Modelling Services as Socio-technical Systems ...and analysing such - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Modelling Services as Socio-technical Systems ...and analysing such models Nicola Guarino (*) Nicolas Troquard National Research Council of Italy Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento (*) Joint work with Roberta Ferrario, partly done in the framework of a cooperation with SAP Research, Karlsruhe 1

What is a socio-technical system • Think of a vending machine: it is useless if somebody doesn’t properly supply it • Think of a business directory (yellow pages): it is useless if it is not regularly updated in order to reflect the actual situation • Think of an e-commerce service, like Amazon.com: much more than just a Web interface! 2

� � The socio-technical systems perspective $ [Bostrom & Heinen 1977] • More a perspective on factors affecting work than a theory of the system itself • Set of principles for taking the social system into account 3

A change of shift: from principles to models • Nature and structure of main components: • People • Technical artifacts (agentive and non-agentive) • Organizations • Natural context • Nature of their interactions • Person-artifact • Person-Person • Person-Organization • Organization-Organization • Artifact-Natural context • ... • We need a comprehensive ontological theory ! 4

Ontology of socio-technical systems: our approach • Develop a foundational ontology, as a rigorous basis for understanding the essential features of people , technical artifacts, and their mutual interactions • Ontology of social reality • Ontology of functionality and technical artifacts • Adopt a failure-oriented approach, as a way to “keep our feet on the ground”, focusing on the most important practical aspect of socio-technical systems: • Understanding • Controlling • Living with... their failures! ! From ontology-driven information systems to ontology-driven socio-technical systems 5

The importance of transparent models for cooperative failure recovery EFFICIENCY Start of the crisis Formal Self-organisation organisation Crisis TIME Fig. 1 The dynamics of self-organisation and institutional mechanisms in crisis situations: the case of Hurricane Katrina. The self-organisation phenomena (grey curve) depicts the action of teams of volunteers who spontaneously tried to re-establish communications and who offered their help. The black curve shows the evolution of the formal organisation. Note that the amplitude of the curves and their development over time does not have an absolute value and is shown only to illustrate the positioning of the self-organisation phenomena in crisis situations. Pavard et al. 2006 6

The need for a global view of services • Current Web services models focus on the external interfac e, advocating its strict separation from the internal view: roughly, a service is a transfer function from an input state to an output state • Yet, business applications need to specify • how the service is performed at the business level, referring to internal details whose nature varies a lot from service to service • when the various processes involved in a service occur • Business applications need to monitor and evaluate services quality with respect to their actual impact on the whole service system , which includes external events, objects, people, organizations... (context- aware services) [example: a directory service] • Service Level Agreeements need to refer both to internal and contextual details • Well-known gap between business services and IT • Need to look inside the black box and out of the box... 3

Looking outside the box • Taking people and society into account Putting people in the loop: from users to actors • Putting social interactions in the loop • • Putting social institutions in the loop • Taking external environment into account • External natural environment • Internal aspects of artifacts Interfaces (sensors) • 5

Looking inside the box • Cognitive transparency , to support: • At design time • participatory, concurrent, agile design • At run time • governance • control 6

Is this a service? The 2011 Cambridge Service Alliance grand challenge : understanding the “Safer Sutton” service system. Is reducing fear of crime in Sutton a service? 6

In search of identity criteria for services • Services should be counted , and located in space and time: • Is there a fire extinguishing service here (and now)? • how many restaurants are located in the Province of Trento? 11

Services vs. goods • Services are not kinds of goods ( immaterial goods) , since there is a radical difference between goods and services [Hill 77]: Goods are transactable and transferable • • Services are transactable, buy they are not transferable • Why are they not transferable? because services have a temporal nature, they are EVENTS ! 6

Two different notions of services as events • Action-based : passing the salt is a service • Commitment-based : a previous commitment is needed. • Paying for a service vs. finding a service • Service delivery vs. service offer • Terminological solution: • What is delivered is the service content A service implies always a commitment • Occasional favors are not services. • 9

Services are based on commitments • How can you tell that a service is present , here and now? • ...if somebody is committed to do something here and now service commitment • guarantees the execution of some type of actions , • on the occurrence of a certain triggering event , • in the interest of another agent • upon prior agreement • according to a certain specification ( service description ) • which constraints the way service actions will be performed ( service process ) service as value co-creation vs. service as commitment to value co- creation 10

Service and service system lifecycle 15

Describing a service: Mapping thematic roles to service roles • Commitment agent • Commitment beneficiary • Service provider • Service customer • Core action agent • Service producer • Core action beneficiary • Service consumer • Core action patient • Service object • Core action instrument Bad (?) news: OWL can’t be used for this! (as co-reference of variables is needed) 16

Services and Value Exchange • Properly speaking, value is not exchanged . Value is experienced by an agent, at a given time • Internally to a service’s value chain (at the interface between the service process and the service consumer), multiple kinds of value-cogeneration-transfers may occur: • Transfers of goods • Transfers of rights • Transfers of duties • Value attribution for services is strongly linked to their temporal aspects • …in different ways: some services cost more if they are quick, others if they last longer… 15

Service lifecycle Consumer's needs Service search Negotiation Service delivery After sale awareness Customer's Provider's Search for Search for awareness awareness Monitoring Evaluation providers customers achievement achievement affects affects affects affects Customer's Provider's Provider's cost Customer's cost benefit benefit Service Payment Value flow Exploitation Value flow P -> C C -> P Service value exchange 19

Conclusions: event-centric business modeling • What are the basic events (out of the box)? • Where are they located, in space an time? • Which are their participants (human and non-human)? • What are their natural boundaries? • What are the key documents (so-called “business artifacts”) determining the business evolution? 26