Context

Businesses today must collaborate in a coordinated fashion. To collaborate, they must align their business processes and IT by complying to a common reference architecture. The common reference architecture that addresses their specific collaboration requirements is generally an adaptation of an existing generic reference architecture. However, a design framework for adapting reference architectures is lacking.

Objective

In this paper we propose a design framework for aligning business processes and IT across diverse collaborating organisations in order to derive a more specific reference architecture from a generic one.

Method

We developed the design framework using the guidelines of ISO/IEC/IEEE standard for modelling design viewpoints and validated it in a real-life business case study.

Results

We developed an architectural design framework which we call BITA* that is composed of three coherent architectural design viewpoints. The BP2BP alignment viewpoint provides alignment modelling abstractions for business analysts to be used to align business collaboration processes. The IT2IT alignment viewpoint provides alignment modelling abstractions for software architects to be used to align distributed IT systems. The BP2IT alignment viewpoint provides alignment modelling abstractions for interdisciplinary teams of business and IT specialists for aligning the mapping of business collaboration processes and the underlying distributed IT. The modelling abstractions are applied in a case study to derive a reference architecture for meat supply chain transparency systems.

Conclusion

A key challenge in developing the design framework is the difficulty of comparing models of business processes and IT that come from diverse organisations. Our main contribution is the set of modelling abstractions, which enabled us to represent business processes and IT in a uniform and comparable manner, and the systematic approach for applying the modelling abstractions. The framework is applied in the agri-food sector and needs to be evaluated further in multiple case studies from various application domains.

中文翻译：

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BITA *：多个合作组织的Business-IT调整框架

语境

今天的企业必须以协调的方式进行协作。要进行协作，他们必须通过遵循通用参考体系结构来调整业务流程和IT。满足其特定协作要求的通用参考体系结构通常是对现有通用参考体系结构的改编。但是，缺少用于适应参考体系结构的设计框架。

目的

在本文中，我们提出了一个设计框架，用于使跨不同协作组织的业务流程和IT保持一致，以便从通用框架中获得更具体的参考体系结构。

方法

我们使用ISO / IEC / IEEE标准指南开发了设计框架，用于对设计观点进行建模，并在实际的业务案例研究中对其进行了验证。

结果

我们开发了一个称为BITA *的建筑设计框架，该框架由三个相关的建筑设计观点组成。BP2BP对齐观点为业务分析人员提供了对齐建模抽象，以用于对齐业务协作流程。IT2IT对齐观点为软件架构师提供了对齐建模抽象，以用于对齐分布式IT系统。BP2IT对齐观点为业务和IT专家的跨学科团队提供了对齐建模抽象，以对齐业务协作流程和基础分布式IT的映射。案例研究中使用了建模抽象，以得出肉类供应链透明度系统的参考架构。

结论

开发设计框架的主要挑战是比较来自不同组织的业务流程和IT模型的困难。我们的主要贡献是建模抽象集（使我们能够以统一且可比较的方式表示业务流程和IT）以及应用建模抽象的系统方法。该框架已应用于农业食品领域，需要在来自不同应用领域的多个案例研究中进行进一步评估。