The development of business models is a challenging task that can be supported with software tools. Here, existing approaches and tools do not focus on the company’s situation in which the development takes place (e.g., financial resources, product type). To tackle this challenge, we used design science research to develop a situation-specific business model development approach that contains three stages: First, existing knowledge in terms of tasks to do (e.g., analyze competitive advantage), and decisions to be made (e.g., social media marketing) are stored in repositories. Second, the knowledge is used to compose a development method based on the company’s situation. Third, the development method is enacted to develop a business model. This demonstration paper presents a tool-support called Situational Business Model Developer that supports all stages of our approach. We release the tool under open-source and evaluate it with a case study on developing business models for mobile apps.

Due to the proliferation of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, VR is finding new applications in various domains, such as stock trading. Here, traders invest in stocks intending to increase their profit. For this purpose, in conventional stock trading, traders usually make use of 2D applications on desktop or laptop devices. This leads to many drawbacks such as poor visibility due to limited 2D representation, complex interaction due to indirect interaction via mouse and keyboard, or restricted support for collaboration between traders. To overcome these issues, we have developed a novel collaborative, virtual environment for stock trading, which enables stock traders to view financial information and trade stocks with other collaborators. The main results of a usability study indicate that the VR environment, compared to conventional stock trading, shows no significant advantages concerning efficiency and effectiveness, however, we could observe an increased user satisfaction and better collaboration.

To build successful software products, developers continuously have to discover what features the users really need. This discovery can be achieved with continuous experimentation, testing different software variants with distinct user groups, and deploying the superior variant for all users. However, existing approaches do not focus on explicit modeling of variants and experiments, which offers advantages such as traceability of decisions and combinability of experiments. Therefore, our vision is the provision of model-driven continuous experimentation, which provides the developer with a framework for structuring the experimentation process. For that, we introduce the overall concept, apply it to the experimentation on component-based software architectures and point out future research questions. In particular, we show the applicability by combining feature models for modeling the software variants, users, and experiments (i.e., model-driven) with MAPE-K for the adaptation (i.e., continuous experimentation) and implementing the concept based on the component-based Angular framework.

Corporate decision makers have individual requirements for decision support influenced by business goals, regulatory restrictions or access to resources such as data. Ideally, decision makers could quickly create tailored decision support systems (DSS) themselves which optimally address their individual requirements for decision support. Although service-oriented architectures have been proposed for DSS customization, they are primarily targeting trained software developers and cannot immediately be adapted by decision makers or domain experts with little to no software development knowledge. In this paper, we therefore motivate an assisted process-based service composition approach which can be used by non-developers to create tailored DSS. For assistance during service composition, we contribute a meta-model for the formalization of both decision support requirements and functionality of decision support services. Models created according to the meta-model can be used to detect mismatches between a decision maker’s requirements for decision support and services selected in the service composition representing a DSS. Furthermore, the formalizations may even be used for automated service composition given a decision maker’s decision support requirements. We demonstrate the expressiveness of our meta-model in the domain of regional energy distribution network planning.

Companies show an increasing interest in low-code development platforms to facilitate application development by domain experts without sophisticated software development knowledge. Thus, companies aim for a more efficient development of more effective applications since domain experts as so-called citizen developers are no longer limited by the availability and domain knowledge of trained software developers. Nevertheless, efficiency and effectiveness of application development is traditionally also largely influenced by the use of a suitable software development method. Domain experts are, however, not trained in software development methods. This introduces a risk of domain experts creating unusable applications or exceeding the designated time frame of a project (or both). In this paper, we therefore propose an initial version of a situational software development method which supports domain experts in manufacturing companies during the low-code development of applications. The method can be tailored based on situational factors, considering application requirements, features of the used low-code development platform, and characteristics of the development team. We also present feedback corroborating the usefulness of our method and future extension points based on expert interviews.

Due to the increasing influences of a VUCA world, design thinking workshops have been established as a standard technique to build solutions according to uncertain customer needs. Concerning the ongoing pandemic and rising development of solutions across organizations, more and more workshops were conducted online with software support. However, existing software tools insufficiently address the different workshop situations in terms of the process (i.e., fixed tasks to conduct), the place (e.g., static online whiteboards), and people (i.e., synchronous working of all stakeholders). Therefore, we propose a design science study to develop a situation-specific software support that can be configured with flexible development processes, different places, and task-related people. Based on practical experience in existing research projects, we derive the initial design requirements and map them to a set of design principles. Out of that, we design a concept with its implementation as a software tool and point out open challenges.

The development of effective business models is an essential task in highly competitive markets like mobile ecosystems. Existing development methods for these business models do not specifically focus that the development process profoundly depends on the situation (e.g., market size, regulations) of the mobile app developer. Here, a mismatch between method and situation can lead to poor resource management and longer development cycles. In software engineering, situational method engineering is used for software projects to configure a development method out of a method repository based on the project situation. Analogously, we support creating situation-specific business model development methods with a method base and new user roles. Here, the method engineer obtains the knowledge of the domain expert and stores it in the method base as elements, building blocks, and patterns. The expert knowledge is derived from a grey literature review on mobile development processes. After this, the method engineer constructs the development method based on the described situation of the business developer. We provide an open-source tool and evaluate it by constructing a local event platform's business model development method.

Platform-based business models underlie the success of many of today’s largest, fastest-growing, and most disruptive companies. Despite the success of prominent examples, such as Uber and Airbnb, creating a profitable platform ecosystem presents a key challenge for many companies across all industries. Although research provides knowledge about platforms’ different value drivers (e.g., network effects), companies that seek to transform their current business model into a platform-based one lack an artifact to reduce knowledge boundaries, collaborate effectively, and cope with the complexities and dynamics of platform ecosystems. We address this challenge by developing two artifacts and combining research from variability modeling, business model dependencies, and system dynamics. This paper presents a design science research approach to develop the platform ecosystem modeling language and the platform ecosystem development tool that support researcher and practitioner by visualizing and simulating platform ecosystems.

Requirements for energy distribution networks are changing fast due to the growing share of renewable energy, increasing electrification, and novel consumer and asset technologies. Since uncertainties about future developments increase planning difficulty, flexibility potentials such as synergies between the electricity, gas, heat, and transport sector often remain unused. In this paper, we therefore present a novel module-based concept for a decision support system that helps distribution network planners to identify cross-sectoral synergies and to select optimal network assets such as transformers, cables, pipes, energy storage systems or energy conversion technology. The concept enables long-term transformation plans and supports distribution network planners in designing reliable, sustainable and cost-efficient distribution networks for future demands.

Mobile shopping apps have been using Augmented Reality (AR) in the last years to place their products in the environment of the customer. While this is possible with atomic 3D objects, there is is still a lack in the runtime configuration of 3D object compositions based on user needs and environmental constraints. For this, we previously developed an approach for model-based AR-assisted product configuration based on the concept of Dynamic Software Product Lines. In this demonstration paper, we present the corresponding tool support ProConAR in the form of a Product Modeler and a Product Configurator. While the Product Modeler is an Angular web app that splits products (e.g. table) up into atomic parts (e.g. tabletop, table legs, funnier) and saves it within a configuration model, the Product Configurator is an Android client that uses the configuration model to place different product configurations within the environment of the customer. We show technical details of our ready to use tool-chain ProConAR by describing its implementation and usage as well as pointing out future research directions.

Augmented Reality (AR) has recently found high attention in mobile shopping apps such as in domains like furniture or decoration. Here, the developers of the apps focus on the positioning of atomic 3D objects in the physical environment. With this focus, they neglect the configuration of multi-faceted 3D object composition according to the user needs and environmental constraints. To tackle these challenges, we present a model-based approach to support AR-assisted product con-figuration based on the concept of Dynamic Software Product Lines. Our approach splits products (e.g. table) into parts (e.g. tabletop, ta-ble legs, funnier) with their 3D objects and additional information (e.g. name, price). The possible products, which can be configured out of these parts, are stored in a feature model. At runtime, this feature model can be used to configure 3D object compositions out of the product parts and adapt to user needs and environmental constraints. The benefits of this approach are demonstrated by a case study of configuring modular kitchens with the help of a prototypical mobile-based implementation.

The continuous innovation of its business models is an important task for a company to stay competitive. During this process, the company has to validate various hypotheses about its business models by adapting to uncertain and changing customer needs effectively and efficiently. This adaptation, in turn, can be supported by the concept of Software Product Lines (SPLs). SPLs reduce the time to market by deriving products for customers with changing requirements using a common set of features, structured as a feature model. Analogously, we support the process of business model adaptation by applying the engineering process of SPLs to the structure of the Business Model Canvas (BMC). We call this concept a Business Model Decision Line (BMDL). The BMDL matches business domain knowledge in the form of a feature model with customer needs to derive hypotheses about the business model together with experiments for validation. Our approach is effective by providing a comprehensive overview of possible business model adaptations and efficient by reusing experiments for different hypotheses. We implement our approach in a tool and illustrate the usefulness with an example of developing business models for a mobile application.

To build successful products, the developers have to adapt their product features and business models to uncertain customer needs. This adaptation is part of the research discipline of Hypotheses Engineering (HE) where customer needs can be seen as hypotheses that need to be tested iteratively by conducting experiments together with the customer. So far, modeling support and associated traceability of this iterative process are missing. Both, in turn, are important to document the adaptation to the customer needs and identify experiments that provide most evidence to the customer needs. To target this issue, we introduce a model-based HE approach with a twofold contribution: First, we develop a modeling language that models hypotheses and experiments as interrelated hierarchies together with a mapping between them. While the hypotheses are labeled with a score level of their current evidence, the experiments are labeled with a score level of maximum evidence that can be achieved during conduction. Second, we provide an iterative process to determine experiments that offer the most evidence improvement to the modeled hypotheses. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach with an example of testing the business model of a mobile application.

In the last years, store-oriented software ecosystems are gaining more and more attention from a business perspective. In these ecosystems, third-party developers upload extensions to a store which can be downloaded by end users. While the functional scope of such ecosystems is relatively similar, the underlying business models differ greatly in and between their different product domains (e.g. Mobile Phone, Smart TV). This variability, in turn, makes it challenging for store providers to find a business model that fits their own needs. To handle this variability, we introduce the Business Variability Model (BVM) for modeling business model decisions. The basis of these decisions is the analysis of 60 store-oriented software ecosystems in eight different product domains. We map their business model decisions to the Business Model Canvas, condense them to a variability model and discuss particular variants and their dependencies. Our work provides store providers a new approach for modeling business model decisions together with insights of existing business models. This, in turn, supports them in creating new and improving existing business models.