Combining DEMO and Normalized Systems for Developing Agile Enterprise Information Systems

Our research aims at finding key concepts to link agile enterprises with agile automated information systems. To effectively respond to environmental changes, such as in market needs, technology, regulations or law, enterprises need to be able to change their supporting information system(s) accordingly. The Design and Engineering Methodology for Organizations (DEMO) has already proven to be an effective tool in designing and realizing agile organizations. The Normalized System (NS) approach, on the other hand, has proven to be the key for developing agile Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems, which support such agile organizations.

We found that DEMO and its underlying PSI-theory, and the principles and elements of the Normalized Systems approach match. Also we designed, using two cases of Dutch governmental subsidy schemes, a few simple and automatable steps to derive a Normalized System from the ontological model of the B-organization, provided by applying DEMO to an enterprise, while retaining the implementation freedom of the organization under consideration. Finally we found that the impact of implementation choices is minimal and that it is clear how they affect the automated information system. With this result, one vital cornerstone for achieving enterprise agility has been covered.