An ontologybased competency model for workflow activity assignment policies

• Published in: Journal of knowledge management 2008-10, Vol.12 (6), p.72-88
• Main Authors: Macris, A., Papadimitriou, E., Vassilacopoulos, G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Competences; Modelling; Training; Work flow
• ISSN: 1367-3270
• DOI: 10.1108/13673270810913630

Purpose Assigning business process activities to agents human or automated for their performance or supervision is a critical issue in business process management. Rolebased approaches are commonly used to specify work assignment policies, with roles defined as collections of capabilities and privileges required to perform job functions. The purpose of this paper is to address the activity assignment problem through a competencybased approach. In this context, an ontologybased competency model is developed to assist in identifying the competencies that exist in an organization and the competencies required, by workflow activities and in performing a competency gap analysis as a prerequisite for domainspecific user development through competencybased training. Designmethodologyapproach An approach for developing a business process activity assignment policy based on an ontologybased competency model is presented. This model is also used to define domainspecific training courses that enable users meet the competency requirements of process activities. In broad terms, the approach consists of the following steps identification of the competencies required in order to perform the various activities involved in each business process and definition of roles based on these competencies identification of the competencies acquired in the organization and assignment of users to roles performance of competency gap analysis to identify the missing user competencies for role playing and identification of user development needs and development of competencybased training scenarios intended to fill the user competency gaps. Findings An experimental implementation of the ontologybased competency model proposed in the banking domain provided a finegrained role structure that was based on the competencies required by business process activities, and a usertorole assignment that closely matched the competencies required for role playing, and brought forward missing user competencies that pointed to required user training needs. Originalityvalue The proposed ontologybased competency model fulfils the need for a sustained work assignment approach based on user roles. To this end, roles and users are defined as collections of required and acquired competencies, respectively. A novel approach based on ontologybased competency ontologies was also developed to fill required but missing user competencies.