Experiences Applying e3 Value Modeling in a Cross-Company Study

Driven by business interests, (product/customer) value has become a critical topic in system and software engineering as well as enterprise planning. The conceptual modeling community has responded to this challenge with several modeling approaches, including e(3) value modeling, focusing on capturing and analyzing value flows in value networks. This modeling approach has risen from practical e-commerce experiences and has been further studied in an academic context. In this experience paper, we report the advantages and disadvantages of applying e(3) value modeling as part of a cross-company case study focusing on understanding the internal and external value of APIs from a strategic perspective. We found that value modeling was generally well-received and understood by the company representatives, but also found drawbacks when used in our context, including challenges in modeling internal value networks, capturing problematic or missing values, finding quantitative value measures, and showing underlying motivations for flows. Our findings can help to improve language aspects, methods and tools, and can help to guide future value analysis in similar contexts.