Inter-organizational Reference Models - May Inter-organizational Systems Profit from Reference Modeling?

Inter-organizational systems span from business models over business process models to their execution on top of a service-oriented architecture. In our project BSopt we have developed an integrated model-driven approach that addresses the different layers and builds up-on well-estabilshed languages on each of these layers. When applying our integrated methodology we recognized that models for the same business case are similar, but still varying for different business partner networks. Accordingly, a systematic approach to derive a model from another model, i.e., from a reference model, is needed. Significant achievements have been made by the reference modeling community in finding ways to leverage the potentials of model reuse in business process modeling. In this paper we outline the potentials of adapting design techniques known from reference modeling to the specific needs of inter-organizational system develpment even if we do not provide a solution yet.