that a methodological approach is advantageous by guiding the process towards efficiency and effectiveness. The theoretical base for such a method is described concerning change and method theory. Two methods deriving from perspectives of process redesign, quality, ergonomics and organisational theory were integrated. The resulting method was verified in three case studies, concerning change process and method use. The results show that integration of perspectives, situational adaptability, an unbiased initial problem attitude, and a change initiating co-operation between change agent and organisation could be achieved. The developed theory and work structures are advantageous in guiding and legitimising the change process. The work procedures ensure participation and enable both top-down and bottom-up generated improvements to be emphasised.

All organisations have to keep improving different aspects of their business in order to survive in their businessarea. This improvement can be done in different ways, including as business and IT alignment. There existdifferent ways of performing business and IT alignment, such as applying EMMs. Enterprise Modelling (EM)is an area that has been built up with the intention of improving business practice and management. AnEnterprise Modelling Method (EMM) is a systematic way of building models that are to be used for planningimprovements. For this purpose, it is needed to make an evaluation of methods capabilities in supportingbusiness and IT alignment. According to all above, the results of this paper include a list of EMMs that areapplicable in business and IT alignment.

Each organization should make progress to remain competent in its business. Enterprise Modeling (EM) helps in understanding the current and planning the future states, followed by proposing improvement actions in an enterprise. To receive support from EM, we should start a process of using an Enterprise Modeling Method (EMM), that likewise any other process needs using resources. As resources are expensive, we prefer not only gaining results, rather using resources reasonably, i.e. performing an efficient process that supports the process quality. To realize if we have an efficient EMM, we should evaluate its efficiency. In this paper we present a method for efficiency evaluation of EMMs for general case of application. This method contains efficiency criteria and questions for evaluating their fulfillment. Then it is applied to the Enterprise Knowledge Development for appraising the evaluation method. The paper ends with a number of conclusions about the evaluation method.

In many industrial sectors, modularization of products and services is considered as an important contribution to increased efficiency and competitiveness. Research has developed many modularization approaches, however, there is a gap between industrial practice in modularization and state-of-research in this field, which partly is due to shortcomings in "measuring"the value and state of modularization. This papers contribution is an analysis of industrial real-world cases to contrast practice and research, and a compilation of metrics in the context of modular product design from research. 

The main objective of this article is to structure and clarify the transdisciplinary reality of modularization as a foundation for handling business-driven modularization of smart products. Lately, the complexity has increased in the industry due to global manufacturing, different customer requirements, legal requirements, digitalization, new business models, and the evolvement of smart products. The increasingly complex reality has been acknowledged on an enterprise engineering level where complexity is one part of different grand challenges for enterprises. This complexity needs to be handled both horizontally (in the whole value chain) and vertically (on all management levels). It is therefore essential to clarify the modularization landscape by bringing together the business domain, and the engineering domain to cater for the future of modularization. The main contribution of this paper is to suggest a conceptualization of the modularization domain through a meta-model that covers essential aspects of business-driven modularization of smart products.

The specification of interfaces is critical in modularization and product architecture development. Literature defines product architecture as (1) the arrangement of functional elements, (2) the mapping from functional elements to physical components (3) the specification of the interfaces between interacting physical components. However, other scholars state that interfaces should include more than physical components, such as spatial, material, energy, and information exchange. This view has been extended to include attachment, transfer, control and communication, power, spatial, field, and environmental interfaces. However, to use interfaces through the product lifecycle and reuse them between product architectures and generations, there must be an approach to handle applicable interfaces in a company. This research contributes by presenting a way to operationalize (investigate an abstract concept, it's essential to make it measurable and tangible) interfaces by introducing interface requirements that are definable, measurable, definable, and testable properties as a part of the interface development process and interface description. The method is illustrated by applying it in an industrial case study.

Business processes need to be aligned with business strategies. This paper elaborates on experiences from a business process design effort in an action research project performed at Intersport Sweden. The purpose with this project was to create a solid base for taking the retail chain Intersport into a new organizational state where the new process design is aligned with the strategic goals. Although business process modeling is concerned with creating artifacts, traditionally IS design science research has had little impact on research on business process models. In this paper we address the question of how design science research can contribute to business process design. In the paper three heuristic guidelines for creating organizational commitment and strategic alignment in process design are presented. The guidelines are derived from the successful actions taken in the research project. The development of these guidelines is used as a basis to reflect upon the contribution of design science research to business process design.

Pragmatism as theoretical foundation and research approach has been applied in different practical settings by a number of different scholars. One approach, addressing the need for considering different stakeholder's views associated with actions being performed, has been coined as co-design by Olov Forsgren. In this short paper we revisit some of the philosophical roots of co-design in an knowledge endeavour of regarding co-design as social constructive pragmatism. By doing that we try to strengthen the theoretical base for co-design as well as getting inspiration for new development of the co-design movement. Social constructive pragmatism is conceived as a social constructive process in which observations by inquirers are essential. The basic categories in co-design are the viewer often described as the actor, the viewing often described as the action and the target of the viewing, often described as the object. The meta-viewer is also an important part of co-design in viewing the whole scene of actors, actions and objects. In this paper a framework that relates co-design to an action cycle constituted by three steps (conditions, action, and result) as well as the notion of inquiry is presented.

The need for alignment between business strategies and business processes is today manifested in many different ways. This chapter presents experiences from a collaborative process modeling and process design effort performed at Intersport Sweden. The main purpose with the process modelling and process design was to serve, as a solid base for the transformation of Intersport Sweden into the future. In this effort an important part was that the new process design was in clear alignment with the new strategic business model. By a collaborative co-design approach for deriving and designing business process models diverse stakeholders’ knowledge and interest were captured in the development of tangible process descriptions of the future. The new strategic business plan has through collaborative process design been given a meaning and participating actors have become committed to implement this new business strategy.

Business strategies need to be aligned with business process models. In this chap-ter experiences from a collaborative process modeling effort performed at Inter-sport, Sweden, for the purpose of creating a solid base for taking a business into the future will be elaborated on. In this effort the new process design is aligned with strategic goals. By a co-design approach for deriving business process mod-els diverse stakeholders’ knowledge and interest are captured in the development of tangible descriptions of the future. Business plans are given a meaning and par-ticipating actors become committed to implement business strategies.

Business strategies need to be aligned with business process models. In this chapter, experiences from a collaborative process modeling effort performed at Intersport, Sweden, for the purpose of creating a solid base for taking a business into the future will be elaborated. In this effort, the new process design is aligned with strategic goals. By a codesign approach for deriving business process models, diverse stakeholders’ knowledge and interests are captured in the development of tangible descriptions of the future. Business plans are given a meaning, and participating actors become committed to implement business strategies.

When developing businesses there is often a need to rely on instructions such as methods. Methods are among other things experiences from previous development work. Within an organisation there usually exists a variety of methods and method like work forms that different actors have experience of. When performing development work one intends to achieve certain result by using methods. Therefore, there is a need to ensure that the used method also harmonises with the goal for the change work. One way to create such a method is to perform method integration, where several methods can be used as candidates on different levels when forming the "new" method. The method parts can be treated so that they form a synthesis or just a concatenation in the "new" method. When performing such method integration three supplementary approaches can be usedwill be discussed: modeltheory, practice and internal based method integration. A fruitful way to create a well grounded integrated method is to let these three approaches interact with each other during the method integration process. This paper focuses on experiences from the application of these three supplementary approaches. The paper also treats the problem of reconstruction of tacit method knowledge.

In information systems research, significant attention has been paid to the discrepancy between organizational context and technology. In the IS discourse this is, among other initiatives, expressed as the need to create alignment between business and IT. Translated into the domain of business process management (BPM), this will put demand on achieving alignment between used models in process modeling. An action research approach has been adopted to explore a multi-layered thinking in process modeling, which has been validated through the development and application of a multi-layered framework with a consultancy firm. Applying the multi-layered framework has addressed three areas of concern related to managing alignment 1) focal areas, 2) abstraction levels, and 3) degree of formalism. In this setting, a multi-layered thinking during process modeling and design has facilitated managing alignment of business and IS/IT. Further research however concerns the application of the framework in other settings.