Managing Semantic Models for representing Intangible Enterprise Assets: The ARISTOTELE Project Software Architecture

Pierluigi Ritrovato Dep. Of Electronic Engineering and Computer Engineering, University of Salerno MOMA S.p.A

Outlines
Overview of the ARISTOTELE project
The ARISTOTELE Approach ARISTOTELE Models ARISTOTELE tools

ARISTOTELE Architecture
The approach The logical view

Other Available results

The Architecture Already Developed tools

Problems to Overcome
Conflicting goals
Separation and missing interconnection between enterprise learning pathways and real contingent workers needs.

Lack of integration
Missing links between learning strategies oriented to different working and organisational contexts. Difficulty to capture and reuse formal and informal knowledge for organisational learning. Once the needed knowledge is acquired, all information on how this knowledge was built disappears Lack of any form of Collective Intelligence

Heterogeneity
High-level fragmentation of data, information, tools and environment used by workers to operate in their working life (studying, carrying out process activities, discussing, collaborating, etc.). Difficulty to assess, exploit, share and reuse learning experiences in terms of approach, contents and knowledge both at personal and enterprise level.

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ARISTOTELE Approach: overview

1. To merge strategic organisational objectives and worker preferences and needs to create personalised and adaptive learning experience; To support organisational processes: optimising human resource allocation; supporting daily work through Personal Working Learning Environment; individual performance assessment; To support innovation management and building through Innovation Factory

2.

3.

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ARISTOTELE enabling building blocks and research areas

The top level is the starting point: inputs (organizational objectives and worker needs, preferences, ) influencing the key ARISTOTELE processes The middle level embraces the key ARISTOTELE processes centred on collaboration:
Building of personalized learning experiences Creation of Innovation Factory for collaborative innovation boosting Management and sharing of personal knowledge to be reused in different domains and tasks

The bottom level includes features supporting update and reuse of organizational knowledge
SOA-KME Workshop @ CISIS 2012 Palermo 4th-6th, 2012

The general Idea

ARISTOTELE Models
Knowledge Model (KM)
provides constructs for the representation of enterprise knowledge entities, enterprise domain vocabulary, educational vocabulary

Competence Model (CM)

provides constructs for the representation of competences and their relations to other concepts such as context, activities, and objectives

Worker Model (WM)

provides constructs for the representation of worker including social, learning, working and personal goals

Learning Experience Model (LEM)

provides constructs for the learning experience needed to achieve a new competence or fill a competence gap.

SOA-KME Workshop @ CISIS 2012 Palermo 4th-6th, 2012

Models Definition
The models have been defined following four main directions:
the analysis of organizational practices of the pilots, the projects scenarios and requirements, and the methodologies needs to derive the main concepts and relationships of the four models; the definition of few and clear principles to follow during the modeling activities; the selection of a set of specifications, standards and available models from the the State-of-the-Art and Intelligent Web Teacher (IWT) platform that represent the building blocks of the four models; the analysis of actual experiences from communities of practice

SOA-KME Workshop @ CISIS 2012 Palermo 4th-6th, 2012

Role of the Models: Integrated Schemas

Characteristics of the ARISTOTELE Models

Reference Ontologies: used to represent and structure enterprises resources (e.g., worker profile, competences, project and activities, etc.)
FOAF, DOAP, SKOS, SIOC, etc.

Organisation Ontologies: exploited to provide a shared classification of the resources available in the Knowledge base.
to classify knowledge resources according to the context of the enterprise and to provide a common access layer to heterogeneous resources daily produced by the workers (e.g., document, wiki, blog, etc.).

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The Knowledge Model: reference Ontology

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The Knowledge Model: Organisation Ontology and IWT Learning Domain Model

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Competence Model

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Worker Model

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Learning Experience Generation Model

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A Knowledge model instance example

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Training Domain Instance

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The Tools
Knowledge Management (KM) Tool, exploiting methodologies and techniques supporting organizational knowledge building and maintenance (merging, matching, versioning) in a semi-automatic way using knowledge extraction techniques as well. Human Resource Management (HRM) Tool, exploiting methodologies and techniques supporting competence gap analysis, team and group formation, internal resources competence development, and recruitment. Social Collaboration and Networking (CN) Tool, aiming at supporting the innovation process within the organization. . Learning Experience Generation (LEG) Tool, exploiting methodologies and techniques to recommend suitable contents and didactic approaches to the workers, to generate, adapt and manage personalized learning experiences tailored to the organizational objectives. Personal and reliable Working and Learning Environment (PWLE) tool, acting as a methodological and technological integrator for all the other tools.
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How Fit Everithing Together

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Design the ARISTOTELE Architecture

Several Challenges
Complexity of the systems
Enterprise architecture Enterprise Application Integration and Semantic technologies Integration of Several Technologies several form of deployment (SaaS, IaaS, distributed, centralised) Facilitate Adoption, Acceptance and Assimilation

Provide the right information to the involved stakeholders (distributed teams) Respecting the time constrains

Key decisions
Incremental approach (2 steps)
first High Level Architecture (guidelines, approach description and documentation) exploited for tools design Architecture Design leveraging on existing frameworks

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Definition of the High Level Architecture What it is: Sketch the whole system
Provides a methodological and technological framework describing principles and guidelines underlying the whole ARISTOTELE Platform Provides specification of the logical description of the architecture
Provide an understanding of what kind of building block we rely on and How they contribute to the achievement of the whole system

Provides guidelines for architects and developers team in charge of the design and development of the different ARISTOTELE modules Provides information about decomposition of the platform
Identification of the main building blocks Identification of their responsibilities

Provides information about ARISTOTELE enabling technologies features

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Definition of the High Level Architecture Documentation (1/2)

Produce the documentation that communicates the architectural decisions Inspired to the Views and Beyond (V&B) approach proposed by the Software Engineering Institute
Motivation An architecture document is useful only if it communicates effectively the architectural decisions Fundamental unit of documentation Views, each representing a "part of the whole" system structures Fundamental principle Documenting an architecture is a matter of documenting the relevant views, and then adding documentation that applies to more than one view The concept of View allows simplify the communication by focusing only on some aspects at a time

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Definition of the High Level Architecture Documentation (2/2)

More in detail, the process followed the steps
Identify the stakeholders and their needs (Designer, Developer, Integrator, Administrator) Identify the useful views Establish the information sources Gather information Create the documentation package Review

Views
Logical - Defines the typology of building blocks and how they are related Decomposition - Defines the required building blocks for each logical layer Implementation Provides guidelines for the most significant implementation issues Technological Clarify the role of the technological baseline (IWT and SharePoint) with respect to the overall architecture Integration - Defines interaction and communication patterns among ARISTOTELE components, SharePoint components, IWT components and legacy applications Deployment Provides guidance for the platform deployment

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ARISTOTELE Architecture design

User Requirement s MIKE 2.0 SAFE Architecture Semantic Enterprise Enterprise 2.0 Business Process Patterns High Level Architecture Architectural drivers

Architecture Design

Views & Beyond High level system overview

Software Architecture Documentation

ARISTOTELE Architecture design

Input
User Requirements Business Process Patterns: to describe how ARISTOTELE supports the members of the organization From High Level Architecture:
Architectural drivers Views&Beyond approach for the documentation of the architecture A first high level system overview

From MIKE 2.0:

SAFE Architecture: An architecture for the Federated Enterprise (Methodology for the definition of the architecture, SOA pattern adoption) Semantic Enterprise: provides a layer for the enterprise to establish coherence, consistency, and interoperability across its information assets Enterprise 2.0: brings the collaborative and social computing concepts associated with Web 2.0 into the Enterprise

Output: Software Architecture Documentation

ARISTOTELE Architecture Logical view

Data Tools PWLE LEG HRM CN KM

Orchestration Services Service Broker Base Services Services SharePoint Services IWT Services
Knowledge Management Tag Suggestion Expert Finding

Core Services
Enterprise Linked Data Layer

Competence Gap Recommender System Link Discovery

Team Building Learning Experience

Relevance Calculation Worker Competence Update

Content Data Data

SharePoint IWT

Semantic Data External or Legacy

Triple Store

Semantic Layer high level architecure

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Enterprise Liked Data Layer

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Available tools

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Available tools

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ARISTOTELE references

Thank you very much for your attention and stay tuned!
Web site: http://www-aristotele-eu.org Follow us on twitter: (@Aristotele_ip) URL: http://twitter.com/#!/Aristotele_ip LinkedIn: ID Group - ARISTOTELE Facebook: ARISTOTELE Project

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