ProjectWeekNijssen


 * Sjir Nijssen with  Ilias Ntais in March 2009 in Heerlen||[[image:Sjir-Ilias.jpg width="400" height="180" align="left"]]||

Towards the integration of various management disciplines
Abstract

The world is in a great need for productivity enhancements, particularly in the knowledge economy. The industrial economy was quite solidly based on physics, chemistry and mathematics. What is the basis for the knowledge economy? Is there a similar solid foundation? In this presentation it is argued that we are on the verge of moving into declarative knowledge, to be compared with the transition from Roman numerals to the decimal system. The current world with its procedural laws and regulations, has become unmanageable. The credit crisis is in my view first and for all the result of the inadequate representation of contracts, in the traditional procedural way. This traditional procedural way makes intelligent questions almost impossible to answer when the number and size of the contracts are substantial. What is the architecture or framework underlying the declarative knowledge? In this presentation this framework will be described. The framework will be compared to the underlying frameworks of OWL, SBVR, BPMN, CogNIAM, ORM and .NET. Why will the world move to declarative (business) modeling? What will be the influence of Microsoft to make declarative modeling mainstream? How much experience has been gained with declarative modeling? What will the Oslo Microsoft project M language contribute to this? What will happen with all the procedural-object-oriented code? What happens if major streams of education will accept the declarative approach? Is fully integrated education already somewhere realized? And what are the experiences? Much quicker and much much better quality! Sounds impossible. But cell phones were 30 years ago given the same label by most people.

CV Prof dr Sjir Nijssen
After his master in Electrical Engineering he did a Ph.D in applied mathematics. This year marks the 40th anniversary of being more than full time involved in business modeling.

He started business modeling on the data side in the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) as initiator and chairman of Working Group 2.6. There in the seventies the roots for conceptual modeling were established. Several international conferences have been held.

In the late seventies and eighties he was actively involved in ISO with the result TR 9007, Concepts and Terminology for the Conceptual Schema and the Information Base. This report can be seen as a basis for SBVR as is now acknowledged.

After 7 years as full time professor in Computer Science he decided it was time to set up a company to offer business modeling services; he thereafter also has set up a private university together with Reed Elsevier, to promote fully integrated education based on a predecessor of SBVR.

He has become convinced in practice that the data orientation is not sufficient and that the data orientation needs to be embedded in the process orientation. This has led us to develop a best business practice how to get the best collaboration between Business and IT using a well selected combination of BPMN and SBVR. The approach is strongly based on a subset of natural language the starting point of the business modeling approach he developed in the mid seventies and now one of the pillars of SBVR. The embedded SBVR in BPMN receives a warm welcome in the market place, is the experience of PNA, the company Sjir Nijssen is employed at.

PNA has a private university with probably a world first, bachelor curriculum that is fully based on SBVR and BPMN. Every subject is described in terms of concept definitions, associated fact types, associated fact type forms and associated rules and BPMN to describe process aspects. The results are amazing when one observes how students react when all the teaching is integrated. At PNA UML is also taught as a subject in this way.

He is currently a member of the SBVR 1.1 RTF.

He is a believer in full integration based on understanding, in controlled natural language and formalisms at the same time.