Information Systems Development

The publication of the third edition of Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools in September 2002 gives us the opportunity to look back on the previous two editions published in 1988 and 1995, as well as this new edition, and reflect on the progress of information systems development over the past 15 or so years. On reflection, the publication of the three editions seems to coincide with three eras of information systems development methodologies. We refer to these as early methodology era, methodology era and era of methodology reassessment. In this paper we develop these themes.

This paper identifies a gap in ISD research regarding the philosophy of information technology as it relates to social impact in complex organisational contexts. It recognises that this will lead to problems of organisational stability, and that too often technology and knowledge transfer is accompanied by a one-sided approach resulting in a loss of local context. It posits a revised philosophical position based upon the work of current thinkers in the philosophy of technology/human relations and applies this position to ISD. This revised perspective challenges researchers to review their working assumptions about research in general and technology development and deployment in particular.

The coming of the 21St century saw an increasing number of Lithuanians making use of computers.1 However, this situation should be seen from two different perspectives: state institutions and mass media pays a lot of attention to the development of information, or knowledge society, but people involved in the practical installation of information technologies (IT) are not very optimistic. State institutions are concerned with keeping up with the progress in this field in European Union, and especially neighboring Baltic countries; the consumer, on the other hand, sees IT in the light of the possibilities of his/her enterprise that usually are quite modest.

Motivation for goal-driven requirements engineering: In (Lamsweerde, 2000), Axel van Lamsweerde defines Requirements Engineering (RE) as “concerned with the identification of goals to be achieved by the envisioned system, the operationalisation of such goals into services and constraints, and the assignment of responsibilities of resulting requirements to agents as humans, devices, and software”. In this view, goals drive the requirements engineering process which focuses on goal centric activities such as goal elicitation, goal modelling, goal operationalisation and goal mapping onto software objects, events and operations.

The starting point for exploring software engineering often revolves around the process view of software development and the implications and limitations that come with it. Software development is life cycle driven: the traditional linear life cycle, where progress is represented by a discrete series of transformations (state changes) has had a defining influence over the discipline. In fact, many software development processes are either predicated directly on various forms of a rational model concept or are designed to overcome perceived problems with this process through increments, timeboxes, user participation and experimentation.

In creating useful or valuable artefacts, societies resort to a variety of paradigms (taken to mean very crudely, schools of thought, or models of acceptable intellectual or professional practice (Kuhn, 1970)) to describe the process of creation. Sometimes the model of experts (with apprentices) is used; sometimes the idea of automata or robots is used. In the first case, the nature of the creative process, for example the process of making a violin, can scarcely be articulated and it only passes from one generation to the next by osmosis. In the second case, the nature of the creative process, for example the assembling of volume cars, can not only be articulated but can also be delegated to machines (or to people acting like machines). (Many artefacts, for example novels, movies, ballets, haute cuisine, jazz, operas, gardens and Parliamentary statutes, seem to come into existence without any obvious paradigm for their creation, development or production, except trial-and-error, genius or experience.). There is apparently no paradigm to support the development of educational experiences. This paper develops the argument that information systems development methodologies can be adapted to underpin the rational and systematic development of web-based education.

Information systems are getting more and more multimedia-based as well as network-based. Clear examples of this trend are various Internet applications for areas such as business, education and entertainment. In this paper, we present the result from an interview study directed towards trends in developing web-based multimedia applications. The focus of the study is trends in methodologies and competencies required for developing such systems. The result show that multimedia systems development is a multidisciplinary effort requiring cooperation between people with different backgrounds and specific competencies, methodologies and views of the world. Multimedia development comprises the parallel processes of software engineering, content development and project management.

It is generally assumed that systems development methodologies (SDM) are used in practice (Saeki, 1998), and there exists a widespread belief that adherence to SDM is beneficial to an organisation (Fitzgerald, 1996; Hardy et al., 1995). Furthermore, organisations are facing a lot of pressure to use SDM (Fitzgerald, 1996). Despite the high investment in the development of SDM and the pressure to use it, their practical usefulness is still a controversial issue (Fitzgerald, 1996; Introna and Whitley, 1997; Nandhakumar and Avison, 1999). While many organisations claim that they do not use any methodologies (Hardy et al., 1995; Chatzoglou and Macauly, 1996; Fitzgerald, 1998), others are using it with positive results (Chatzoglou and Macauly, 1996; Rahim et al.,1998). Apart from this, we do not know why SDM are used or not used, or what factors influence its use and effectiveness.

This paper focuses on the relationship between ISs and organisational processes from a perspective of rationality of actors, processes and organisations. Actors in organisational processes are considered rational to the degree to which their actions contribute to the achievement of their goals. Furthermore, organisational processes governed by rational actions are considered rational. More generally, the increase in rationality that characterises modern organisations and society is called rationalisation. The major role of many ISs has been to assist actors in selecting the best actions (e.g., production schedule) to achieve a predefined goal (maximise throughput or minimise waiting times). Given a particular criterion (e.g., minimise cost, maximise margins), such ISs automate the generation of alternative actions and the selection of the best or optimal action, thereby achieving optimal control and ultimate rationalisation of these processes.

Traditional ISD methods have been criticized for placing too much emphasis, at least implicitly, on stability of IS development activities (Truex and Baskerville, 1998). Advocates of so-called lightweight methods (Beck, 2000; Cockburn, 2000) have presented similar thoughts. Discussions on IS development in emergent organizations (Truex et al., 1999) provide recent profound critique of ISD methods (Truex et al., 2000). In fact, advocates of IS development in emergent organizations have set new goals for developing ISs (Truex et al., 1999).

Offshore outsourcing is the transference of an Information Technology, IT, function, from a company to a supplier organization located outside the borders of the parent company’s country. It is a commonly used strategy among leading companies in the United States, US, and Western Europe. Companies typically invest in offshore outsourcing with the expectation of lower costs, economies of scale, access to specialized resources, and/or new business ventures,(Aubert, et. al. 1998). Contributing to the rise of offshore outsourcing was the shortage of IT professionals in the US in the late 1990s.

The problem we are approaching in this paper is that the actions offered by information systems (IS) often seem to disharmonise with the actions performed in the work practice. Several researchers report lacks in IS use. For example, Hagerfors (1994) claims that there is a lot of IS which is not fully usable in the context wherein they exist. Henderson & Kyng (1994) claims that there is a discrepancy between creation of IS and work situations. Bannon (1994) claims that there is need for a better understanding among researchers and system designers about users and their work settings. We need to understand people as actors with a set of skills and shared practices based on work experiences (ibid.)

Information systems are considered as an academic discipline at universities. It is defined as the effective analysis, design and implementation of information systems and information technology in social organizations. Information systems domain is multidisciplinary and includes strategic, tactic and operational activities connected with collecting, processing, storing and disseminating, usage of information. These activities constitute information management process. Information systems as a research discipline is focusing on information as well as on information technology and software development. Information processing and communications are known from the beginning of human activity and people always had the same problems of appropriate information selection and collection for the decision-making.

This panel will constitute a series of paper presentations examining key issues in the area of information systems and organisational change. In particular, it will address the themes of process re-engineering, change management, evaluation frameworks for change management and impact of groupware implementation using case studies from a number of countries such as the UK, Sweden, USA and Germany. A brief outline of the contribution from each of the panellists is given below.

With the dramatic advancement in information technology, organizations and institutions worldwide can now make much more effective use of virtual teams that employ distributed work patterns, rely on technology-mediated communications and take advantage of “around the clock” activity. For example, according to research conducted by the Gartner Group 137 million workers worldwide will be involved in some form of remote electronic work by 2003. By the year 2010 it is projected that employees will spend 40% of their time working with others who are in a different place and different time zone (Salamon 2001). In fact, in the project management arena 60% of all projects are already considered virtual (Guss 1998). However research on the effect of virtuality on project management processes and subsequent success is practically nonexistent. This paper concentrates on the role of leadership in virtual project management and focuses primarily on information systems (IS) projects.

The aim of this paper is to describe an information service within a virtual organisation and to provide a set of lessons learned concerning the implementation of information services in virtual organisations. The study was performed within a joint project between a major Swedish industrial research institute, a number of international companies within the electronic industry and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Skovde. A main goal for the project was to provide designers with information about manufacturability. This may be described as knowledge sharing in an inter-organisational network (Franke, 1999). In order for organisations to survive, it is of vital interest to acquire knowledge about the actors in the organisational environment e.g. customers, suppliers, and business partners (Alavi and Leidner, 1999; Hackathorn, 1999). Carlsson (2001) stresses the need for further research on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in network-based knowledge processes. In our view an information system serves as a means for managing knowledge. Hence the terms information system and knowledge management system will be used interchangeably.

Modern organisations are expected to maintain a high level of innovation in their business and products. This means that they need to flexibly adapt to rapid change in their business environment. Among the main driving forces in this process are people and their knowledge. Organisations need to utilise this knowledge in the most efficient way since, in essence, it is part of their competitive advantage. It is therefore that managing experience, competence, knowledge about business processes, organisational practices, and best business practices are so important. The main goal of the Framework 5 project no IST-2000-28401 Hypermedia and Pattern Based Knowledge Management for Smart Organisations (HyperKnowledge) is to develop and test a novel approach to Knowledge Management (KM). The two cornerstones of this approach are the EKP method and the RETH tool ( Bubenko, Persson and Stirna, 2001). During the course of the project two trial applications of the approach will be carried out — one involving a commercial company and one involving a public organisation.

Recently a lot of efforts were directed towards finding a conceptual modelling language that would be simple to learn and use in information systems development process, but expressive enough in order to capture all aspects of domain knowledge. To model knowledge explicitly has become an important issue because information systems were started to be used not only for data processing activities but also for management purposes and long-term organisation development. The knowledge considered usually is related with different aspects of organisation — its processes of production, marketing, management, processes constraints, policies and guidelines, customers and suppliers. The knowledge of such domain considered in information systems should capture all aspects of the domain — its structure, the behaviour of objects in the domain, and the constraints that govern the behaviour. Thus, the complete description of the domain is achieved.

Expected behaviour for an organisation is usually described as a set of work processes that has to be carried out. Goal is reached (or task will be fulfilled) when certain pre-described work routines have been completed. For many application domains, for example, in chemical batch processes, automation, control systems, etc., processes are looked at from the technological viewpoint only. Specified relevant work processes do not depend on employees’ decisions and therefore their behaviour is not modelled, as a rule.

The basic problem at early analysis stage of the development life cycle is how to quickly comprehend a large and complicated system. One of the ways to comprehend such a system is to build an object model, as it was suggested by the pioneers of object modelling approach such as J.Rumbaugh1 and J.Martin2. In up-to-date terminology it means building a UML class diagram. The authors have got convinced in their everyday practice on extreme efficiency of this type of modelling, though at the same time a significant experience for this job is also required. To make this job easier, a modelling methodology must be developed. The goal of this paper is, on the one hand, to give some methodological recommendations in the conceptual modelling by means of class diagrams, and on the other hand, to discuss requirements for tools which support this type of modelling.

In the 1990s several new software engineering frameworks were introduced, among them Rational Unified Process (RUP) (Jacobson et al. 1999),OPEN(Henderson-Sellers and Unhelkar 2000), Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF)(Microsoft 2001), and Catalysis(D’Souza and Wills 2002).A significant feature of these is that the software product is developed incrementally, through a series of iterations. This structure not only mitigates technical risk, but also challenges some of our traditional conceptions of the relationship between software engineering (SE) and information systems (IS) implementation as ‘separate worlds’, because the SE frameworks also include activities to secure a successful implementation in a complex organisational setting(Kruchten 2000).

Software development is rather complex process consisting of different activities. It is dependent on skills’ level of different specialists as well as on usage of different technologies. One of the activities supporting software development process is risk management. Risk management requires knowledge and experience from people involved. This paper addresses software development risk management. The survey among software development experts was performed to find the risks, which are live to software developers in Latvia. This paper summarizes the results of the survey.

The emergence of the Information Systems (IS) field and the delineation of its epistemological boundaries are tied to the strong social element that involves the study of Information Technology (IT) in organizations(Land, 1983;Friedman, 1989;Angell, 1991).With the needs of the so-called information-age organization moving further away from those that characterized the industrial organization of the 20th century, research is focusing on where and how new forms of information handling are conceived, planned and implemented(Hammer, 1990;Venkatraman, 1991).The magnitude of the effects that the process of information handling has on the structure and behaviour of organizations is evidenced through its influence on the development of organizational theories(Drucker, 1988;Handy, 1995)and practice(Porter, 1985;Hammer, 1993).

System development methods have already long been controversially discussed, but there is still a lack of knowledge and understanding based on empirical studies about how systems development is actually conducted in practice, how system development methodologies and methods are used and to what degree they are used as proposed in the literature (Floyd, 1986; Nandhakumar & Avison, 1999). The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this understanding. It reports how and to what degree Rational’s Unified Process (RUP) was used in two commercial development projects.

Modem software production is incremental and iterative. Systems are developed in successive iterations delivering incremental releases of the product. Iterative and incremental development can only succeed if the scalability is built into the system architecture in the first iteration and carefully managed in successive iterations.

Semistructured data can be explained as “schemaless” or “self-describing”, indicating that there is no separate description of the type or structure of the data. This is in contrast with the structured approaches, such, e.g. relational databases, where the data structure is usually designed first and described as a database schema. Semistructured data is data whose structure is irregular, is heterogeneous, is partial, has not a fixed format, and evolves quickly. These characteristics are typical for data available in the Web (HTML pages, e-mail message bases, bookmarks collections etc). The research of semistructured data aimed at extending the database management techniques to semistructured data in the late 90’s (Suciu, 1998).

The term integrity is used to refer to the accuracy or correctness of the data in a database. In other words, integrity involves ensuring that the data stored in the database are in any time correct. The database management system needs to be aware of certain rules that users must not violate. Those rules are to be specified in some suitable language, and have to be maintained in the data catalogue.

Although the information revolution is in full swing, development of information technology may rest on one question: can silicon-based computer technology sustain Moore’s law beyond 2020? In 1965 — three years before he co-founded Intel with Bob Noyce — Gordon Moore published an article that turned out to be uncannily prophetic. Moore wrote that the number of circuits on a silicon chip would keep doubling every year. He later revised this to every 18 to 24 months, a forecast that has held remarkably well over several decades (Unold, 2001).

The problem of universals is a profound abstract question that quests into the nature of our knowledge, which our civilization has been querying for the past several millennia — this large abstract problem, Artz (2002)2 writes, has been known to the modern world from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Such as, how do we know the true identify of the object and fit the identity into a true classification so that we could understand and attribute to this object? There are multiple problems with identifying a true identity, for example, how do we know what the true identity of the object is? Is there such a thing such as the true identity or are there multiple true identities? Could we really classify the objects even if we knew the true identity(s) of them? And what is classification? Does it exist in the world as a true relationship between identifiable objects or it is just a human way of ‘languaging’ a common understanding? Artz (2002) elaborates in depth on the problem of universals in information modeling, finding that both essence in the same issue — difficulty of classification, or how do you know a thing is a thing and that it belongs to the class of the thing? How do we know what makes a thing thing; and what properties relate things?

The evolution of ISD methods from water flow model to object-oriented techniques was catalyzed by the need of managing several uncertainties in user requirements, changes in software and hardware technology as we have reported in our previous case study 1. However it was assumed, that there are only slight changes in the static and dynamic behavior of the completed system during operation.

The influence of small companies in the entire economy is increasing. Small companies employ more people than ever, and many more are starting their own businesses. Small companies sometimes act as incubators for future economic giants. Realizing the importance of new information technology (IT) small companies are increasingly investing in their information systems, encouraged also by declining cost of contemporary IT. They are replacing their existing manual systems or old legacy systems with new, more flexible and reliable systems, to run their daily operations. A general belief exists that this enhances the flexibility of small companies, although some investigations (e.g. Levy and Powell, 1998) indicated that IT increases the effectively and effectiveness of the business and strengthens a creative way of thinking, but does not improve their flexibility.

The word “virtual” describes work that spans one or more discontinuities. The term has been applied to work where people are in discontinuous physical work locations, where work is done in discontinuous time frames, where people have discontinuous organizational affiliations (Watson-Manheim, Crowston & Chudoba (2002)).

The purpose of this work is to investigate the proposition that sourcing and alignment competencies are positively related to e-business success for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We review and operationalize critical competencies in sourcing and alignment related to the use of e-business i SMEs, and we report the exploratory empirical findings from a survey. The results contribute to our understanding of adoption of e-business in SMEs, and will have implications for programs, which aim to stimulate e-business adoption and success in SMEs.

In Australia Electronic Service Deliver (ESD) and e-commerce have become increasingly important means for governments and citizens to engage in business transactions. The pressure for take-up of ESD and e-commerce and the transformation of Australia into a digital economy has come from both government and business (Chifley Research Centre, 2001). Nevertheless, in spite of these government and business inducements, Australian small to medium businesses (SMEs) are still slow to adopt e-commerce options. According to a report published in 2000 on a study commissioned by the NOIE into the take-up of e-commerce by SMEs, Taking the Plunge. Sink or Swim?, SMEs slow to adopt e-commerce “do so at their own peril” (NOIE, 2000).

An electronic commerce project might have many different aims. The main aim of this particular project-called market place Värmland - was to strengthen small and medium enterprises (SME) power of competition and create a positive growth for the enterprises in the whole province Värmland. The target group was enterprises which have up to 50 employees. The idea was to develop the persons’ competence in using e-commerce in their business. Therefore companies were invited to take part in a course about e-commerce. The members of the project group had assumed that persons from about 500 companies would follow the courses during the three years when the project was going on. The focus of the course was directed towards doing analysis of the usability of electronic commerce. By doing the analysis it was assumed that the participants would be able to apply this competence in the companies of their own. Further more the plan was to create a network between the companies and an IT-platform for information and exchange of knowledge. The project was also designed to support other projects which have been started to market the enterprises products and to support these enterprises possibilities to buy and sell to each other. The municipal councils in the province make great purchases. The trend also is, that these councils want to use electronic commerce when buying something. Until now many small companies have not been able to sign contracts in order to deal with the councils. Many of them do not know what to do or they do not have any equipment for it. Many of them also feel that there are many difficult hinder to climb over.

Traditional data networks transport their packet bits end-to-end from node to node passively. However, increasingly widespread use of the internet has placed new demands on the networking infrastructure. Novel applications continue to emerge rapidly and often benefit from new network services that better accommodate their modes of use.

Today there is a rapid development of information technology which can be used to support the mobility of people, vehicles and goods (Ertico, 2001; Francica, 2001). The systems which are built with this new technology combine: mobile units for communication, e.g. units which are built into vehicles, cellular phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs);wireless telecommunication, e.g. 3G-mobile telecommunication and radio communication;positioning, e.g. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and cellular phone triangulation;Geographical Information Systems GIS-technology.

In the last decade companies focus on building enterprise-wide messaging and communication infrastructures in order to meet the ever-increasing requirements for inter-and intra-enterprise communications. In this perspective, enterprise services are crafted to facilitate and improve the communications within the enterprise, with the goal of reducing the overall cost of communication for the enterprise as a single entity. Towards this direction, they continue to evolve towards a core set of standards and capabilities that will offer organizations benefits such as universal interoperability, network convergence, end-to-end media fidelity and high reliability.

By the increasing number of participants in the worldwide computer networks, like the Internet, the importance of electronic communication and electronic commerce grows rapidly. In most existing electronic payment systems over the Internet, security aspect is an interesting issue, especially on privacy of customer. Every time customer made a purchasing and paid by his credit card all purchase transactions will be stored in a database of credit-card company. If the information is collected into a list, a dossier could be compiled of your consumer habit and financial status. This information is valuable of interest parties. Your consumer habits would be valuable information to a mail-order company as specific products could be targeted at you. Companies would be able to assess your credit worthiness from your financial history.