Modern systems are subject to constant changes in the business and technological environments. As a method for dealing with such system changes, systems thinking proposes the Soft System Methodology (SSM), which transforms problematic current systems into the systems that should be. In systems engineering, the Seven Samurai Framework (SSF) has been proposed as a model for system change that solves current problems. Enterprise Architecture (EA) has proposed a method for designing companies that are responsive to business change. These methods share the commonality that they are designed to solve problems in existing systems. However, the relationship between these methods has not been clear. In this paper, we clarify the relationship between EA and SSF using the Seven Samurai Framework by ArchiMate (SBA), a method for expressing SSF using the EA modeling language ArchiMate. We also clarify the effectiveness of SBA by applying SSM to SBA.

Many parts of Japan have experienced devastating earthquakes and tsunami in the past 30 years. How did emergency information reach non-Japanese residents and international tourists who did not understand Japanese language in the areas stricken by those earthquakes? In this paper the authors discuss how the way of disseminating disaster information in multiple languages has developed through the disaster experiences and what kind of pitfalls were revealed in each earthquake disaster.

In order to prevent information system failures, it is not enough to simply define functional requirements; it is necessary to clearly describe non-functional requirements such as reliability and availability. Diagram Modelling methods have been proposed to integrate non-functional requirements with functional requirements. However, in these methods, the relationship between functional exceptions and non-functional requirements was not clear. In addition, several methods have been proposed to describe non-functional requirements such as performance using functional exceptions. However, the interrelationship between these description methods was not clear. In this paper, we propose a method for extracting non-functional requirements based on functional exceptions. We also use this method to compare three methods: NFR framework, Control case, and Hatley and Pirbhai Method.

The conventional successful business model of companies has been to increase productivity with high efficiency in order to provide good quality products to society. However, this business model is changing to focus on how to optimally manage corporate technology and resources to solve social issues. Therefore, it is necessary to promote three different types of activities to improve quality, productivity and sustainability that ensure the sustainability of each organization into the future. In this paper, we propose an SDQ Cube Template that expresses the strategy to promote SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals), DX (Digital transformation) and QC (Quality Control) initiatives in business processes. Additionally, we clarify the effectiveness of the proposed method by expressing practical business processes using the SDQ Cube template.

According to a survey [1] conducted in 2021 by the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT), 80 percent of companies place emphasis on OJT (On the Job Training) as a method of teaching business operations within their organization. However, OJT cannot clarify the knowledge of what and how people think when conducting operations. In order to resolve these issues, Tahara proposes the use of KW Lists that clarify thought processes according to the business process and the on-site knowledge required to perform operations. In this paper, we structure KW Lists in terms of thought processes and diagram them using ArchiMate. Through this method, the architecture of the KW (Knowledge &Wisdom) List becomes clear, enabling the visualization of the relationships among elements of the KW list, which had not been possible until now.

Digital transformation necessitates the creation of business value or innovation using digital technology in every industry. Enterprises are facing an unprecedented business environment and competition for resources and market, which forces them to be more adaptive. Consequently, their Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) must also be adaptive. The conventional information system architecture has high dependencies between their application components to realize the loosely-coupled, microservice application architecture required for adaptiveness. In this paper, we propose a loosely-coupled, process-based enterprise information system architecture - Unicage - which consists of business, application, data, and technology architectures, especially for Enterprise Resource Planning system, with only input and output data-based building blocks. As a result, it enables a Full Cycle Development. We also propose a model for the architecture using ArchiMate.

In the design of production processes in the manufacturing industry, it is necessary to transfer the defect investigation knowledge, which is the empirical knowledge of experienced workers, to beginners. Leonard and Swap pointed out the importance of acquiring empirical knowledge through experimental learning. However, they have not clarified the explicit empirical knowledge representation method and the experimental learning method. If the knowledge cannot be represented, empirical knowledge remains tacit, and the knowledge transfer from experts to beginners is not only individual and inefficient, but also difficult to reuse. In this paper, we propose a production knowledge chart (PKC) that expresses the production process to acquire the empirical knowledge necessary for investigating defects in the production process. In addition, we clarify the effectiveness of the proposed method by expressing a general production process with PKC. In addition, we will discuss future research.

Many Japanese companies have introduced various business software packages (=packages) to improve operational efficiency. In some cases, the introduction of packages has not always been successful. However, few reports have quantitatively analyzed package introduction cases. This study proposes the Business Modularization Capability Index (BMCI), consisting of organizational, business, and modularization capabilities, to evaluate package introduction cases quantitatively. By quantitatively evaluating 17 package implementation cases using the BMCI, we clarify the relationship between organizational capability, clarification of operations, modularization of operations, and package consistency.

In this study, we consider projects in which systems are developed using machine learning (ML) techniques. An ML project canvas has been proposed to represent the project so that stakeholders can have a common understanding of the project. In many cases, this canvas must be constructed by business division practitioners without sufficient support from data scientists and the quality of the canvas model is dependent on the skills or experience of the practitioner. Therefore, we propose a method for constructing a project-specific project canvas model using the business–AI alignment model, and confirm the effectiveness of the method through the analysis of ML project practices.

As the digital technologies have spread into society, many Smart City Reference Architectures (SCRA) have also developed. ArchiMate has been widely used to describe SCRA. However, there are SCRAs have not been developed by ArchiMate. In this paper, we propose an SCRA analysis method using ArchiMate. Moreover, a case study on an SCRA is examined to show the effectiveness of the proposal.

For the success of Digital Transformation (DX), corporate management must understand the relationship between DX and their corporate business. However, in many companies, business divisions and IT departments are siloed, so executives cannot discuss DX based on an overall picture of business and IT. Although dynamic capability is also used to explain the iterative DX process, the details of the feedback process of dynamic capability are still unclear. In this paper, we propose a method to promote understanding of DX using the Frame & Work Module (F&WM) method and Enterprise Architecture (EA) in order to make it easier for executives to get an overall picture of business and DX. The F&WM method is used to show the detailed steps of the feedback process of dynamic capability. The proposed method is applied to the case of a Japanese house building company and evaluated.

The research domains and solutions of information technology have been rapidly changed as information technology continuously and deeply deployed into our society. On the other hand, it can be considered that there are some common knowledge creation processes in information technology researches. In this paper, we propose a common research process on creating new researches which were extracted by retrospectively reengineering knowledge creation model of our Information Technology research papers that were conducted with my co-authors. The research creation model is applied and evaluated by our publications.

In this study, we consider the construction of a model for representing an artificial intelligence (AI) service system project. When developing a system using AI technologies to support a business task in a company, all project members from both business and IT divisions must have common understandings on the project before starting it. For this purpose, a business–IT alignment model for AI service systems is proposed as a business–AI alignment model. However, we need to substantiate this business–AI alignment model for each project, because it is a generic model. To address this problem, we propose a method for constructing the business– AI alignment model and apply it to a real project for developing an AI service system in a case study, and confirm that we can construct the project-specific business–AI alignment model–without support of data scientists.

To promote the digital transformation, it is important to develop a digital strategy that can improve profits. So far, a method for creating corporate IT strategies using a balanced scorecard has been proposed. In this paper, the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard are visually described as business management, customer experience, digital business ecosystem, and digital transformation requirements to construct the strategic map for the digital transformation. The DBSC (Digital Balanced Scorecard) is also proposed as a method for achieving the digital transformation promotion index.

In this work, we propose a model of a project to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) service system used in an office environment. Our model is based on enterprise architecture (EA) approach and consists of business layer elements, application layer elements, and motivation extensions, so that project participants from both business and IT divisions can have the same understanding of the project. By applying the proposed model to the project analysis results, we show that we can derive actionable insights for project risk management.

ArchiMate is the language to model Enterprise Architecture using diagrams. Although ArchiMate is the powerful language to describe the whole content of Enterprise Architecture, it is not easy to learn and use correctly ArchiMate because it has approximately 60 graphical icons. The application knowledge how to use ArchiMate is highly expected. In this paper, we propose the aspect analysis approach to design ArchiMate diagrams. A simple example to develop ArchiMate diagram using the approach is also explained. Moreover, a workshop design to educate ArchiMate using the approach for software engineers is discussed.

In collaborative development of games software, hotspot identification technique significantly supports maintenance and evolutions activities including modding because newly involved developers must identify hotspot. This paper focuses on game loops as hotspots because many action games, including classic action games and the latest action games for console game machines, have an architecture consisting of game loops and update functions. This study assumes that game loops and update functions have the largest number of function calls in the entire source code modules. This paper investigates whether call flow analysis helps developers identify hotspots in four games software publicly accessible in GitHub. The results of the investigation revealed that one game loop and a set of update functions could be identified precisely by call flow analysis and that other three neighborhood functions could be identified. The results showed the possibility of automated identification of game loop and update functions by call flow analysis.

It is difficult to reliably prevent failures occurring after the release of software products, and efforts to do so vary from company to company. In this paper, we will propose a two-stage third-party(2S3P) review method that focuses on the design process from the perspective of Enterprise Architecture and carries out a stepwise review of design document from the perspective of "natural language" and "quality characteristics". We will also examine the effects and consider how it affects processes after design.

For assuring dependability among systems, it is necessary to describe not only system architecture, but also assurance argument between elements of systems. The composite dependability means for assuring dependability between components of a system. Several approaches have been focused to show the assurance of one single system. Moreover, a unified method to describe both assurance case and system architecture in the same diagram has not been known. This paper proposes a unified method to describe assurance case and system architecture by using an Enterprise Architecture modeling language, Examples of the proposed method are also described. The result shows the method is effectively applicable for assuring dependability of business, application, and technology architecture.

A portal is expected to promote the creation of enterprise communication. In this paper, the communication process of the Architecture Board utilizing a global enterprise portal is analysed. On the basis of the results, a method for promoting the global enterprise portal is evaluated and proposed for the near future.

It is well known that requirements specification is the critical success factor for developing information systems. However, the quantitative index to evaluate the requirements specification capability of the system development organizations has not been known. This paper proposes a requirements specification capability index to evaluate information system development organizations. The requirements specification capability index is defined based on the 6 dimensions, that are requirements vision development, requirements communication, requirements product design, requirements process design, requirements investment, and requirements human resource development. The proposed capability index has also been applied to several Japanese software development organizations. The result shows that the capability index can effectively be applied to visualize the requirements specification activities of the organizations from the 6 dimensions.

The knowledge which is needed on automotive software development, increases significantly according to large-scale, complexity of automotive software. Therefore, it is very difficult for an engineer to understand the whole software development. This paper introduces a way of constructing a meta-model, which visualizes the knowledge of expert engineers, based on The Seven Samurai framework. It can solve issues of system development by considering the seven types of elements which are defined in this framework. And then, its name was defined based on the famous Japanese cinema. Additionally, this paper shows the evaluation results of applying the meta-model to the evaluation of actual standard software assets in the product line, and then the effectiveness of the proposed approach is confirmed based on the results.

With the development of technology and hardware, it has been assumed IoT(Internet of Things) society in the future that any device leads. In the automotive industry, in order to provide advanced services, such as automatic driving, any things are expected to lead the vehicle. In the IoT society, so that the lead is more than one system each other quality characteristics are different, such as safety. For this reason, there is concern that trouble is generated from the difference in the attitude toward safety. In order to prevent the problem is to visualize the design quality of each other's systems, it is necessary to obtain a common understanding among the developers. In this paper, as a technique to visualize the design quality of the system, to create a description document of automatic operation system using the GSN(Goal Structuring Notation), to be able to objectively explained on the basis of the assumption and evidence the validity of the design quality of each other's system Check. Upon confirmation, provide a description items to be measures to hazards and threats that are expected in the relationship between the systems in automatic operation system, it showed the item should be explained to each other between the systems. Such description structure is standardized, if shared between systems, with the common understanding can be obtained between developers can predict the quality required for the product. As a result, it is considered to be able to prevent a problem that occurs from the difference of the corporate culture.

For managing information systems operation, it is necessary to clearly describe not only dynamic interactions between subjects and target operations on the information systems, but also their environmental context. In this paper, a method to elicit and design systems operation knowledge is proposed based on the structural model of human activities. An example of the proposed method is provided how to elicit and revise the operational knowledge by using an incident management guideline. The practical application is also described to show the effectiveness, critical issues and limitations of the proposed method.

In order to develop a system with high safety, it is necessary to determine countermeasures for hazards that extracted using analysis methods like HAZOP, FTA, and so on. Furthermore, it is necessary to able to explain that countermeasures are surely embedded into a developed system in order to be accepted the analysis result by stakeholders. In this paper, we discuss the effectiveness of the knowledge to apply D-Case for a safety analysis result that includes hazards extracted by HAZOP, failure modes extracted by FTA and countermeasures for failure modes.

It is necessary to integrate practical software development and operation body of knowledge to deploy development and operation methods for assuring safety. In this paper, the knowledge for system safety verification and validation will be categorized by the basic knowledge, the plan knowledge, the analysis and design knowledge, and the verification and validation knowledge. This paper also describes a systematic approach for constructing the knowledge for the modern safety verification and validation.

It is necessary to integrate practical software development and operation body of knowledge to deploy development and operation methods for assuring safety. In this paper, an approach based on the method architecture is proposed to develop an integrated method for describing various software related bodies of knowledge and the safety case for assured software life cycle processes.

System developers should explain system errors sufficiently, during a system failure situation. This is an essential act in order to verify the dependability of systems. Dependability Case (D-Case) is one method for confirming systems of dependability suffciently, against a system failure situations. However, in D-Case, we could not clearly describe the relationship of words (people, objects, activities) within its (D-Case) nodes. For this reason, we introduce a new way to define Word Relationship Diagram (WRD) that describes the relationship of words within D-Case and propose our conversion rules from Dependability Case to Word Relationship Diagram (D2W rule) and vice versa (from Word Relationship Diagram to Dependability Case (D2W rule)). In addition to this, (1) we created a rule for the relationship of words for D-Case. (2) We applied the rules to the Dependability Case (D-Case) and the Word Relationship Diagram (WRD) of a train operation system.

In this paper we present a new reasonable method for writing security cases. A security case is one form of assurance case as there are other forms such as safety case, reliability case, dependability case and so on. Assurance case is a technique to structure assurance requirements concerning a system. It contains argumentation structure and evidence to convince a stakeholder that a certain concern on whether it is safety, reliability or security is being assured by the implementation of proper and appropriate actions that counters the risks or vulnerabilities raised by the concerned stakeholder. A security case is somehow very unpopular if we compare it to a safety case. And therefore, it is safe to say that so far; safety cases are better versed than security cases. However, due to the ever-growing concerns of the area of Cyber-Security, it is extremely crucial to produce effective and accurate security cases for cyber-systems.

Recently, critical incidents have occurred in complex IT systems. Thus, how to confirm the dependability of a system via dependability cases is becoming necessary. Information related to dependability is important knowledge that must be shared among stakeholders. However, in previous methods used to describe dependability cases, the relation between a dependability claim and responsibility cannot be clearly specified. Thus, since the cause investigation cannot be completed at the time of the incident, system knowledge could not fully be utilized. Hence, we propose a method to express a responsibility attribute for sharing information and attaining an agreement between stakeholders.

An analysis methodology is proposed for sustainable knowledge collaboration services. The methodology consists of three layered knowledge collaboration architecture, knowledge collaboration community analysis method, knowledge collaboration architecture analysis method, knowledge collaboration structure analysis method, and knowledge collaboration metrics. In this paper, a way to integrate above methods is considered to develop sustainable knowledge collaboration service analysis methodology. The knowledge structure of the methodology is also discussed.

RFID technology has been widely spread. Many business players and consumers will take advantage of RFID system. On the other hand, it is important to protect the RFID user’s privacy information. RFID stakeholders have published the privacy protection guidelines to control to obtain, use and manage the privacy information for RFID system. In this article, we analyze four guidelines which are published by four various RFID stakeholders. As a result of our analysis, we propose RFID privacy protection ontology. This ontology consists of goal ontology, function ontology and technology ontology. This article shows features of each ontology and relationship among them, and also discusses the stepwise ontology alignment to design method of RFID system.

We propose a new requirements elicitation method in the domains of ERP, CRM, and SCM by using specifications of several existing package software. We have analyzed the requirements elicitation processes of experienced analysts in a specific domain, and found that they clarify requirements by referring the specifications of existing packages that seem to be satisfied with customer's needs. This process can be formulated into two subprocesses: 1) package selection, where an analyst compares the customer's needs with functions/nonfunctions of packages and selects the suitable candidates of packages; and 2) requirements evolution, where he examines the selected packages with his customer and an approved part of specifications of packages are added into their requirements. The proposed method, called PAORE (package oriented requirements elicitation method) is designed based on the analysis. We applied this method to a simple but realistic example of Web-based sales supporting system and assessed it.

Experts in requirements elicitation interview stakeholders using various levels of knowledge to grasp and elicit users' requirements. This paper analyzes expert interview processes and explores a computation model for simulating them. This model can be used to navigate a novice analyst's interview processes. It consists of a blackboard model and a state transition model in order to narrow the candidates for questions that an expert analyst will ask stakeholders next in the interview process. The candidates are selected based on information that has been elicited from stakeholders, and the blackboard model is for holding this information in the form of IEEE 830, a standard form of requirements specification documents. We have analyzed experts' interview processes and constructed a computation model in the sales management domain. We also recorded novice processes and showed that we could improve them by means of the model.

The paper proposes an approach which generates alternative flows and cancel flows necessary in exceptional conditions automatically with transactional constraint rules in business flow. In our approach, modification of a business flow is easier than current workflow systems because modification of the transactional constraint rule is not necessary unless constraints among the services change. The paper shows the effectiveness of our approach with a travel reservation example.

The Visual and General User Interface for Database Environments (VGUIDE) is an integrated environment for developing and running distributed information systems based on the client/server model. Its main features are: (1) fourth-generation language (4GL) for developing database applications that reduce system development costs. (2) a real-time control monitor that can be scaled from small systems to heavily loaded large systems, and (3) 4GL application programs that can be ported among multi-vendor machines and operating systems. First, we give a technical overview of VGUIDE for developing distributed information systems. This involves an integrated middleware environment, various client/server models, and flexible application control mechanisms. Next, the performance of VGUIDE is examined. then, actual examples with VGUIDE are explained. Also, the effectiveness of VGUIDE is discussed.