Abstract
Origin of this article was the question whether the process description of product management, as it occurs in the guideline of VDI-4520, can be replaced by a model created with the concept of Subject-Orientation. Advantages and disadvantages of both description approaches are compared. The most important evaluation criterion is the achievable transparency for all persons and departments involved. Therefore, the goal was to construct a subject-oriented model draft of the Product Management Process based to the VDI guideline. The resulting diagram was created by a novice modeler in this field, without prior knowledge and experience with that uncommon modeling paradigm that is Subject-Orientation and without access to experience. Consequently, using this created the model for the Product Management Process as an example, weaknesses of PASS may have surfaced but at the same time have to be considered under the given circumstances. The weaknesses include semantical issues in processes with few defined subjects and explicit communication in the source material, possibly suggesting that PASS might not be as versatile as literature implies, and in result making the modelling of explicitly non-subject-oriented processes a challenge. This article provides a basis for discussion and further research regarding the applicability of PASS, and the claimed benefit of featuring a higher practical usefulness when executing in practice compared to traditional notations.
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Notes
- 1.
Note by editor: it can be arranged displayed visually, but it has no formal impact.
References
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Acknowledgement
This contribution was accepted as a short paper since it is a valuable showcase for the fact that adopting subject-orientation and subject-oriented thinking is not necessarily as simple and straightforward as it may be perceived by the research community. The work is a demonstration of the challenge to diverge from classical input-task-output process-thinking and truly adopt subject-orientation, especially when source material and pre-training are deeply rooted in and limited by the classical description paradigm.
E.g., in Fig. 1: The “sub-process” (grey rectangles around the subject) are labeled in a way that make it evident that “process” is mainly understood as activity by the authors (e.g. “Markt segmentieren” – Eng.: “to segmented the marked”). Consequently, the subjects are assigned to the activities and the whole model is essentially task/activity oriented. The stated claim that no messages could be defined demonstrates this problem complex further, especially when the “Marktexperte” (market expert) could have easily send a “Report on the analysis of Market Segments” to the Product Manager. Sternly speaking, it could be said that PASS elements are mostly used as a visualization tool, but SO is at best weakly or not “daringly” enough applied. Hypothetically it can be seen that this is a logical consequence from the attempt of “literally translating” the source material and stay too close to it. Furthermore, the work shows how important “the notion of process” for understanding subject-orientation. In other words what is “a process” or “a sub-process”? Subject-Orientation requires understanding that “a process” is the interaction of multiple active entities and that activities are assigned to active entities, not the other way around like was done above. An interface subject can indeed represent a more complex sub-system of active entities, which is the “sub-process”, but that is a different understanding than the “sub-process” idea in VDI-4520.
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Schubert, C., Häuser, F. (2022). Subject-Oriented Modelling of VDI-4520: A First Draft. In: Elstermann, M., Betz, S., Lederer, M. (eds) Subject-Oriented Business Process Management. Dynamic Digital Design of Everything – Designing or being designed?. S-BPM ONE 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1632. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19704-8_9
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