Conceptual Modeling in Digital Transformations - Enabling enterprise design dialogues

Authors

Van Gils B., Hoppenbrouwers S., Proper H.A.

Reference

CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 3327, pp. 41-51, 2022

Description

Conceptual models are both foundational in, and part of, the broader practice of domain modeling. In general, conceptual models are useful in dealing head-on with many types of knowledge-intensive efforts to describe and reason about the conceptual structures of a domain of interest. In the context of digital transformations, conceptual models have an important role to play in (collaboratively) capturing the understanding of relevant aspects of the existing/desired enterprises and their context. At the same time, digital transformations also bring about many important challenges for conceptual modeling. In this paper, we identify two related challenges in this context, concerning the need to manage the diversity of the involved participants, as well as the need to enable the inclusion of non-experts in the modeling activities. For each of these challenges we will also suggest directions for future research. In doing so, we also argue that, in this context, it is important to understand conceptual modeling as being an integral part of what we call enterprise design dialogues that occur naturally across the enterprise.